FWIW, when reparations are discussed, it is usually a reference to the fact that after the civil War, the government somehow found a way to scrape down in its pockets and compensate the slave owners for their "loss of property."

One can I think reasonably ask how this government was able to find the resources to pay people for losing their slaves and not the resources to compensate slaves for the years of freedom stolen. Although it is almost certainly too late to reconcile that particular wrong directly as those slaves are now all dead.