Reparations for slavery is one of the hottest political topics on the 2020 campaign trail. But, who wants them? Who gets them? And why are they important? First things first: Reparations for slavery isn’t all about getting that bag. It’s part of it, for sure, but it’s also about acknowledging and reconciling a wrong. In the United States, that “wrong” is what some would call this country’s original sin: slavery, and its legacy. Darrick Hamilton is the executive director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University. He says that reparations consists of three components: acknowledgment; restitution (read: securing the bag); and reconciliation. “We are at a moment where we’re really grappling with our history, again with integrity, to understand that people aren’t poor because they simply make behavioral choices,” Hamilton told The Root. Early presidential hopefuls like Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Julián Castro and Marianne Williamson have been open to the idea of reparations—a program that experts say could run the country trillions of dollars. Others, like Cory Booker, haven’t directly endorsed reparations but support programs like “Baby Bonds” that would help the lowest income families regardless of race. Hamilton makes it clear that reparations and baby bonds shouldn’t be conflated. “Should baby bonds be considered a sort of reparations? Absolutely not,”he said. Hamilton should know—he along with one of his colleagues, came up with the idea. The professor continued: “There are different programs. We need to be addressing social equity with a race conscience, and that’s how I would characterize baby bonds. Baby bonds deals with the gaping disparities around wealth, whether you’re black or white.” Slavery is something the United States has never collectively confronted. ICYMI: Free black labor built this country. Centuries of slavery, and its aftermath, caused tremendous disparities in wealth, education, health, income and incarceration that are still evident today. See the entire video above.