The ’90s may be remembered as another decade when tiny bandages were prescribed for serious old wounds.

Our government has established an ugly record of making insufficient reparations to its multitude of victims. Clinton’s recent lack of resolution on the issue of whether America should formally apologize to descendants of slaves sent a mixed message.

Of course, an apology would be so absurdly inadequate by itself that it seems inappropriate to consider the issue, unless it would be only a small fraction of a much larger compensatory plan. The bottom line is that descendants of slaves deserve a great deal more than an apology, and Clinton knows that. So is America postponing the apology because something greater awaits? Or is Clinton avoiding the issue because he knows America will never cough up the cash?

Certainly, his coolness on the idea resulted from fears that millions of people who have been damaged by the legacy of slavery might demand government compensation — as they should!

What the hell ever happened to 40 acres and a mule, anyway?

The sad fact of the matter is that if America ever does attempt to make financial reparations to descendants of slaves, it will not be enough. Our government has a bad old habit of underestimating the amount of money due to all the people it has wronged. Take the recent decision to remunerate Latin Americans of Japanese ancestry, for example.

During the second world war, the Roosevelt administration arranged the detention of thousands of people of Japanese ancestry living in Latin American countries, the majority of them from Peru. Though no official explanation has ever been offered, it is believed that these Japanese Latin Americans were abducted for reasons similar to the larger detention of Japanese-Americans on the West Coast of the United States: The internees were believed to have been some sort of military threat to America and its allies.

Of the thousands of internees from Latin America, only 200 were allowed to return after the war. Some of them moved to Japan. Others endured much hardship in the process of becoming United States citizens. These people lost everything they had in Latin America when the United States abducted them. It is important to note that many of them led very affluent lives in Peru. Family homes and businesses were completely lost.

America did this to them.

Now, the United States government has decided to pay five thousand dollars to each of the surviving internees and their heirs. This is only one quarter of the meager twenty thousand dollars paid to Japanese-American internees under the 1988 reparation law.

While Japanese-Peruvians are satisfied that the United States government has finally admitted it committed an injustice, they are not pleased with the remuneration. Understandably, they want to know why they will receive only a fourth of what Japanese-American internees were paid.

What can you buy with five thousand dollars nowadays? A decent used car? … Maybe if you shop around a little.

Of course, the exchange rate might be favorable for Peruvians, but I doubt that five thousand dollars will buy a very nice new car in Lima.

Even if the U.S. gave all of the surviving internees and their heirs shiny new Saturns, would such compensation make up for the damage?

Think about it — a new car in exchange for a family home, a business and a lifestyle.

This is not to include any of the mental and emotional anguish imposed by the abduction, or the struggle to survive in a new country.

Is five thousand dollars enough? Is a shiny new Saturn enough?

No way.

It’s insulting. America the Beautiful, as wealthy as she is, once again fails to put her money where her mouth is.

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Tom Owings is a graduate student in English from Ames. He is the opinion editor of the Daily.