How do I explain reparations to someone who thinks it's about blame?

This is where Sor Juana's insight matters most. She distinguished between *responsibility* and *blame*—you can acknowledge a system's injury without declaring every person in it a villain. Reparations aren't punishment. They're recognition that certain groups accumulated advantages while others faced systematic extraction—of land, labor, wealth, dignity. Think of it like this: if your family inherited a house built on stolen ground, you didn't steal it. But you did inherit it. Reparations ask: what do we owe to repair that original harm? It's not about making today's people feel guilty. It's about being honest about how yesterday's injustice shapes today's inequality, and choosing to correct course. When you frame it this way—as *structural* rather than *moral blame*—people often soften. They recognize the difference between "you personally did this" and "this system did this, and we all live in its shadow." That distinction opens conversation instead of closing it. Start there.