Question: what was the first war America fought over slavery?
Hint: It wasn't the civil war.
Answer: The Barbary war.
Slavery has nothing to do with racism although, of course, that's not how it's taught in US schools. Different cultures have kept slaves for millennia. There was a booming Middle Eastern slave trade for centuries before slaves were shipped to the new world. The Barbary wars mentioned above were fought because of the near million Europeans captured into slavery. And for centuries before the Middle Eastern slave trade boomed, the Roman empire had a booming slave trade and one could argue that the empire was, quite literally, built by slaves, few of whom were a different "race" to the Romans.
At it's most basic slavery is a solution to an economic problem i.e. how do I get work done cheaply?
America could solve it's problem with racism in a heartbeat by acknowledging that slavery was an economic solution to an economic problem - i.e. how do we grow cotton and other crops cheaply? And establishing an organization that pays restitution to the descendants of slaves. Reparations should have been paid after the civil war but they weren't and that was the point when the economic issue became a race issue. Because in order not to pay restitution you need to ignore the economic realities of the situation and focus on something else. And that something else was race.
The problem has been exacerbated by years of indoctrination to such an extent that American of all races seem to think slavery was a race issue despite having to discount nearly three thousand years of history and three thousand years of economic theory to arrive at that conclusion.
And, because racism is routinely accepted as the cause of slavery, there isn't a magic bullet solution. But if you focus on the economic realities you can, quite easily, figure out an economic solution.
By 1860 the nearly 4 million slaves in the US were worth some $3.5 billion making them the largest single financial asset in the entire U.S. economy, worth more than all manufacturing and all railroads combined. That was why the Civil war was fought. That was why nearly 20% of all Southern white men of military age died in the War. In fact, until Vietnam, more people had died in the Civil War than all other American wars combined.
Given the economic realities of slavery you can see why reparations weren't paid - it would have cost too much money. But it's time to wake up to the realities. To undo a great injustice costs a great amount of money. How much? Perhaps 5 to 10% of GDP for the next 100 years, enough money and enough time to undo all the wrong that was done.
I can't see it ever happening but, unless it does, America will continue to tie itself into knots over race and racism until well into the 22nd Century.