Tag: reparations

A New World Awaits On The Other Side Of Reparations
SOCIAL JUSTICE

A New World Awaits On The Other Side Of Reparations

In 1782, as the Revolutionary War raged on and the design of what would become the Great Seal of the United States was finalized, a Black woman named Belinda Sutton petitioned the Massachusetts legislature for reparations from her enslaver and won. Sutton claimed that she had been “denied the enjoyment of one morsel of the immense wealth, part whereof hath been accumulated by her own industry.” She successfully argued her claim and was granted 15 pounds and 12 shillings per year from the wealth accumulated by the Royall family on the Ten Hills Plantation as restitution for her 40 years of enslavement. Unbeknownst to her, Sutton and her petition (which can be read in full at the end of this article) would set the stage for a centuries-long movement to repair the harms of the trans-Atlanti...
From Juneteenth To Reparations: Reclaiming Our Stolen Stories
Journalism, SOCIAL JUSTICE

From Juneteenth To Reparations: Reclaiming Our Stolen Stories

Do you know the story of Juneteenth? Can you imagine it? June 19, 1865, the day that General Order No. 3 “informed all Texans that, in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves were free,” is the day that we know as Juneteenth today. We can imagine asking: What kind of jubilee floated into the air that day? Do you think the exaltations shook fear out of the ground? What songs gave sound to words with no language? Juneteenth (“Emancipation Day” or “Jubilee Day,” as it was called in most early accounts) is a celebration of the news that informed Black people throughout Texas that the institution of slavery had been abolished—despite the Emancipation Proclamation marking the legislative end of slavery nearly two and a half years earlier. The day...
Reparations Can Be Paid Through School Finance Reform
EDUCATION

Reparations Can Be Paid Through School Finance Reform

Preston Green III, University of Connecticut and Bruce Baker, Rutgers University White public schools have always gotten more money than Black public schools. These funding disparities go back to the so-called “separate but equal” era – which was enshrined into the nation’s laws by the Supreme Court’s 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. The disparities have persisted even after Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision that ordered the desegregation of America’s public schools. Since Black schools get less funding even though Black homeowners pay higher property taxes than their white counterparts, we think reparations are due – and they can be paid by reforming the ways Black homeowners are taxed and schools in Black communities are funded. We make this ar...
Reparations – Why Are They About More Than Money
IN OTHER NEWS

Reparations – Why Are They About More Than Money

Kerry Whigham, Binghamton University, State University of New York Between 1904 and 1908, German soldiers and settler colonists killed about half of all Nama people and over 80% of the Herero ethnic group. On May 28, 2021, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas acknowledged that Germany committed genocide in what is today Namibia. Maas’ statement was Germany’s first official description of these events as “genocide.” Maas also announced that Germany would pay Namibia roughly US$1.3 billion to answer for these crimes. Many refer to this gesture as reparations. Meanwhile, in the United States, reparations to Black Americans for slavery are gaining traction. A growing number of universities, including Georgetown and Virginia Theological Seminary, along with a few cities such as Asheville, North...
The Need For Reparations Today – What Alexander Hamilton’s Deep Connections To Slavery Reveal
CULTURE

The Need For Reparations Today – What Alexander Hamilton’s Deep Connections To Slavery Reveal

Alexander Hamilton has received a resurgence of interest in recent years on the back of the smash Broadway musical bearing his name. But alongside tales of his role in the Revolutionary War and in forging the early United States, the spotlight has also fallen on a less savory aspect of his life: his apparent complicity in the institution of slavery. Despite being a founding member of the New York Manumission Society, which sought gradual emancipation of New York’s enslaved population, Hamilton benefited from slavery – both personally and by association. As a historian of early America and Northern slavery, I study how Colonial-era figures like Hamilton fit into America’s long history of enslavement, and how slavery fueled networks of power that have lasted through the ages. A life entwin...
Reparations Should Cover Past Harms And Current Value Of Slavery-Built Infrastructure That Still Creates Wealth In US
POLITICS

Reparations Should Cover Past Harms And Current Value Of Slavery-Built Infrastructure That Still Creates Wealth In US

American cities from Atlanta to New York City still use buildings, roads, ports and rail lines built by enslaved people. The fact that centuries-old relics of slavery still support the economy of the United States suggests that reparations for slavery would need to go beyond government payments to the ancestors of enslaved people to account for profit-generating, slave-built infrastructure. Debates about compensating Black Americans for slavery began soon after the Civil War, in the 1860s, with promises of “40 acres and a mule.” A national conversation about reparations has reignited in recent decades. The definition of reparations varies, but most advocates envision it as a two-part reckoning that acknowledges the role slavery played in building the country and directs resources to the ...
How Reparations to Descendants of Slavery Can Heal a Nation
Journalism

How Reparations to Descendants of Slavery Can Heal a Nation

To truly understand the debt this country owes to Black people is to be liberated from the bondage of miseducation that we’ve remained shackled to in the so-called land of the free. On a spring day, I stood at the corner of Madison and Pennsylvania avenues in the nation’s capital, transfixed on the building in front of me. Passersby zigzagged around me. In my trance, I imagined a “magnificent brownstone front, its towering height,” with “spacious windows.” A “splendid” sight indeed. Through those windows I imagined “its marble counters and black walnut finishings,” and “a row of its gentlemanly and elegantly dressed” Black men and women “clerks, with their pens behind their ears and buttonhole bouquets in their coat-fronts.” It was “beautiful,” just as Frederick Douglas...
Journalism

With Reparations, We Must Demand Repair—and Heal Ourselves

Part two of this six-part series explores the plurality of reparations that includes Black people’s spiritual and psychological healing. The first panel at the National Grassroots Reparations Convening in Ferguson, Missouri, earlier this month was titled “Spirituality, Healing and Reparations.” Facilitator Rev. Emma Jordan-Simpson, executive director at Fellowship of Reconciliation, the organization cohosting the four-day convening, opened the discussion by sharing a story about the Lyft driver who brought her there that day. The driver was an older African American woman who described to Jordan-Simpson having multiple jobs, caring for grandchildren, and needing another source of income. The driver told her simply, “My soul is tired.” “What do we say to our people whose so...
Reparations Are a Peace Treaty
Journalism

Reparations Are a Peace Treaty

The first article in this six-part series explores how the wars on drugs and poverty were actually wars on people, making the case for reparations as a way toward peace. “If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense.” —letter to former master from Jourdon Anderson A peace treaty is a document that spells out how warring parties can cease violence. Often there is systemic change that follows at every level, from the federal government to local institutions. After WWII, the U.S. required Germany and Japan to change their constitution...
Journalism

On Reparations, the Question Isn’t If, but When and How

The House subcommittee hearing held on Juneteenth is the result of centuries of work. We will never achieve racial justice in America if this country does not examine the impact and legacy of slavery—and make strides toward achieving reparatory justice. —Jeffery Robinson, deputy legal director, ACLU For nearly 250 years, enslaved Africans and their descendants toiled on the land and in the homes of White enslavers in the United States. They planted, fed, weeded, mowed, and harvested crops that were not theirs; cared for and fed children they did not birth; and cleaned homes and tended lands they did not own. We’re all familiar with this uncomfortable but sanitized image of U.S. slavery. The harsh reality is that too many of the more than 300,000 African men, women, and...