A New Generation of Black Farmers Is Returning to the Land
They are working to repair harm inflicted over the past 400 years, with an eye toward reparations.
“Imagine your neighbor stole your cow. A few weeks later the neighbor comes over, laden with remorse, to offer a sincere apology and a promise to make it right. The neighbor offers to atone by giving you half a pound of butter every week for the rest of the cow’s life. What do you think of that?”
The challenge was issued by Ed Whitfield, board member of the Southern Reparations Loan Fund, during the E.F. Schumacher Center lectures in 2018. His audience was unanimous in its response: “We would want our cow back!”
And the United Nations agrees. The UN Principles on Reparations and Immunity, which provides basic guiding principles around gross human rights violations, hol...