Q. How can I help?

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Eventually, reparations will be paid by the U.S. government. But to get us to that point, you can help generate the political support that will be needed to make it happen. 

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There are lots of options for positive action. Start by reading about the issue and then talk with people about why you believe reparations are key to this country's future.

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Let your representatives in U.S. Congress know that you support House Resolution (HR) 40, the commission to study reparation proposals for African Americans Act. Find out where your representative stands on HR40 and urge them to sign on as a cosponsor. Reparations won't happen on the national level without broad public support. In the meantime, create your own personal reparations plan.

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Q. What is a personal reparations plan?

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We can take positive action toward this goal on the personal, local and state level. Contribute to a more equitable future by:

• Donating to local or national reparations funds, e.g., N'COBRA (National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America)

• Finding, starting or supporting reparations-like private initiatives

• Doing your banking with Black-owned banks

• Joining the widespread dialogue about race relations and systems of oppression

• Divesting in systems of oppression. Ask yourself:

  • How much money have I “invested” into the existing system?

• How much personally?

• How much professionally?

• How much more would I invest assuming I maintain this level of success for another 10 or 20 years?

  

These questions might get you beyond donations. Ask yourself,  "How can I start to divert funds into a rainbow coalition of creators, makers, farmers, laborers, storytellers, educators, technologists and more? Can it be done in a way that is immediate and scalable?" (DallasKidd)

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Q. What would a national  reparations program look like?

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We don’t know. The first step would be establishing a national commission to study the options. We have done this before: similar to how the U.S. government compensated Japanese Americans for internment during World War II. And Germany created a reparations program for survivors of the Holocaust. Some models focus on direct payments. Some might focus on community investment. Some would combine both. Any commission would be held to creating a report within 18 months, under the proposal of Darity and Mullen outlined in From Here to Equality.

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What is clear, is that whatever program is created, it is based on a "recognition of the need for national redemption. It is the federal government that should implement reparations via congressional legislation." (Darity and Mullen p 245)

 

Q. Who should get payments?

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Black American descendants of persons enslaved in the United States, based on the debt that never was paid to their ancestors upon emancipation, the forty-acre land grants. (Darity and Mullen, p254)

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What about wealthy Black Americans like Oprah Winfrey – do they get payments?

 

Yes, and whether they donate them to others or not is their decision.

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A reparations project is not an anti-poverty program. It’s an act of justice – restitution that has never been paid before. So we mustn't worry about whether conditions of eligible recipients should block them from receiving payments. Recipient can redirect, but they must be eligible. Remember, reparations to victims of the Holocaust were not based on the economic status of eligible recipients. When reparations made to Japanese Americans for unjust incarceration, no one asked how much they are worth before they received their payment. The same is true here. This is not a matter of how well individual Black people are doing today. It’s a matter of the collective difference between Black wealth and white wealth. It’s their discretion if they take it. (Darity Ted Talk)

 

Q. How would such a program determine which Black Americans are descendants of persons enslaved in the United States?

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As part of a reparations program, the agency in charge would have a branch specializing in genealogical research. Or eligibility could be determined by private genealogists. Darity also suggests that the internet and sharing information on dedicated websites could be valuable in helping people establish that they are descended from an enslaved ancestor. The agency that administers the reparations program  (Darity and Mullen, p258)

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Q. Rather than direct payments, wouldn't it be better to funnel reparations funds into social service programs, e.g., police reform and education?

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None of these approaches would meet the task of eliminating the Black-white wealth differential in the U.S. They are not enough. In terms of the racial wealth gap, educational attainment doesn’t hold much promise at all. Black heads of households with a college degree have two-thirds the net worth of white heads of household who never finished high school. More and better education won’t interrupt the intergenerational ability to move resources from one generation to the next. (Darity Ted Talk)

 

Q. Where will we find this money?

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This question comes from a scarcity mindset. Reject that. You don’t have to take money from pot A to produce money for pot B. Look at the rapid provision of $2.5 trillion to cope with coronavirus crisis in 2020. The Federal government is not constrained by tax payments to make new expenditures. Even so, the program must be designed to reduce the inflation risk. That’s the only barrier. There's no need to cut other programs or other valuable initiatives in order to finance reparations project. The program would be set up to create the funds over a decade. There is no revenue-based constraint. (Darity Ted Talk) 

 

Q.  Why now?

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The momentum of the moment is promising. In the year 2000, a major survey showed that  only 4% of white Americans were in favor of reparations. That figure is now about 20% and almost half of all millennials are in favor of reparations.

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The coronavirus pandemic makes the case for reparations even more urgent, as it has revealed the ongoing harms of systemic racism through excess mortality among Black people and the disproportionate collapse of Black businesses, employment opportunities, and educational opportunity.

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We must continue to commit to the case for reparations during pandemic. It’s always an urgent time, for 155 years, since end of slavery, where no restitution has been provided. It’s time for the nation to pay the debt. It’s time for racial justice

 

Q. My family never enslaved people, so why should I pay reparations?

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Reparations are not about punishing white Americans, and white Americans are not the ones who would pay for them. It does not matter if your ancestors engaged in slavery or if you just immigrated here two weeks ago. Reparations are a societal obligation in a nation where our Constitution sanctioned slavery, Congress passed laws protecting it and our federal government initiated, condoned and practiced legal racial segregation and discrimination against Black Americans until half a century ago. And so it is the federal government that pays. (Hannah-Jones)

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"By erecting a slave society, America created the economic foundation for its great experiment in democracy." (Coates) 

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"Reparations are not exclusively focused on slavery. Slavery was the beginning from which white supremacy culture in the United States was born. It led to Jim Crow period, legal segregation, mass incarceration, police executions, persistent discrimination in employment, housing, credit markets, immense racial wealth gap. If you are white, you have benefited from this white supremacy culture, at the expense of Black Americans." (Darity, Ted Talk)

 

Q. Why should I care?

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The scourge of slavery in the United States and its ongoing harms, including a huge and persistent racial wealth gap and the ongoing horrors of police brutality and mass incarceration, must be acknowledged and repaired by the U.S. government. The path toward racial equality and the nation's healing hinges on compensation and redemption. (Darity Ted Talk)

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The current system is a disservice to us all…and when we offer reconciliation and reparation, we not only help to heal the injustices against Black people but everyone else who is living in the unjust status quo (DallasKidd)

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"An America that asks what it owes its most vulnerable citizens is improved and humane. An America that looks away is ignoring not just the sins of the past but the sins of the present and the certain sins of the future." (Coates)