In a conversation with a dear friend, we discovered that we both now support reparations!
Both of us had been against the idea. Not because we didn’t believe they were deserved, or that we didn’t believe in the righteousness of reparations. We believed that as much as they are deserved, it just wouldn’t happen and that the whole argument was a distraction from other policy pursuits and discussions that needed to take place.
What changed our minds? The answer can be summed up in one word: RACISM!
This country’s continued racism and racial hypocrisy, the brutal abuse of Black bodies; the fact that Black people make up 13 percent of America’s population, but 16 percent of those families living in poverty; the fact that Black Americans represented thirty-three percent of the sentenced prison population, nearly triple their 13 percent share of the U.S. adult population; median black household income was 61% of median white household income in 2018; white households—who account for 60 percent of the U.S. population—held 84 percent ($94 trillion) of total household wealth in the U.S. Comparatively, Black households—who account for 13.4 percent of the U.S. population—held just 4 percent ($4.6 trillion) of total household wealth. How that breaks down per household, the median white household held $188,200 in wealth—7.8 times that of the typical Black household ($24,100).
The appropriation of Black life and culture without concomitant concern for justice, equity and fairness, all demand that there be some kind of tangible payment that represents an understanding of the depth of injury done to Black people and the lack of hope that anything substantive will get done until the government pays for its continued and continual mistreatment of Black people.
What about those ‘more basic’ policy concerns? What’s more basic than money?
Almost everyone who supports reparations has heard all of the excuses for not implementing this remedy: it’s an interminable amount of money; its an astronomical amount of money; we can’t tell who’s Black; we can’t determine who the descendants of slave are anymore; this generation doesn’t owe Black people anything, there are no more slave owners.
Still, because of the pandemic, America found a way to give cash checks to every American (by comparison, European countries found a way to give monthly checks, some amounting to $2000 per citizen). At this point the there is a proposal to give $600 checks and the House has just voted to up that amount to $2000. The incoming Biden Administration promises more. During the Democratic Primary, a Universal Basic Income (UBI), giving nearly every American, thousands of dollars per month, was a ongoing policy proposal.
Trump administrations did give obscenely expensive ($2 trillion) tax cuts to America’s wealthy. “…it steered the bulk of the [tax] relief to the richest Americans, especially those making more than $300,000. The largest cuts as a share of income will go to taxpayers in the 95th to 99th percentiles of all earners…” The upshot of this tax cut being that many of Trump’s friends and their companies will pay no taxes at all. People who hysterically claim that poor folk and progressives want to ‘redistribute’ wealth in this country, don’t look now, it’s already been redistributed – from the bottom to the top!
The fact is the idea of ongoing payments to Black citizens as redress for past (and present) societal and systemic maltreatment, is no longer that far-fetched.
I am a Baptist preacher by calling, and for me, this is not an economic question, it is a moral question. Slavery, reconstruction and the post-reconstruction, with its Jim Crow segregation, represent nearly 500 years, of gross maltreatment and oppression. It was not just that the white people were ‘mistaken’ or ‘men [and women] of their times’. They were cruel people who kidnapped, enslaved, beat, raped, mutilated, humiliated and, yes, murdered, millions of people. They meanly worked, and in more cases than can be counted, worked literally to death, millions of people. When slavery ended, they sought workarounds with the ‘black codes’, which arrested (in effect, ‘re-enslaved’) and put to work, again, for no pay, millions of blacks under the guise of ‘law’. When the nation grew tired of the weight of Reconstruction, and ended it in a political bargain which resulted in Rutherford B. Hayes to ascend to the Presidency, the let loose a reign of terror, disenfranchising, ‘legally’ and by tradition, lynched, beat and tortured still millions more black people through Jim Crow. Yes, for all of this, we are owed.
In abusive relationships, we now admit that men (and some women), who commit domestic violence, are men (and some women) who have been exposed to domestic violence in their formative years. They are the progeny of parents who committed and/or were victims of domestic violence. We know that rapists are the products of violent and mysoginistic upbringings. Is it so hard to believe that white people, exposed to racist attitudes and behaviors in their homes, their communities, in their schools, churches and voluntary associations, in their workplaces were not in some ways ‘infected’ with a ‘virus’ of racism, if not racial indifference (a passive form of racism), that has allowed white privilege and black suffering to continue?
It’s interesting that people don’t make the connection…
White people who experience privilege simply by virtue of the color of their skin, and who live everyday in the experience of that privilege have grown up having been taught, implicitly and explicitly that their wealth and place is what life ‘owes’ them. They don’t understand, that all of the wealth of this country is built on stolen labor, by stolen people, or exploited labor by exploited people. Their wealth, ‘earned’ though it may be, was made possible by racial exploitation. It is time that someone recognize what is owed, and make arrangements to pay. It is what’s right.
There is a multiracial, multigenerational awareness that has found its genesis with the catalyst of George Floyd’s death. But this understanding of tragedy of Floyd’s death, must be combined with the understanding that Floyd lived a unappreciated Black life. That this Black life was snuffed out because the policeman who caused his death, did not just see that his life had value, but that his Black life had value. That he [Floyd] through some circuitous route, traces it’s lineage all the way back to courageous, creative, enduring who survived slavery and segregation who should – at the very least – be accorded a semblance of respect for their humanity. Yes, their Black humanity. This is the sum and substance of what ‘Black Lives Matter’ means.
So how do we do it? How much will it cost? To whom will it be paid? How will we distribute it? That frankly, is not our problem, anymore than white on Black racism is our problem. This is the problem of policy makers. But let’s be plain…it is a conversation that needs to begin, it needs to begin now and there needs a serious intent to translate these conversations into actions that lead to legislation.
Will that settle things? Will it get rid of racism? No! Of course not. Nothing solves ‘everything’. We still need to strengthen our Civil Rights laws. We still need law enforcement and judicial reform. We still need an effective Voting Rights Act. We need all of that and the cash payments.
I was introduced to the concept of reparations, some years ago Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, in Georgia. I was changing planes and going through the airport on my way to the other terminal, I was confronted by a young man, asking me to sign a petition to urge the government to pass reparation legislation. I signed it quickly, and walked on saying to myself, ‘Yeah, like that’s going to happen.’ But I wasn’t right for thinking of this issue in that manner. Nothing happens in this country, until its made to happen. You don’t think the Trump tax cut legislation was actually written by Trump, do you? Or the legislature? No, there are business leaders and lobbyists and conservative think-tanks which all have a hand in writing this legislation. We have to focus, demonstrate, talk to our legislatures and our neighbors – even our white neighbors – and make the conversation public and ongoing, saying upfront, ‘We want legislation that literally pays us cash money as reparation as payment for that oppression and murder of our ancestors.’
How long will it take? I don’t know. The incoming administration needs to take it seriously and work on it – even if it takes two terms. The tangible acknowledgement is worth it.
I’m just glad I have a friend who agrees with me!
A Cup of Black Coffee 