Reparation | rep·a·ra·tion | n
1. the making of amends for a wrong one has done, by paying money to or otherwise helping those who have been wronged.
In the nine years since author Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote “The Case for Reparations” in The Atlantic, conversations surrounding the idea of reparations have become much more mainstream.
Even Beyoncé has spoken about the need for reparations. In her song, “Black Parade,” released on Juneteenth in 2020, she calls for “peace and reparation for my people.” But what do people mean when they talk about reparations?
For most, reparations should have a monetary value.
Economists advising the California Reparations Task Force estimated financial reparations owed to Black Californians who are descendants of people enslaved in the United States would likely exceed $800 billion.
To come up with that figure, URL Media partner Black Voice News, in partnership with California Black Media, reported the economists considered potential financial losses from health disparities, Black mass incarceration and over-policing, and housing discrimination.
Dr. Thomas Craemer, a professor of public policy at the University of Connecticut and one of the experts involved in the assessment, said these factors were chosen because there was data available for them and because they represent harms that the state “is at least partially responsible for.”
And while the $800 billion figure is not a settled figure — the experts are still in deliberations — it provides the task force with an estimated figure to work from when making recommendations.
“What we are estimating are losses to the African American descendants of slaves in the United States,” Craemer said. “Our calculations could be used to come up with determinations of reparations but it’s not necessarily identical.”
For others, effective reparations must include both cash payments and investment in impacted communities.
After the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee proposed a package that called for the city to pay each qualifying Black resident an individual payment of $5 million, eliminate personal debt and tax liabilities of African American households and secure annual incomes at a minimum of $97,000 for 250 years, San Francisco NAACP President Rev. Dr. Amos Brown came under fire for seemingly calling on the city to reject the proposal, Black Voice News in partnership with California Black Media reported.
Brown has since clarified his statement saying that he was not opposed to the idea of a cash payout, but that he did not want a proposal that would give Black residents “false hope.”
“We don’t want to get set up for another study or for them to put this up on a shelf to collect dust,” he said in an interview with Roland Martin. “We must have action. We believe in cash plus – not either or.”
And while most discussions about reparations center Black Americans who are the descendants of people who were enslaved, there are also calls for reparations to tribal nations beyond land acknowledgements.
“Look at where these acknowledgements are done,” Cris Stainbrook told Sahan Journal earlier this year. “A lot of them could actually do something without even putting up money. They could actually return land.”
Stainbrook, president of the nonprofit Indian Land Tenure Foundation and a member of the Oglala Lakota Nation, feels that most land acknowledgements fall flat because the words are not backed by action.
But Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, a 118-year-old parish in the south Minneapolis Longfellow neighborhood which has been using a land acknowledgment for the past decade, took a different path. When the church came into some money after selling an affordable housing complex to a new owner, it gave $250,000 to the Indian Land Tenure Foundation.
“The money was a small act of reparation for what had been taken from the Dakota people,” Ingrid Rasmussen, the church’s lead pastor, told Sahan Journal.
The foundation used that money to launch the Beyond Land Acknowledgement Fund, which will help tribal nations across the country buy back land.
This weekend, take some time to learn more about the work the National African American Reparations Commission is doing and find out ways you can support that work through the Fund for Reparations NOW.
