Reparations Monday + a Playlist
Words by: Maggie Laubscher | Music by: Abby Yemm
The call for slavery reparations has been a growing force of late. With this year’s wave of protests against police brutality and systemic racism, the campaign has been gaining momentum. The latest push is today’s #ReparationsMonday. It’s about healing, lifting up, and making amends. Here is what’s useful to know and how you can help.
The Meaning
Reparations are simply the making of amends for a wrong. Reparations for slavery applies this concept to victims of slavery and their descendants. It can take many forms: money, land, scholarships, and more. And it has a long history in our country.
In 1865, survivors of slavery were promised 40 acres of land and a mule. A few months later, President Andrew Johnson overturned the promise. As of today -- some 155 years later -- this promise or any other has yet to be fulfilled.
So, what is Reparations Monday? It’s a call to shine a light on the need for reparations. Again, it is about healing, lifting up, and making amends. It’s about the need for reparations and the healing power of them. The movement, created by the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), aims for increased institutional giving to Black-led organizations. That means donations will be spread across over 150 Black-led organizations, which can have a powerful and long-lasting impact. Organizations include M4BL, Black Lives Matter Network, Color of Change, Black Movement Law Project, and many others.
The chosen date is also significant, being the day before the annual Giving Tuesday celebration. Giving Tuesday is thought to support our already unequal system -- one where donations go to the most known and supported organizations. As M4BL says, ‘It’s time to disrupt. It’s time to reroute.’ Reparations Monday aims to redistribute and transform our current system into one that serves the Black community.
The Importance
‘It’s about more than a check,’ said Shaniyat Chowdhury, a Democratic former candidate for Congress, in a New York Times article in July of this year. ‘It’s about improving the quality of life for black Americans. It’s about addressing the sins of this nation over 400 years.’
Today, the average white family has about 10 times the wealth as the average Black family. This difference is due to a decades-long domino effect. It’s years of systemic racism, which includes zero slavery reparations, housing segregation, redlining (denying financial services based on one’s race), and more. For example, racial housing segregation doubled from 1880 to 1940. So if a Black person was able to buy a house - despite the odds stacked against them - it was likely in a neighborhood worth less than a white counterpart neighborhood. Which means the Black person grew their wealth slower and passed down less wealth to their descendents. This in turn makes the American Dream that much more inequitable. And this is just one example. Our government has denied wealth to Black people for its entire history. Reparations would help reverse this racial wealth disparity.
The Champions
U.S. Representative John Conyers was the definition of perseverance. Every year from 1989 to 2017, he introduced a bill on the study of reparations. He stopped only when he resigned shortly before his death in 2019.
In 2019, U.S. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee reintroduced the bill, carrying the torch from Conyers.
Also in 2019, U.S Senator Cory Booker introduced the first-ever reparations bill in the Senate.
Earlier this year, BET founder Robert Johnson called for $14 trillion in slavery reparations. ‘Wealth transfer is what’s needed,’ he told CNBC. ‘Think about this. Since 200-plus-years or so of slavery, labor taken with no compensation, is a wealth transfer. Denial of access to education, which is a primary driver of accumulation of income and wealth, is a wealth transfer.’
And then there is Ta-Nehisi Coates, who wrote the definitive case for reparations in The Atlantic in 2014. In recapping the article for The New Yorker last year, he said, ‘The case I make for reparations is, virtually every institution with some degree of history in America, be it public, be it private, has a history of extracting wealth and resources out of the African-American community… Behind all of that oppression was actually theft.’
In addition, more and more politicians are openly supporting reparations. Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Tulsi Gabbard, Bernie Sanders, Beto O'Rourke, and others all support reparations.
#ReparationsMonday. Now is the time.
A PLAYLIST
Our resident artist phenom Abby Yemm, is making a stellar playlist to pair with this piece, coming soon.
Be well and play on, Nellies. XO