So…What Are Reparations?
According to the International Center for Truth and Justice reparations “serve to acknowledge the legal obligation of a state, or individual(s) or group, to repair the consequences of violations — either because it directly committed them or it failed to prevent them.”
Beyond just ending harmful policies, reparations are meant to address lasting impacts of that harm. While many assume this must take the form of cash payouts, reparations can also involve community investment, support in access to health care or education, addressing past psychological trauma, erasing unfair criminal records, land grants, rewriting incorrect histories and more.
The heart of reparations is in the root of the word itself: repair.
Reparations aren’t meant to give people handouts or benefits. They’re a part of a truth-telling movement that seeks to explore how harm that has been perpetrated in the past can have lasting effects on future communities. At its core, reparations are a tool in pursuit of the classic American Dream. It simply functions on the acknowledgement that we’re still pursuing equal footing.
What Have Reparations Looked Like in the Past?
Reparations for Holocaust Victims
In response to the atrocities committed against Jewish people and other minorities during the Holocaust, the German government has paid economic reparations to victims and their families that total over $89 billion over the past sixty years. The German reparations project continues to undergo revision and expansion to their qualification metrics, including family members of deceased victims.
Reparations for Japanese Internment Camp Victims
After 45 years of campaigning, 82,219 Japanese Americans who had been forcibly held in internment camps received the modern equivalent of almost $3.5 billion when the government admitted that their actions were the result of "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership."
Reparations for Tuskegee Experiments:
In 1932, 600 Black men entered into an experiment run by the Public Health Service. 399 of these men had syphilis, and were told that they were being treated for it. They were not. The purpose was to study the long-term effects of syphilis, despite widespread knowledge of successful treatments like penicillin. Following a class-action lawsuit, $10 million was allocated to the living participants and their families, as well as lifetime medical care for victims as well as their families and offspring.
Most Importantly, what might reparations for Black Americans look like?
Reparations can take many forms. The most commonly thought of form of reparations is cash-payouts from the government, but this is not the only solution!
Cash payouts:
Particularly controversial (hyperlink:https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-americans-think-about-reparations-and-other-race-related-questions/)
Most often referenced as a rectification for stolen enslaved Black labor during slavery as well as human rights violations perpetuated against enslaved Black people. UConn Professor Thomas Cramer created a model to evaluate the value of unpaid Black labor, and arrived at a conservative estimate of $14 trillion in 2009
Community investments:
Community investments embody support through institutions that Black Americans have historically been barred from accessing. In terms of housing, policies like redlining in combination with racial exclusion resulted in Black Americans being refused property sales on medium and high value homes, even if they were financially eligible. The result was starkly racially segregated neighborhoods, and equity built in white neighborhoods that resulted in an estimated $400,000 - $500,000 more wealth for white households Reparations in this case can look like government subsidies supporting down payment, mortgage maintenance, or investment into Community Land Trusts as a way to repair the inequality that continues to grow out of forced housing segregation.
The same can be said for education. Because public schools are funded by neighborhood property taxes, predominantly Black schools became and remain underfunded. Findings from a multi-year study published by the nonprofit EdBuild found a $23 billion dollar discrepancy between predominantly white schools and predominantly Black schools, and even found that on average, ”for every student enrolled, the average nonwhite school district receives $2,226 less than a white school district.”
In this case, reparations can take the form of investment in schooling systems and redistribution of funding to lower-income schools, or policies that discontinue the utilization of property taxes as the framework for school funding.
Financed access to education and healthcare including therapy and mental health counselling as a means of use for redistributed or additional funds.
Erasing unfair criminal records and supporting reintroduction for formerly incarcerated people
Pardons for crimes that were unjustly convicted, and commutations of sentences for inmates whose criminal records include unjust convictions.
Support for returning citizens whose sentences have been pardoned or commuted.
Rewriting inaccurate histories and correcting for their impacts on today’s government and structures
A Texas textbook calling enslaved Africans “immigrants” and “workers”, a Virginia textbook describing how “enslaved people were happy to be in Virginia and were better off than they would have been in Africa. Abolitionists lied about slavery in the South.” Modern day textbooks still continue to reinforce propaganda originally written before the civil war by white supremacist enslavers and their supporters that characterizes the conditions of slavery as being “not too bad” and Black people as dependents who enjoyed being enslaved. These lies and euphemisms still taught in classrooms affect how we view the struggles Black Americans face today.
In addition to histories that cause active harm to communities there are also current institutions such as policing that have origins in slavery and the structures of white supremacy.