Advocate for reparations.
Happy Monday and welcome back to the Anti-Racism Daily. I was hoping to cover this issue last week on the day of the hearing, but I totally missed my own deadline with everything happening in Texas. It aligns well with Andrew’s article yesterday, which analyzed our relationship to reconciliation through history.
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Nicole
TAKE ACTION
Send a message to your members of Congress urging them to support H.R. 40.
Download and review the reparations toolkit from the Movement for Black Lives.
Research efforts for reparations in your state and local community. See how you can support, amplifying, or advocate as needed.
GET EDUCATED
By Nicole Cardoza (she/her)
Last Wednesday, February 17, Congress held a hearing on “H.R. 40: Exploring the Path to Reparative Justice in America.” The bill, referred to as H.R. 40, calls for Congress to create a commission to study the history of slavery in the U.S. from 1619 to 1865, and develop actionable steps to pay reparations. You can watch a recording of the entire hearing on PBS.
This is a marked point of progress on the long road to receiving federal reparations for Black people. In 1898, The National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief Bounty and Pension Association had 600,000 members – all of who organized to obtain compensation for slavery from federal agencies. During the 1920s, Marcus Garvey organized hundreds of thousands of Black people to demand reparations. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr advocated for reparations as part of his book “Why We Can’t Wait” in 1964. The Black Panther Party called for reparations as part of their ten-point program.
In fact, in her 2019 public lecture at Columbia Journal of Race and Law, activist, attorney, and scholar Nkechi Taifa emphasizes that, since the end of slavery, “there's been no substantial period of time where the call for redress has been neglected.” Read her full speech via Columbia and more examples of reparations through history via ACLU.
But in 1988, Congress passed legislation paying reparations to Japanese Americans that were descendants of those held in detention camps, along with funding dedicated to educating the history of Japanese internment and a pardon for all those convicted of resisting arrest. This action created a framework for approaching reparations for Black people in the political sphere. As a result, the H.R. 40 bill was introduced a year later, led by the late Representative John Conyers (MI). It’s named after “40 acres and a mule,” referencing the broken promise of 1845 to redistribute land to formerly enslaved people (learn more in a previous newsletter).
The House and the Senate issued apologies to Black Americans for the impact of slavery and Jim Crow back in 2008 and 2009 (NPR), a hollow gesture without joint accountability or reparations for the harm. (They also apologized for the harm that happened “to Native Peoples” during this time). But otherwise, there’s been no significant progress on behalf of the federal government.
Despite this, public perception of reparations is rapidly shifting. Ta-Nehisi Coates’ article, The Case for Reparations, brought reparations to the front-page in 2014 (The Atlantic). And racial reckoning of this year alone has swiftly shifted sentiment in favor of passing reparations. Reparations have been a persistent demand from major Black-led organizing groups. And last summer, the Human Rights Watch, along with dozens of other organizations, sent a letter to Congress urging the review and passing of H.R. 40 (Human Rights Watch).
Representative Shelia Jackson Lee (TX) took on this work after the passing of Rep. Conyers. She reintroduced the latest version of H.R. 40 on January 4, 2021. This pivotal step got buried in the news; two days later, white supremacists stormed the Capitol building – resulting in another slew of calls for accountability. It’s difficult to imagine what more is needed to make this case a national priority.
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Reparations is repairing or restoring. It’s a formal acknowledgment and apology, recognition that the injury continues, commitment to redress and actual compensation.”
Nkechi Taifa, told to Donna M. Owens for NBC News
Proponents of the bill believe that this year, H.R. 40 has a chance. It’s likely the bill will pass the House but may falter in the Senate. But they hope that President Biden will step in, enacting this work as an executive order if Congress votes against it. The press secretary at the White House confirmed that Biden supports a study on reparations but didn’t explicitly note how he’d respond to the bill (Newsweek).
In the interim, we can also turn to state and local governments to pursue reparations in their communities. Over the past two years, in particular, states and cities have increased efforts to pay reparations for Black people and other people of color (Pew Trust). For example, Maryland has launched its own commission to consider financial commitments like free college tuition at Maryland schools, low home mortgages, and business loans without collateral (NBC).
It’s important to remember that conditions only worsen each day the government fails to act on reparations. A recent study found that reparation payments could have reduced the transmission and fatality of COVID-19 across the U.S. Researchers from Harvard Medical School and the Lancet Commission on Reparations and Redistributive Justice analyzed data in Lousiana and found that payments could have reduced between 31% to 68% of coronavirus transmissions (Social Science and Medicine). As of this past weekend, over 500,000 people in the U.S. have died from COVID-19 in less than a year. This is more than the number of U.S. soldiers that died in both WWI and WWII (NBC News).
The best time to demand reparations was yesterday. The second-best time is right now. We must hold our leaders accountable for a legacy of harm to protect our communities today.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Last week there was a Congressional heraing on H.R. 40, a bill that calls for the government to create a commission to study the history of slavery in the U.S. and pay reparations.
Social sentiment on reparations is changing swiftly, particularly due to the racial reckoning of the past year
The work to federally recognize reparations for Black people has been happening for decades by politicians and organizers alike
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