Reparations: In Brief

According to the United Nations, reparations are actions that attempt to right the wrongs of systemic, state-sanctioned human rights violations like genocide, chattel slavery, and displacement. 

THE UNITED NATIONS OUTLINES FIVE CONDITIONS THAT MUST BE MET FOR FULL REPARATIONS: 

1)  Acknowledgement of harm, including official apologies, public education, and memorials    

2)  Compensation for injury and harm, and for lost land, labor, property, relationships, culture, and spirituality  

 3)  Restitution, including restoration of victims’ rights, property, and citizenship status    

4) Rehabilitation, including psychological and physical support    

5) Cessation and guarantees of non-repetition, including reforming or eliminating laws and civil and political structures that led to or fueled the harm, including those that continue to do so.

Do you remember the phrase: "40 acres and a mule"? It was a promise made to formerly enslaved people, towards the close of the Civil War. Some got the land and mule, only to have them taken away as soon as white southerners saw the Union army retreat. Most never got them.

The revocation of that promise set a precedent to deny Black Americans dignity, safety, security and opportunity.  Through many generations, in every sector life, racist systems have maintained a deep divide between descendants of enslaved people and white people. Lynching, redlining, gerrymandering, segregation, and police violence are only a few of the ways African Americans have, and continue to be, harmed.

Reparations are owed to Black Americans. In 2008 and 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate respectively made formal apologies to African Americans community for “centuries of brutal dehumanization and injustices," including an admission that “African Americans continue to suffer from the complex interplay between slavery and Jim Crow long after both systems were formally abolished.” After an effort that began in 1989, history was made in the US Congress when the House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee voted on April 14, 2021, to move H.R. 40, the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans, to the House floor for full consideration.

Since then, H.R. 40 has stalled in committee. The Reparations Collective is unwilling to wait for national reparations policies to be enacted. We see the need for reparations now, in many forms, for myriad past and continued harms.