4AAAM - forty acres and a mule or something like that

In response to a thread on social media about reparations, some questions were raised: How would reparations be paid? How would we value the labor costs? Who would be paid? and so on. They were good and important questions and I'm grateful for them. It's easy enough to blather about reparations, far less so to figure out the details and mechanics of the doing. 

As I've thought about those questions these last two weeks or so, two things have become clear to me. First, I’ve realized that if we stick with the compensating unpaid labor angle, it becomes almost impossibly difficult to make the reparations argument workable. Not only do you run into the you-were-not-a-slave-why-should-I-pay-you argument, but the value of the labor is nearly impossible to quantify. That alone frustrates the exercise to a degree that is paralyzing. We've been paralyzed on this issue long enough. Time to change directions so that we can move ahead, I say. 

Second, it became clear that just taking the first step of saying “This can be done” started me on a process of thinking and researching; reading and writing that, while not making the doing any easier, did provide me with a potential roadmap for the doing. 

So, here’s where I landed on the whole reparations thing. (Spoiler alert: it’s not where I thought it would be, which is what makes the whole “thinking and researching” thing so fascinating.)

It won't be outstanding unpaid wages (like I said, this didn't go where I thought it would)

In my initial back-of-the-envelope scribbles on this I’d said that unpaid wages were due. I’ve already decided against that approach. Payment of wages owed is unrealistic as the workers themselves are long gone and Lord knows, the resistance to any such payment will mire the efforts in courthouse challenges until 2120. “You weren’t a slave and your parents weren’t slaves! You’re not entitled! Get a damn job like the rest of us Real Americans!^TM ” will be the cry.  

Any attempt to compensate unpaid enslaved labor, in addition to triggering a national case of fragilitis gravidarum, will also have the unintended consequence of sending the message that America’s sins with respect to race are locked into a single time period; that White concern trolls are right about Black people really needing to just “get over” slavery.

But America’s sins against people of a certain hue are ongoing and making the reparations fight all about one particular set of historical wrongs would send precisely the wrong message. We would end up focusing on paying for the old sins, all the while the systems, structures and policies would remain in place to commit new ones daily. Sounds like a losing proposition to me. As it is, America's sins with respect to race haven’t stopped and they certainly don’t seem to be decreasing in either frequency or intensity (cf  the Holden Matthews case in LA). Fixing the reparations conversation in the antebellum period would allow us to continue to hold the entirely wrong-headed view that Emancipation was all that was required, and that good White people done did all they needed to to wipe the slate clean.

While the generations since emancipation are grateful (I use that word very advisedly) for their freedom, they’d really have liked to be free in deed rather than just in word.  Freedom for enslaved people is a process, or it should be. Emancipation was the beginning of that process, Reconstruction, which was an attempt at a reparative justice framework, was to have been the next step but it was sabotaged. We ain’t reach the end of the process yet as is pretty clearly evidenced by the racial wealth gap (among other measures), and it’s time to finish this process.  From my vantage point, I'd say that 'Murica’s still got plenty work left to do. 

America’s sins against Black people are not time-bound, they continue to this day. Rather than giving you a long list, I’ll just link you to a few of my previous essays that speak to some of those sins. 

Briana Brochu: Made in America;

50 years of Black people not being oppressed:

And 50 more years of Black people not being oppressed.

The truth is out there and if you doubt that you should do some research (or maybe click some of the links I’ve provided). 

Reparative justice is due to those who were enslaved, but since they’re long gone, I say we should cast that debt into the sea of forgetfulness. Though this suggestion will bring great relief to some, it comes with a sting in the tail. While we may be willing to forgo unpaid three and four hundred year old bills, what we ain’t finna do is forgive the debt owed to generations that are still very much alive; generations that continue to suffer the financial consequences of ugly America anti-Black policies. Those we can easily identify, quantify and yes boo, rectify. . 

Here’s how I propose we do it

A new 40 acres compact

The Homestead Act of 1862 gave (White) citizens 160 acres of freehold land for moving west. 160 acres. It's worth considering a new Homestead Act. Land doesn’t actually need to be transferred, but the value of it should be. And in instances where people do want land, that too should be possible. We can haggle over how many acres later.

Where land values are being paid out, we should determine the average acreage homesteaders received during the height of homesteading, and then calculate the average value of an acre of that land (by region). If the Brown family of New Jersey decides they want to move to Nebraska, we look at the average homestead in Nebraska and give the family a payment - in land or coin - equivalent to that average. That's how  a reparative compensation system would work. (There's a rabbit hole I won't go down here: how do we discourage people from all moving to the highest land value states to exploit the compensation system. Rabbit hole. Not going there.)

And before you ask, yes, I favor using today’s land values. What would be the point of giving a recipient some arbitrary 1800s land value? The White families who benefited from the land giveaways of 1862 have reaped value over multiple generations, including many of today’s farmers who proudly claim their farms have been in their families for 4 or 5 generations. It was primarily White families that benefited from the homesteading of the 1800s, so it's only fair that those who were shut out of those giveaways on account of White supremacy should be given the opportunity to benefit today. Stupid ahistorical arguments about how unfair this compensation system is will not fly. Read your history.

So who do we pay? 'Lucky' for us, America's been so busy discriminating, that there's plenty of recent events that need to be 'repaired' financially. 

America will need to pay reparations to folks who have been redlined, sidelined, and prison-pipelined to death. We need to do reparative justice to those who are today experiencing the consequences of the US government’s policies that have shut them out of every large-scale giveaway to the American people. And funnily enough, those people just happen to be the descendants of the enslaved, so there’s your fix. Funny how that worked out huh?

The Who's Who of reparations recipients

So all that said, here’s my new list. These are the things I can think of right this minute that need to be repaired.

The family of every single lynching victim;
Seneca Village (mid-19^th century) descendants;

Tulsa Massacre (1921) descendants;

Rosewood Massacre (1923) descendants;

Tuskegee syphilis experiment (1932) descendants;

Henrietta Lacks (1951) family and descendants;

The family of Emmett Till (1955);

The Little Rock 9 (and every school child of that time who was harassed and brutalized by students and teachers);

Families impacted by unequally funded schools;

Families impacted by redlined housing that depressed the growth of Black wealth

Lagniappe (bonus): Black GIs unable to access GI benefits

And these are just a short list of fairly recent acts that need to be repaired. There are, of course, many others. 

As it turns out, there is no need to know what plantation Black folks’ people built; what cotton Black folks’ people picked because there is so much recent ugliness about which can find out a great deal without any real hard labor. And you know majority America ain't about to do no hard labor....that's what they have us for. 

There’s no necessity to run around looking for boogeymen in white hoods or plantation owners' garb. Save that  energy, y'all gon need it to fight the logic of this argument: White America owes Black America for what it did yesterday..Looking at recent injuries forecloses the “get over slavery” argument entirely. We arent talking about slavery. And look at us, foreclosing on somebody else. LOL. Turnabout is fair play they say. 

Y’all know Becky and Chad do tho. They are endlessly inventive and when it comes to avoiding culpability for racism’s impact on the lived realities of Black and brown folk? “Endlessly inventive” is an understatement. I anticipate that even this reasonable compromise will land like a loud fart in church. This here is us saying, “See? We got over it. Now can we talk?” I’m pretty sure the answer will still be no but there you have it. .