America was built on the oppression of People of Color.

Reparations 101

There has been a significant amount of talk about reparations as of late, and rightfully so. Here are some straightforward answers for common questions:

What are reparations?

According to the Constitutional Rights Foundation, reparations are defined as,

“a sort of compensation for the free labor blacks were forced to render during 250 years of slavery.”

Why are we talking about reparations now?

Robert Johnson (America’s first Black Billionaire who sold BET to Viacom in 2001) knows that reparations given to descendants of American slaves would aid in giving Black people a more equal standing in society saying,

“reparations {are} the “affirmative action program of all time,” Johnson said they would send the signal that white Americans acknowledge “damages that are owed” for the unequal playing field created by slavery and the decades since with a “wealth transfer to white Americans away from African Americans.”

Rashawn Ray and Andre M. Perry make significantly valid arguments in their piece titled “Why we need reparations for Black America,” where they note how deeply the disparities of Black people are:

Today, the average white family has roughly 10 times the amount of wealth as the average Black family. White college graduates have over seven times more wealth than Black college graduates. Making the American Dream an equitable reality demands the same U.S. government that denied wealth to Blacks restore that deferred wealth through reparations to their descendants in the form of individual cash payments in the amount that will close the Black-white racial wealth divide. Additionally, reparations should come in the form of wealth-building opportunities that address racial disparities in education, housing, and business ownership.

And This excerpt from a worthwhile read by Ta-Nehisi Coates puts the inequities Black families have faced for generations at center stage, saying:

“In Chicago and across the country, whites looking to achieve the American dream could rely on a legitimate credit system backed by the government. Blacks were herded into the sights of unscrupulous lenders who took them for money and for sport. “It was like people who like to go out and shoot lions in Africa. It was the same thrill,” a housing attorney told the historian Beryl Satter in her 2009 book, Family Properties. “The thrill of the chase and the kill.”

The kill was profitable. At the time of his death, Lou Fushanis owned more than 600 properties, many of them in North Lawndale, and his estate was estimated to be worth $3 million. He’d made much of this money by exploiting the frustrated hopes of black migrants like Clyde Ross. During this period, according to one estimate, 85 percent of all black home buyers who bought in Chicago bought on contract. “If anybody who is well established in this business in Chicago doesn’t earn $100,000 a year,” a contract seller told The Saturday Evening Post in 1962, “he is loafing.””

TL;DR: take some time to read through and reflect on the above information. Your privilege is showing.

What are some specific companies that should consider paying reparations?

As you can imagine, some longstanding companies were operational during the era of slavery, and they benefitted in various ways. The ACLU identifies some specific companies that should consider paying reparations to the Black community including:

• Companies that sold life insurance policies on the lives of enslaved persons, such as Aetna, New York Life, and AIG. Financial gains were accrued by the predecessor banks of financial giants like J.P. Morgan Chase and Bank of America. 

• Others with documented ties to slavery included railroads like Norfolk Southern, CSX, Union Pacific, and Canadian National. 

• Newspaper publishers that assisted in the capture of runaway persons include Knight Rider, Tribune, E.W. Scripps, and Gannett.

• The financial backers of many of the country’s top universities were wealthy slave owners, and it has been disclosed that the reason Georgetown University stands today is because the Jesuits who ran the college used profits from the sale of Black people to continue its operation.

What are some ways we can pay reparations back to the Black community?

The Chicago Lawyers’ Community for Civil Rights notes some immediate and impactful changes that could be made:

“Specific and practical suggestions by advocates like N’COBRA include scholarship funds, textbooks for educational institutions, the development of historical monuments, first-time home buyer programs, and economic development efforts devoted to communities where slave-descended African Americans predominate. These proposals target specific areas where people of color were not given the same opportunities or access as White people.”