Hello and welcome to another episode of The Weeds.
I'm John Quilinhill.
And today, I'm joined in the studio by my friend
and my colleague Fabiola Cineas.
She covers race and policy here at Vox.
Hi, Fabiola.
Hi, JQ.
Can I call you JQ on this?
Of course.
Okay, good.
Good.
Today's episode is actually a conversation Fabiola had
as part of a series exploring reparations in America.
It originally ran last year on Vox conversations,
now called the Gray Area.
And it was made possible with support
from the Can to Be Collective
and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The episode we're sharing today takes a step back and says,
okay, what if reparations for black people do happen?
What would that implementation look like?
What would it cost?
Where would that money come from?
And who would qualify?
It's a fascinating deep dive
and then a great way to kick off black history month.
♪
So in this episode, we spoke to two leading experts
on reparations.
They are actually a husband and wife duo,
Sandy Darity, who's a professor at Duke University,
and then his wife, Kirsten Mullen, who is a folklorist.
And we brought them both on simply because, again,
they're the leading voices on reparations.
And they've also put out a pretty comprehensive framework
on what a reparations plan or project would look like
if the United States were to undertake it.
And so I just think they had just such strong ideas.
And it have probably thought the most about what reparations
would actually look like if the United States were to say,
you know what, let's start to roll out this project tomorrow.
Reparations are often treated as a non-starter,
like something that just will never happen.
And so it was nice to sort of sit down and say, like,
OK, but what if it did realistically?
What would that look like?
Exactly. And it feels like, again, like you said,
if you say the word reparations, I feel like in some circles,
right, it's something to make people laugh.
It's something that people believe will never happen.
It's something that other people I've interviewed say,
it's time to stop talking about it.
But again, I think Sandy and Kirsten are the two people
who said, we're going to actually take the time
to look at the decades and decades and decades of research,
whether that was from like economists or other historians
to kind of get a sense of just what the literature is out there
already, but then adding more modern day stuff.
So the fact that they were even able to like take all that research
and history and say, let's actually put a number
on what reparations would cost.
And that's why we named the episode 14 trillion and no mules
because they got to something that was so specific.
It's powerful. A lot of people don't agree with their work.
There are a lot of people who do agree with their work.
And so I think we just felt it was important to bring these voices out
and make sure that they were part of an entire series on reparations.
Yeah. And one of the things that I really appreciated
about the conversation and working with you on it,
is kind of being able to bring to light and to the forefront.
And a place where there's a lot of space for nuance
and taking the time with it, that controversy,
that idea of, you know, there really is tension
over who in the diaspora would qualify for reparations if they happen.
And I think one of the things I loved about working with you on it is
we are both part of this diaspora, but we're in different places in it.
My family is from the south.
I'm descended from people who were enslaved.
Your family is Haitian, which in and of itself has a very important,
Haiti has a very, very important place as far as the diaspora
and just the fight for liberation goes.
I think in the episode, I kind of get a little personal with Sandy
and Kirsten just basically saying, like under their framework,
I would not get reparations, you know, as a descendant of two Haitian parents
who moved to the United States in the late 1970s.
I would not be eligible for reparations because under their framework,
you have to show that you have at least one ancestor
who descended from someone who was enslaved in the United States.
So I think that's like one of the main areas where a lot of people disagree with them
because they're like, you know what, we've got to pay attention to contributions.
We've got to look at how the slave trade was just intertwined with other countries,
including and especially Haiti.
And so those are other perspectives that are represented in other parts of the podcast.
But yeah, the eligibility part is huge when it comes to what Sandy and Kirsten are articulating.
But then also it just starts to make us think about these bigger questions of just like,
what is Blackness in America? Who is Black enough?
Like, who is Black?
And so not that this makes me feel like I'm not Black.
Because to be honest, right, if the specific claim is people who are descended from those who are enslaved,
if they deserve to reap whatever riches and wealth were a result of the labor that was done
as a result of slavery, then to me, that argument is like as logical as it gets.
I think that's one of the interesting parts about it.
The fact that we sit in these very different parts, I mean, very different, I think, is a stretch,
which I think kind of reveals my kind of thoughts on it all.
But sitting in these different places in the diaspora and even coming to different conclusions,
because I know you think, well, it does make sense.
And I do see that argument, although I think I often come to things from a more pan-African lens,
because I think, okay, if redlining is happening, are they looking at where you're from?
Or like, you know, if the police stop you, they're not necessarily wondering like,
oh, are you the descendants of the enslaved?
But depending on what the reparations are for, it does, to a degree, make sense for
this specific group of people, of which I am a part of, to get reparations.
And can I just say, it was very nice.
I mean, this was something we sort of talked about in the production.
But being able to produce this series, having you host it, and just being able to, like,
look at the scholarship and seriously look at this, just, it was very refreshing, I think,
I think too often, black scholarship and scholarship about black people is not
taken seriously. And it was just nice to, to be able to do that, to have the platform and the tools
to have that conversation.
Yeah, I feel like in a lot of ways, reparations still is in this place, but we're talking about
reparations more. And again, that's why it was just so, so fun to be able to put this
series together. And I'm glad that we're bringing it back for Black History Month.
Why not?
Enjoy listing.
Reparations is about a debt that the federal government owes to all Black Americans in the
US slavery.
As a consequence of the failure to provide the 48-year land grants.
It involves the historic acknowledgement of historic law and a recognition that the
injury continues.
Literally, there is no reparations in the form of the payout of money that can undo what has been
done.
I think apologies don't mean anything whatsoever. I mean, apologies, the easiest thing in the world.
This is returning what was taken from a people.
Today, we'll explore the cost of reparations.
If the federal government were to devise a plan for payments, what could it look like?
I spoke with Duke University economist William Sandy Darity and folklorist
Kirsten Mullen about the reparations framework they outline in their book from Here to Equality,
Reparations for Black Americans in the 21st century.
As they write in the book, racism and discrimination have perpetually crippled
Black economic opportunities.
And they theorize that reparations, a program of acknowledgement, redress, and closure,
could reverse inequalities between Black people and White people by closing the racial wealth gap.
Their framework is comprehensive, and it unearths long-standing tensions.
Darity and Mullen are two of the leading thinkers on reparations.
They're also a husband and wife duo.
I cut up with them while they were at home in North Carolina.
At times, you might even hear some household sounds or the occasional leaf blower in the
background. It's a reminder that for them, this is more than policy. It's personal.
And so that's where I started. With their own family histories, their connections to slavery
in the United States, and how that influences their work.
On both sides of my family, my ancestors were enslaved in the United States.
On my mother's side, my great, great grandparents were held in bondage on a plantation
called Rose Hill in North Carolina. Rose Hill Plantation was a relatively large plantation owned
by the body family, the White Bodies. My ancestors had the last name body also.
And so we referred to them as the Black Bodies. And my great-grandmother, who I knew during my
lifetime, was the daughter of these two individuals who had been enslaved on the Rose Hill Plantation.
In my case, on my mother's side, the family line goes back to Caroline County, Virginia,
where my ancestors were enslaved by the Wise family. And then on my father's side,
our ancestors were enslaved in Colbert County, Alabama. And I can remember when
Jose and I took our over son to meet his paternal grandparents, who I didn't know to be particularly
sentimental or even nostalgic necessarily. But my grandfather held the baby up in the air
and pronounced him the fifth generation. And I didn't immediately know what he was talking about.
But it was on his mind that he was the fifth generation born free. I think on both sides of
our family, Sandy's in mind, in terms of how we came to know what we know, both of our children
were given the assignment to interview their oldest living relatives and learn as much as they could
about their family's genealogy and how they came to be where they were. And they were very
garroless and very animated, talking to him about what they knew and going back each generation.
And then suddenly they just got silent. And that's all we know. We can't share anything. We don't
know anything else. And I thought, well, this is odd. You know, this is like a little brick wall
that they seem to be hitting. But I had heard some stories about relatives for the back. And I
wanted them to share that with our son so that he could do well on his paper for school. But they
were very reluctant on both sides to share what they knew because they were running headlong into
family members who were the sons and daughters of the white people who had owned us.
And so it sounds like for the both of you, these stories were kind of there in your family to an
extent. Like was there ever a point where you both had to go into the archives or do some serious
digging through records to find out these stories as well? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Absolutely. Okay.
Because you get these little kernels. And my feel is folklore and anthropology. And I always say
that black folklore is true. There may be some details around the edges that need to be researched.
But so often the big picture, the stories that have been passed down across generations,
are almost always true.
Mm.
It feels like reparations advocates are constantly having to make the case for reparations and
needing to prove that black America is old. But then you flipped it and you're like, why should
black people have to continue to wait for the debt owed to them to be paid? Talk a little bit about
why we should be reframing the question.
I think we've thought for at least 30 years. I'll say that there is an obligation that the
United States government has to its black American citizens who were descendants of persons who were
enslaved here. And it's an obligation that stems from the government's failure to provide the newly
emancipated freedmen with the 40 acre land grants that they were promised in the aftermath of the
years of bondage. You know, we like to say that black people were the first abolitionists and that
their ultimate goal was to obtain their freedom and also to be remunerated for the work that they had
labored so hard to produce. This is not a new quest as old as the arrival of the first African
to this country. Sandy mentioned the failure of the federal government to provide those 40 acre
land grants to the newly emancipated freedmen at the end of the Civil War. But we also know that at
the same time, actually beginning as early as 1862 with the Homestead Act, that the federal government
did provide land grants to white Americans, including the recent immigrants of the United States,
and that promise was not for 40 acres for 160 acre land grants. And this is a policy that was
carried out, in fact by the federal government. We have learned recently that the last such patent
was completed in 1980 in Alaska. So this was over 100 year long commitment that the federal government
made. You have these families that have the capacity as a consequence of this free equity from the
federal government to pass on not only the profits from that land, but the land itself to their
children. We know that 1.5 million white households receive those land grants in the Western territories,
which translates to about 45 million living white Americans today who are still reaping the
benefits of this single federal policy. And when you talk about compensating black Americans,
are we talking about compensating them just for slavery? Are we also talking about Jim Crow
and specific acts of racial terror that could have happened in the 1900s, for example?
We're actually thinking about the full panoply of atrocities and how they have wound down to
the present moment to create this kind of disparity and wealth between blacks and whites. Yes,
it's the effects of slavery. It's the effects of the Jim Crow period of legal segregation.
It's the effects of 100 massacres that were conducted during that period of time by white
terrorists that resulted in the loss of black lives and the seizure and theft of black property.
It's a consequence of the 20th century emphasis on home ownership that was applied discriminatorially
under both the New Deal legislation and the GI Bill resulting in a significant advantage in
home ownership for white Americans in comparison to black Americans.
I mean, you're probably aware of a number of groups that are attempting to focus on some
specific harm, some specific atrocity that took place. And we think that these absolutely should
be pursued, but they're different and separate from the racial wealth gap and its elimination.
Why are you focusing on the racial wealth gap in this context? I mean, part of this is about what
will we do or if one? What is the significance of wealth? And I think it's important to distinguish
between wealth and income. Wealth can take the place of income, but income cannot take the place
of wealth. We think of income as once earning. It's a consequence of actions, the consequence of
work, time spent producing services or materials for a fixed fee.
Wealth on the other hand is a stock of assets. These are things that are happening while you're
sleeping, interest that's being earned on investments, on trust accounts, or you're receiving rents or
you're receiving mortgage payments from some other individual for property that you own or control.
Wealth is a thing that gives individuals a reserve, a cushion. Wealth is a thing that makes it possible
for you to move into a neighborhood with high amenities to put your kids in private primary
secondary schools, elite colleges if you choose. Wealth is a thing that makes it possible for
individuals to obtain high quality medical care or legal counsel. Wealth is a thing that allows you
if you choose to participate in the political process. We know that it's really important in
this country to not only vote, but if you're able to also support the political process financially,
but not everybody can afford to do that. It's mostly people who have wealth who have this
opportunity to participate in our political life in this way.
And what about the research that shows that the racial wealth gap is about the upper classes,
that most of each group's wealth is concentrated within the upper classes. And so reparations might
not overall address the racial wealth gap among all classes of people.
Well, it's bad research. 25% of white households have a net worth in excess of $1 million. And this
is only true for about 4% of black households. If you were to examine the white households
that are at the lowest end of the income distribution, those that are in the bottom quintile or what
we refer to as the bottom 20% of the income distribution, they actually have a higher median
level of wealth than all black American households combined. So the differential in wealth resides
all along the class structure. And relatedly, should there be a cap, an income cap on reparations?
Like, should the wealthiest black Americans who would be eligible for reparations, should they
be in the group of people able to get reparations? You know, this is not a poverty belief program.
Reparations is about a debt that the federal government owes to all black Americans in the
US slavery. When you think about reparations payments that have been made in the past,
internationally, but also domestically, they didn't say, oh, this person is too wealthy to
receive reparations. So no, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, all these people would absolutely be
eligible for reparations. Now, they could decide that they did not want to accept them
if they chose, but they should not be excluded from reparations. And you know, they could make
the decision to take their reparations payments and use them for whatever purpose they have in mind.
One possibility would be to make a donation to the charitable organization that they prefer to
support. In your reparations framework, you've arrived at about $840,000 for each eligible black
household. How did you arrive at this number? We calculated that number on the basis of the
estimate of the difference in average wealth between black and white households.
That's reported in the 2019 survey of consumer finances, which is the most recent survey that
was taken to provide information about household net worth. We arrived at the figure of $840,900,
which is the exact difference between white average household net worth and black average
household net worth. If you multiply that figure across the total number of black households,
that differential, that gives you a figure in the vicinity of $14 trillion.
How much is that individually per person?
We estimate that it's somewhere between $330,000 to $350,000 per person, eligible
black American recipient. What about age? Are we considering this for people who are 18 and up,
or just anyone? The idea is that everyone who meets the criteria for eligibility would receive
the funds, but certainly individuals who are minors, those funds could be held in trust for them
until they reach the age of maturity. How should the United States finance reparations? What proposals
seem the most plausible to the both of you? When you look at what's happened just recently
with within the pandemic, the relief payments that were made, the US government simply made
the decision that it would pay to assist Americans struggling with this pandemic.
Taxes didn't go up. Initially, inflation did not occur. I think there may be an argument to be made
that inflation has more to do with what has happened subsequently with supply chain problems
related to the pandemic in part. Or if you look at when the federal government bailed out the banks
and other financial institutions, that didn't cause taxes to go up either. There are several
options for paying the debt. You can direct the federal reserve to pay. You can direct the
treasury to pay, but because ours is a sovereign government, you don't necessarily have to tax
to pay a debt. The debt person is talking about is the debt that is owed to black American descendants
of US slavery as a consequence of the failure to provide the 40 acre land grants to the newly
emancipated and the aftermath of the Civil War. What will happen when you have a new expenditure
that is not supported directly by additional taxation is you increase the deficit, but you do
not necessarily increase the national debt. In our book from here to equality in the final chapter,
we actually talk about inflation as being the fundamental barrier to any new federal expenditures.
And we talk about ways in which the reparations plan could be structured to minimize the inflation
risk. We suggest that the payments could be spread out over multiple years. We say in the book that
we wouldn't want it to be any longer than a decade, but that would reduce the amount of expenditure
that is associated with the reparations plan in any given year. We also say that you could provide
the payments in the form of less liquid assets. So rather than making the payments exclusively
take the form of some type of direct cash transfer, they could be provided in the form of trust
account or some type of endowment or an annuity in such a way that people would be constrained about
spending the funds immediately. But I think that the argument that a reparations plan would be
inflationary is really an argument that presumes certain ways in which the plan would be executed
and also that the individual recipients would not do any significant amount of savings out of the
funds. So I want to move on to this vision that I mentioned earlier about the reparations program
that you all outlined. And you have this powerful acronym ARC, which stands for acknowledgement,
redress and closure. What do these words mean individually and how do they each work together?
So acknowledgement is a recognition and a admission on the part of the culpable party
that they have committed a grievous injustice and that culpable party in the context that we're
talking about. We mean the United States government. That culpable party indicates that they're going
to engage in an active restitution for the atrocity or atrocities that they have committed.
What would a formal apology from the United States government look like? Is that Biden just
getting on a mic somewhere and saying we're sorry for slavery or just like what would even an apology
from the United States government look like? Each of the branches of Congress, I think in 2007 and
2008, made apologies for slavery. But the Senate side of the apology precluded any kind of commitment
to an active redress. The apology that we have in mind is one that would come from the United
States Congress and it would come with a specific outline of the atrocities that the United States
government is responsible for as well as a commitment to do something about that in the form of compensation.
And were there just like a clause that said that? Oh yeah.
Like although we're apologizing, we're not providing redress. Yeah. Absolutely. That's correct.
Yeah. There's an explicit clause in the Senate's apology to that effect.
So then what would redress look like under your plan? So it could be one of two things. It could
and are not necessarily mutually exclusive. It could be restitution or it could be atonement.
The complication with restitution however is that you're talking about restoring the survivors
to the condition that they were in before the injustices took place. And this is not really possible
to attain. Not only that but many many many of the people who have been harmed have gone on.
They are the seas, long to seas. But what one can do is to look at the people who are still living
this legacy. As Sandy talked about how the people who have born the brunt of these three different
epochs, period of enslavement, nearly 100 years of legal segregation or white terror campaigns
and the present moment where we're seeing police involved shootings of unarmed black women and men.
Huge numbers. There's a portion of numbers of mass incarceration, discrimination in education,
discrimination in employment, and housing, labor. I mean basically you're talking about the material
means for full citizenship rights. Giving black Americans of US slavery, the wherewithal
finally to step into their roles as full fledged American citizens. This has never happened.
And did you both also consider the idea of like going to each family that's been harmed and
asking them what they want on an individual level? Like what would be the issue with going to each
individual family and saying what is it that you want? What do you feel would be sufficient to
address the harms that America has committed against your ancestors and new present day?
I think you would get 40 million different answers.
That would be an endless task. We'd be the next millennium collecting all those stories.
But I think that there are ways in which you could assess what the majority perspective is
about what's desired. And I pretty much convinced that among those black Americans who endorse
reparations, they primarily would like direct payments to be made to them so that they would
have full discretion over the use of the resources. Now that clearly is not a universal position,
but I think that that is the predominant consensus around what reparations ought to look like.
And our rationale for that comes from our studying reparations efforts around the world that were
successful. So when you look at the victims of the Holocaust, a large percentage of those
reparations funds went to individuals and the estates of the individuals who had been harmed
by the Holocaust. And so finally with closure, what does closure mean in this reparations program?
So closure means a settling of accounts that the culpable party, in this case, the United States
government, and the community that merits redress, in this case, black American descendants of U.S.
slavery reach a mutual agreement that the bill has been met, that the debt has been paid.
And this means in term that the community meriting redress does not make any further claims
on the United States government for compensation unless, and this is a critical unless, unless there
is a renewal of the atrocities or a new type of atrocity that takes place.
Next, we'll get Carson and William's plan for reparations, including one of the most
hotly debated aspects of the current conversation. Who's eligible?
There's a new season of you out on Netflix, and the show's lead says this season he did fewer
sex scenes to protect his real life marriage. Meryl Streep's been married a long time.
Do I think that every time she's kissed somebody or had sex in a movie, she thinks,
I can't believe I get to cheat on my husband right now just so I can win an Oscar. Like no.
You and the state of sex on screen plus the writer of cocaine bear on cocaine bear.
This week on Intuit, Vulture's Pop Culture Podcast.
Support for this podcast comes from Barrow. So I recently moved into a new apartment and I have
learned a couple of things about interior decorating because of it. The first is that under no
circumstances can you rush a vibe. And the second is that just one great sofa or dresser can really
make a difference in your entire place. Now, you may not think it's worth it because you know
that getting a big piece of furniture home isn't always easy. But if you're a longtime listener
to this podcast, then you already know that Barrow is a furniture brand that can take care of that
for you. Barrow not only gets you your items fast, they also save you an average of $100
on large items with their free shipping. Their credences are perfect for your TV with adjustable
high interior shelves and cord organizing holes at each corner. Everything is designed to work
perfectly together in your living space. So all you got to do is add it to your cart.
Plus, Barrow's world-class support team is available whenever you need. Right now, you can get 10% off
your first order at barrow.com slash weeds. That's barrow. B-U-R-R-O-W.com slash weeds.
For 10% off your Barrow purchase, barrow.com slash weeds.
Let's talk about eligibility for reparations, which I feel like is the segment or the section
where people have a lot to say in terms of who should qualify. But the both of you have identified
something that's very clear who you believe should be eligible for reparations. So can you walk me
through what those eligibility requirements are and how you arrived at those criteria?
So there are two criteria that we use. One is that these are individuals who can demonstrate
that they are descended from at least one person who was enslaved in the United States.
But the second criteria and both would need to be in place is that these are individuals who have
self-identified as Black African-American Negro or Afro-American for at least 12 years prior to
the enactment of reparations program or the hazard of legislation to put such a program in place.
And why the 12 years? That's always been my question when I wondered.
So we initially were thinking about 10 years, but it's actually the length of two centural
terms. And why do you believe the person has to self-identify as Black?
Our concern is that you have some significant number of people who are living as White Americans
who could probably demonstrate that they have an ancestor who was enslaved in the United States.
And we are concerned that individuals who are living as White should not be eligible to receive
reparations. We have the 12-year condition in because we don't want people to suddenly
declare that they're Black once they know that reparations is something that is potentially
going to be available to them. We don't want people to be Black by convenience.
So that's why we have both of those conditions in place.
Yeah, and we've certainly seen that happening a lot, I think, in pop culture as well, just people
kind of jumping into Blackness when it's convenient for them. So I think that's interesting.
So my next question is just about genealogical research and just the time it would take for
people to do this research and do people have the means to do this, especially when we consider
the census, the 2020 census continued the longstanding trend of undercounting Black people. So how can
we help people and make sure we don't leave people out? So every day there are more finding aids
being created and placed online. Just in the last six months, the entire Freedmen's Bureau records
have been placed online. But one of the provisions that we call for is the creation of a federal
agency that provides genealogical research at no cost to individuals who are attempting to make
their claim for eligibility. But yes, we understand that it's a time-consuming process,
but the tools that are being utilized today are much more sophisticated and effective,
especially because many, many, many more records, like all the Black newspapers now
are available and searchable online. And why do you think this is being met with so much
criticism or just people saying that your idea of eligibility is too narrow and leaves out people
who have been living under white Americans, supremacist violence for decades and their families,
you know, have been here for generations. Why can't they be included as well, especially if we're
thinking about the racial law gap? Well, actually, there aren't that many Black Americans whose
families have been here for multiple generations who were not connected in some way to being
descendants of persons who were enslaved here. But I think our point of view is Black people
virtually anywhere across the diaspora have a claim for reparations, but not necessarily on
the United States government. Haiti and Haitians have a claim on France. Perversely, France extracted
reparations from Haiti. We think all of those money should go back to Haiti with interest,
perhaps in addition to other compensation that's due to Haiti. The countries of the Caribbean that
were former British colonies through Caracomb have been seeking restitution from the United Kingdom,
and they've been very directive about that. And they have not included Black American descendants
of US slavery in their claim, nor should they. But simultaneously, then there should not be an
expectation that blacks from the Caribbean should be included in a claim that's being made by
Black American descendants of US slavery. When you're talking about a group of people who voluntarily
migrated to the United States, comparing them to folks who were forced here in shackles. I mean,
it strikes us as a just a bit odd that in all the places these individuals could have gone,
they elected to come to the United States. And our question would be, did you not watch those
newsreels? When you migrate to a country, you migrate to its history and to its obligations.
And from our point of view, what would make perfect sense would be for these Black people who are
immigrating here from other places to say, we stand with Black Americans in this
US slavery, and we want to encourage the president, we want to encourage Congress to engage in a
national retress program for them. That this is what needs to happen.
So my family did immigrate to the United States from Haiti in the 1960s. I want to say
late 60s is one. Some of my aunts and uncles came over, my parents themselves came in the late
70s. And so I was having this discussion with my brother some weeks ago, and he's like,
dang, I just read somewhere that the claim for reparations is for people who are descendants
of slavery in the United States. And I was kind of the one telling him, like,
doesn't that sound right to you? Isn't that fair? What I want to articulate is the feeling of
there's a struggle that's happening across continents, across borders. The producer of the series,
John Quillan, is descended from Black people who are enslaved in America. And we were having
this conversation. She wonders, why wouldn't all Black people here make this claim? And she
mentioned this sentiment that because our struggles are bound together, shouldn't we try to be more
expansive? And almost it feels like right when you're born into a country of immigrant parents,
it's almost like you grow up feeling like an outcast. For example, for me, I'm a race reporter.
I write about race in the United States, and it's just fascinating to
write about this, but then also kind of realize like, yes, this is my story, but also this is
not exactly my story when I think about the history and write about it.
Yeah. I mean, you can think about all of these groups coming forward and making progress
simultaneously side by side, strengthening each other, drawing courage and, you know,
deep compassion from each other. But our stories are not identical. There's richness in our separate
histories. And I think it's really important, especially given the work that you're doing to hold
up those stories. You're far too young to have been around when there was an international push
to put whatever kind of pressure to bear that you could to end apartheid in South Africa.
I was a college student at the time, and I joined a group called the African Liberation Support Committee.
The marchers demonstrated in front of the Portuguese embassy as a protest against that
government's colonial domination of Angola, Guinea-Busso and Mozambique. In front of the
South African embassy and the Rhodesian Information Center, because of their racist minority regimes,
which rule over the black majority population. And here, in front of the U.S. State Department,
to protest this country's trade agreements with South Africa and importation of Rhodesian
Crowmore, despite a United Nations embargo against it. We were marching. We were writing letters.
So there's definitely a precedent for black American descendants of U.S. slavery like myself
pushing for the end of apartheid in South Africa, which really had nothing to do with me personally.
But I was personally offended by what was happening to those black people. But I think
that same kind of solidarity enacted on behalf of black American descendants of U.S. slavery would be
one of the most incredible things to create unity, to create more occasions for folk to
delve into each other's history. It only is divisive if we decide that that's what we're going to be
engaged in. I do want to respond to your point, Kirsten, about people seeing these
stories and seeing what's happening in the United States and still making the choice to come.
I do want to point out, again, the example of Haiti, right? We have the U.S. occupation of
Haiti starting as early as 1915. I don't know. I feel like it's safe to say that in many cases
for people leaving certain countries, maybe there isn't so much as a free choice as opposed to
something that you have to do to survive. We can talk about the pressure to migrate,
and we can identify many cases in the modern world where people are forced immigrants
or forced migrants. But what is somewhat different is to some degree they frequently have some
options about where to go, even if they have to leave their own country. Whereas in the context
of the transatlantic slave trade, there was no discretion on either side of the process. That
does raise the question as to why people might choose to migrate to a blatantly racist country
if they are black. There must be some perception that there's some benefit to them for coming here
that would more than offset their potential exposure to racism.
So I want to get into another aspect of the conversation that's happening among the African
diaspora in America. At one point, the group ADOS, American Descentives Slavery, aligned with
your work. The group's been called xenophobic and anti-immigrant by critics. So what is your
relationship to ADOS? And what do you make of the broader ADOS movement that has emerged in the
past few years? Well, I think that there's at least a couple of things that we think resonate well
that emerged from the ADOS movement at least initially. The first is the view that out of
multiple diasporic communities, black Americans whose ancestors were enslaved in the United
States are their own unique cultural and national community. And then the second thing is that
reparations from the United States government should target that community specifically.
So on those two points, I think there's no inconsistency with the positions that have been
taken by individuals who align themselves with ADOS. We depart from the anti-immigrant rhetoric
that some people in the ADOS movement have adopted. And I think there has been somewhat of a tendency
to conflate the ADOS movement overall with a subset of individuals who espouse those kinds of positions.
Coming up, there are reparations projects happening all over the country. But are these efforts
enough to pay the debt that's owed?
You've been vocal in your criticism of the smaller reparations projects happening around the country.
I think of what's underway in Evanston, Illinois or colleges and universities like Georgetown
University, for example. Why do you think it's ineffective to focus on individual perpetrators
and smaller institutions or what you call piecemeal reparations?
Let's take an example of this piecemeal project in Evanston, Illinois.
Evanston, Illinois is a suburb on Chicago's Northside Lakefront. It's the home of Northwestern
University. About 16% of its 75,000 residents are black. This week, the Evanston City Council
voted eight to one to begin to make good on its promise to spend $10 million in reparations
over 10 years. First up, $400,000 to compensate for past discriminatory housing practices.
Individual grants of up to $25,000 a person to black residents who can show they or their families
lived in the city between 1919 and 1969. The money can be used for down payments,
mortgage payments, repairs or home improvements.
We know that the current market value of a new house in Evanston is about $450,000.
So you have a house that you're comfortable with, but you really could use some help with
your retirement account or you'd like to contribute that to your children's or your own college tuition
or you'd like to pay off alone. You can't do that. Not only that, the money goes not to the
individuals, but directly to the banks. What we've learned is that these are the same banks that
disadvantaged black borrowers in the first place. This is basically a housing voucher program,
masquerading as reparations. It's fine to have a housing voucher program, but call it that.
Our concern is that as these projects pop up, that there will be many people who oppose reparations
who will say, we don't need a national program. Why are we even talking about this? It's done.
We think that language is really important. Let's call those projects racial equity initiatives
and leave the term of reparations for this sacred mission of eliminating the racial wealth gap,
of putting the US government in the position that it has always been of the clubable party
and the capable party, the party that's responsible for creating and maintaining the racial wealth gap.
Critics have argued that reparations aren't enough. I remember Obama during his presidency saying that
reparations are the easy thing to do, but reparations take us away from doing the hard work, which is
passing policies that would support black Americans long term. Does your framework consider other
policy implications? If not, why not? Let me say first, reparations is not easy. We'd already have
them. We say, let's run that experiment and deliver reparations. Then we can talk about what
else needs to be done. In our book from here to equality, we never say that a cash payment is
all that needs to take place. We talk about all of the difficulties that black Americans
and US slavery are dealing with today, discrimination in housing and education and employment and
credit markets. We talk about black people's exposure to environmental hazards. We talk about
anti-black violence at the hands of police and mass incarceration. We say that reparations
claim that black Americans of USA will be making against the US government would not be fulfilled
until all of these atrocities have ended and the new ones have not been visited upon
the eligible community. We have had a host of social programs in the United States.
If we go back to at least as early as the New Deal, there has been multiple social programs.
Those social programs, for the most part, have been income supplement programs. They have not
been programs that were designed to build people's assets and in particular, not to build black
people's assets. We are talking about an asset building strategy for black Americans that would
bring their level of wealth up to a level that would be on par with the net worth that is held
by white Americans. The two of you have outlined for us today. You have a very comprehensive vision
of what a reparations program could look like and why we need reparations. I'm curious, what are
you still trying to figure out about reparations? Are there any big questions that both of you
are still grappling with as the experts? I think the biggest question for me at this point is,
how do we sustain the momentum in growth and support for reparations, particularly from white
Americans? Circa, the year 2000, only about 4% of white Americans endorsed reparations as payments
to black Americans whose ancestors were enslaved in the United States. Today, that figure is closer
to 30%. The great question is, given that sharp, sharp change in support, is how can we push that
figure closer to 50 to 55% of white Americans to make the prospect of actual adoption of a
comprehensive reparations plan a reality? This is the moment, I think, for a lot of young people
today. This is another opportunity to stand up and be counted to lobby and petition Congress
to talk to people in your formal and informal communities, your family, your classes, the people
that you work with, but also your book club, your artisanal beer collective, your ultimate
Frisbee group. I just want to encourage your listeners to embrace this moment.
Kirsten and William, thank you so much for being with us today.
Thanks for the opportunity to discuss these important issues.
Thanks for talking with us.
Hey, it's John Flynn. We hope you enjoyed today's episode.
You can find the rest of the Reparations series over in the gray area feed. Just look for the 40
acres series. I want to thank my colleague Fabiola Cenius for joining me at the beginning of the
show and sharing this interview with us. The weeds is produced by Sophie Lalonde. This episode was
engineered by Patrick Boyd. Additional help from Eric Janikis and Amy Droves-Dovska,
and AM Hall is our editorial director. The weeds is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Thank you.
All right.