A Chance to Think About Reparations: Sixteen Thousand Dollars

Also, a nudge to read or revisit M4BL's Reparations Now toolkit

Back in the fall, I began using the hashtag #HealingMeansReparations to counter the healing/unity discourse around the presidential election. I wrote about the motivation behind that in my first post. As it happens, that post first went up the morning of January 6th. I had yet to tune into the news that day, so knew nothing about the violent circus happening in D.C. There’s plenty of commentary on those events and their ongoing fallout that you can read elsewhere, but one observation I’d like to share is that, from my vantage point at least, the response to the calls for unity and healing have changed. Many of them have moved on from general dismissal to the type of reframe we really need. That reframing is maybe best captured by the many variations of the phrase “unity requires accountability.” The entry of that phrase into popular discourse will, I think, prove to be incredibly important. It admits the possibility of unity—of a shared community—as a good thing, while also laying down a boundary, a set of conditions to be met, for such community to happen.

Unity does require accountability. Healing—that other favored phrase of Biden’s administration—also has requirements. For one to heal, one must mend; and while some healing can occur by the body’s own volition and the passing of time, social healing is a collective affair, requiring not just mending but that we make amends. Healing requires repair. And in the case of the United States, which has rendered irrevocable harms on so many, this is not repair on the level of “say you’re sorry to your sibling and try to be nicer now.” This isn’t a slim public apology kind of a deal. No, healing in this country requires repair as systemic, broad, and deep as the harms in our history. It requires reparations.

Calls for reparations have a long history, pre-dating the Civil War. They’ve seen increasing traction in recent years, especially after the well-known Ta-Nehisi Coates’ article in The Atlantic. But we need conversation and organizing at a much larger scale for that traction to turn into full-on momentum and begin to bring in solid results. What’s exciting is that there’s been a ton of work in recent years to create some of the tools and media that can help get people thinking about reparations and grow more knowledgeable about what we’re really talking about.

One of the best things I’ve seen on this front lately is the short film Sixteen Thousand Dollars by filmmaker Symone Baptiste. Only a few weeks ago, I was searching around for a chance to watch it and couldn’t find it anywhere, but we’re in luck now, because for the next week it’s up and playing online through the Slamdance Festival. Slamdance is an affordable festival; for $10 (less if you’re a student!) you can see lots of great independent films. Sixteen Thousand Dollars is short, funny, and easily gets at some of the thorny questions around reparations: Is a direct payment the best method? How much is enough? What would that do for people? How might people experience it? Here’s the trailer:

What’s more, you can hear Baptiste and the films’ lead actors discuss the short and their thoughts on reparations in this Q&A from a screening hosted by DSA’s Afrosocialists and Socialists of Color Caucus. In her opening comments before the discussion, Baptiste makes sure to immediately broaden the picture one might have about reparations, advocating for a Pan-Africanist approach: “An ultimate demand could take the form of global reparations—a debt owed to all descendants of slaves affected by the atrocities committed by colonialism around the world.” The cast also makes numerous efforts to keep expanding our vision of reparations throughout the conversation, making it clear that reparations for a multiplicity of harms—not just slavery—are important to keep on the table, and that reparations should exist simultaneously with pushes for universal programs like free education and free healthcare. Reparations help heal, but they don’t prevent future harms from ongoing inequities.

Partway through the Q&A, a member from N’COBRA, the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, speaks up to provide some great context about the current work for reparations. One super important point they make here: H.R. 40, the main bill in Congress on reparations, has in the past been critiqued for being too limited, or for only ‘studying’ the idea of reparations. But the updated version of the bill actually does more than that, and directs a commission to merely to study but also to develop a plan for action based upon its findings. I went and took a look at the text of the 2019 bill, which charges the proposed commission with making recommendations on a wide variety of matters such as laws, policies, and programs that should be changed, along with “What form of compensation should be awarded, through what instrumentalities and who should be eligible for such compensation.”

The N’COBRA member in the screening audience happens to be Jumoke Ifetayo, who is also one of the authors of the Movement for Black Lives’ excellent toolkit, Reparations Now. If you’ve never taken a look at it, it’s absolutely worth your time. Folks who work on racial justice issues might hesitate. “Another toolkit?” you might be asking. No, not just another toolkit. There’s a lot of material here that needs to find its way into our everyday knowledge of the issue. How many examples of reparations that have actually been paid, either in the U.S. and elsewhere, can you think of? I was familiar with some of the instances named, but certainly not all, and for only one (the reparations made to victims of police torture in Chicago) did I have any context on the organizing efforts that brought those reparations about.

As a trainer and facilitator, I think they did a fantastic job of creating an easy-to-implement curriculum with a group to help them learn about reparations and think strategically about the differences in different kinds of demands and campaigns that might be made in the name of reparations. (Looking at the list of contributors, this is not exactly surprising.) The toolkit came out in 2016, as part of the Vision for Black Lives and accompanying policy platform. While there might be resources one could add to it, it doesn’t really need any updating. (Though if you do want to stay up to date, you can always read M4BL’s 2020 platform.)

Not up for reading policy platforms but want to take a few minutes to think a little more about the ‘how’ and ‘who’ of reparations? Get yourself over to Slamdance and watch Sixteen Thousand Dollars. The festival ends on Thursday the 25th, so you’ve only got a few days. And if you have the time, the relaxed and grounded conversation the cast did with DSA is a great accompaniment to the film.

Thanks for reading Unsettling, and catch you next week,

Meg