Piping up for Reparations
How do we grow a choir?
Last week I unexpectedly found myself addressing a whole room of people, advocating for reparations.
Maybe ‘unexpected’ is the wrong word; this is the kind of thing I seem to find myself doing (on this topic and others) when out in public. Both the bane and the boon of coming to community events with me, as some friends know. So perhaps better to say ‘unplanned.’
I was at a panel discussion of leaders doing some really important work in my region to address the history of racist exclusion. They’re making sure that this history is more widely known, and building spaces for community members to meet together to create a more intentionally inclusive culture today. Yet while the word “repair” was in the literature handed out to attendees, I didn’t hear it spoken from the stage. Concepts like truth and reconciliation were directly named in the conversation, but not reparations. It had me wondering: was this happenstance? Intentional? What did all these folks really think about it?
So during the Q&A I stood up and asked how, and if, reparations figured into their work (with a secondary question of how, for the community gathered there, we might incorporate the concept into our own.) The answer was literally “yes/no,” as one of the speakers put it, before he thoughtfully explained the reasoning behind not front-loading talk of reparations into the conversations they’re trying to have, which are bridge-building conversations attempting to reshape the identity of a whole community to one that is welcoming and inclusive. And he shared his own organizing philosophy, based on the potential for helping people ascend a staircase of understanding bit by bit until they’ve come to conclusions about the need for repair themselves, and hit that moment where they can expand it to the “noun-form” of repair — reparations.
I have a lot of respect for this approach. It made me think back to a conversation I had around this time last year with Trevor Smith of Reparations Daily-ish. We had a really wide-ranging discussion, talking about everything from the interconnections of the movements for reparations and land return to how these are bound up with the transformation of our relationship to labor. But one phrase from that long conversation really stood out to me; he said, basically, that (at least at that time — a lot has happened in the last year), there was still “no choir” for reparations.
“Talking to the choir” is a phrase common enough that we don’t usually think about what it takes for granted: the presence of a choir itself. “Talking to the choir” only becomes a risk when you already have a base, and you risk becoming insular by directing your messages and energy only to the chorus of supporters already showing up. Most movements are trying to move beyond that small base, to reach beyond the choir.1 But, he was suggesting, the movement for reparations was not yet at the stage where it could even take the existence of a choir for granted.
(A longish side-note here: this is where I get to tell you that while Trevor kindly allowed me to interview him for Unsettling, that I still haven’t published that piece. Last year was my first foray into doing interviews, and I racked up a pile of them, all with really smart and interesting folks, only to get overwhelmed while trying to transcribe and process them simultaneously. And yes, let’s also admit, I might have been sidetracked by travel adventures, as regular readers most certainly have noticed by now is a frequent pattern. And so I put most of the interviewing project on the backburner. But now you all can hold me publicly accountable into sharing those conversations with the world, right?)
We also talked a bit about the real concern for how to build the reparations movement without triggering backlash at a force and speed that ultimately derails its efforts. It’s not just that sensationalist news outlets will find ways to demean proponents, but that real roadblocks will be put into place. In the last year we have indeed seen the backlash to DEI and almost any discussion of race and power dynamics gain real steam all around the country, and it doesn’t seem to be easing up.
Well, how might we grow support and neutralize backlash at the same time? The “yes/no” approach of that night’s panelists might indeed be one such way, by growing support for reparative projects without always necessarily naming reparations as such. Such an approach also seems like it understands that part of what reparations can help achieve is not just redress and compensation for past harm, but repair of relationships within the larger community. This latter part does not happen unless more folks are at the table, including those who might not initially want to believe that they have any role to play in a reparations process.
This strategy has a lot of merit, especially when it comes to not triggering backlash in communities where that might easily happen. And in general these days I’m thankful for many kinds of bridge-building work I see springing up (or just simply “bridging,” as it’s called by the folks at Othering & Belonging Institute, who have been advising on the reparations process in California). But as I continued to reflect on it over the last week or so, it seemed to me like there was a piece here that felt missing, and I finally understood it was this: it’s hard to recruit new members to a choir if you never announce the choir’s existence, or fail to let people know when rehearsal is.
I believe that one of the gains we have made, in the reinvigorated movements for racial justice during the past decade, is a greater number of people who are curious, if undecided and under-informed, about reparations. To keep over-using this choir metaphor: these are folks who think they might like singing with others but aren’t quite sure yet; maybe they think they need to be professional singers, or know a lot about music theory, in order to show up and participate, when really the community choir is just happy to have more voices. We need to make sure these folks know how to find the rehearsal space. That is, we also need to have some places that are marked “Reparations Work Happening Here” with big signs and explicit invitations to participate.
My getting up at the panel Q&A with that question was more or less the equivalent of waving a big sign; I ended up in conversation with quite a few folks as the event was wrapping up as a result. There were people who felt warmly challenged, and wondered how they (and we as a community) might really step up to the task of reparations together. There were those who expressed experiencing solidarity over an issue on which they didn’t often receive it. And a lot of appreciation generally for naming a topic which seemed to clearly be on people’s minds. All this while still retaining similar appreciation for the strategy named from the stage.
My take-away here is pretty simple: we have options when it comes to the set of tactics and overall philosophy of how we try to promulgate movement towards reparations in our communities, and each comes with its own strengths and potential weaknesses. But this is a good thing, when it comes to growing that choir, as it’s pretty natural for folks to opt towards different kinds of action based on their own personal styles and proclivities.
So perhaps a good question to end this post with is: what’s your reparations style? Are you bold and blunt? Slow and warm? Or charting the waters in your own unique fashion? (And how did that so quickly begin to feel like an internet personality quiz? Watch out, next I’ll be recommending shades of eyeshadow to match.)
But seriously: how are you moving the conversation forward in your community? Even a one-to-one conversation with a friend in which you broach the topic can be a mini sign-waving to see if there’s another potential choir member out there. Grab a third friend, and who knows, maybe you’ll be on your way to a statewide reparations task force. Regardless, you’ll be helping build the public support that can make reparations to become a reality, which is needed if places like California are going to move forward on the recommendations put out after two years of study.
That’s it for this week. But before I go: hello to any of you from the event last week who happen to be reading this! I know some of you are now on the list! Welcome! So happy to be in conversation with fellow community members on these topics.
Thanks for reading Unsettling.
Until next time,
Meg
Or we might say that an effective movement will try to do this. For a good read on the tendency to create clique-ish subcultures that defeat activists’ own stated intentions of creating mass movements and broad social change, and how to get beyond that should you be part of such a group, check out Hegemony How-To by Jonathan Matthew Smucker.