My Thoughts about Reparations
If you are ready to read a book about reparations, here are two suggestions. But first I suggest this introduction to reparations, and a Biblical basis for it. These two posts cover many of the different letters of the conversation about reparations, and I’d like to move into a bit of the more practical part of it, even if it is the controversial and scary part.
Taj James says, “White supremacy is built on two lies: separation and supremacy.” The opposite would be community/togetherness and humility/vulnerability. The opposite of thinking we are better than someone isn’t thinking we are worse than them: it is realizing that we need them. It is being vulnerable and open in a reciprocal relationship. Honestly, the first step in reparations is simply relationship, and that can’t be skipped.
I personally see direct problems passed down from slavery that continue to have results today in the areas of education, prisons, housing, lending/investing, and trauma/healing. These are specific areas that need many different solutions put forward by the Black community themselves, with the agency to carry them out.
When talking with my girls, I walked them through the four parts of fixing broken relationships. When writing this, I would pose 10 questions as we work from inner to outer responsibility:
How can we redeem our racist history through acknowledging?
Learning about our own family history and how it is connected to slavery can help us understand our heritage and mindsets that we have about racial issues. We need to acknowledge where these were and are wrong. Who do you acknowledge to? First to God and then to whoever He shows you to.
2. How can we redeem our racist history though apologizing?
We need to apologize for where we have continued wrong mindsets or (accidentally) continued systems or actions that continue to hurt/break relationships with people of color. Who do you apologize to? First to God and then to whoever He shows you to.
3. How can we redeem our racist history through making it right?
We need to replace whatever wrong we were doing with right actions and mindsets. A big part about making it right is that we have to ask the person we wronged how to fix it: and we might now agree with their answers. But we need to continue to listen, and come up with a plan together, on how to fix that broken relationship. Hopefully, you have open conversations and relationships with people of color, particularly Black people. That makes it easier to start. If you do not, you need to figure out why you don’t have any relationships with people of color and change that.
4. How can we redeem our racist history through recommitting?
We won’t get it all right the first time, no matter how good our intentions are. We may not follow through, or we may realize our plan wasn’t the best way to make things right: so we recommit to trying again. We keep building relationship by working together to make it right.
5. How can we redeem our racist history as a family? (moving to the next outer ring of responsibility)
Redeeming our history as a family is why I wrote the book “Check the Box.” Hopefully, it is a helpful way of journeying through your family and spiritual past with your children to come up with ways to, as a family, make it right and bring little pieces of redemption with you.
6. How can my family and I financially work towards redeeming our racist history?
Personally, since I believe there are specific problems in the areas of education, prisons, housing, lending/investing, and trauma/healing that especially affect Black Americans, then I am actively looking for programs and people that I see doing a really great job addressing these issues.
7. How do we redeem our racist history as a church? (moving to the next outer ring of responsibility)
Unfortunately, if the church had taught people the truth about God’s image in everyone, and everyone being equal, slavery would never have been able to happen, or continue. We, as a church, failed. We let the evil mindsets of white people being more important than Black people to continue, and sometimes—we even taught people that was the truth, instead of a lie.
8. What are some ideas of steps we can take as a church to redeem our racist history?
First, we need to acknowledge where we, as a church, did not teach the theology of the image of God right, and apologize. How the heck did we use the Bible to allow slavery to flourish? We have got to purge away every bit of that wrong theology and replace it with the truth. We need to specifically say, “This was what was taught wrong in our churches (and elaborate) and this is the truth (and elaborate).” We have to intentionally teach a correct theology of the image of God.
9. What are some ideas about how we can make it right as a church?
It has been said that the most segregated (that means separated) time in America is 10am on Sunday morning, at church. How could we have allowed this to continue for so long? We need to ask our Black brothers and sister in Christ how we, as a church, can make it right and heal the brokenness that so clearly still lies between Black and white Christians. And then we stop and listen. Really listen. We won’t get it right the first time, but we can consistently recommit to trying again. And again. God hasn’t given up on us yet, so we still have time. Maybe this is why we still have time: to work on redemption in the church.
10. What are some ideas about how the government can redeem our racist history?
And this is where most discussions BEGIN about reparations. To me, it is more like letter “s” in the alphabet of what needs to be talked about with reparations. In our American history, we fought the Civil War, deciding and making it law that there would be no slavery. Many people acknowledged that slavery was wrong, but not everyone. Some people even did the next step of apologizing, but not everyone.
As a country, we have never done the four steps to making it right. We have laws to no longer have slavery or treat someone as less than human, and everyone (hopefully) knows it is not okay to be racist or say racist things: but if the heart of the matter is still broken, and we still have broken ways of thinking that come out in ways that hurt people (even if we aren’t trying to), then we still have things that need fixing.
First thing I believe that needs to happen on the federal level is an offical apology. Second, I think the bill, HR40, needs to be passed, creating a committee to simply STUDY what might possibly be done for reparations. This is not actually DOING anything, but I believe it is a step forward. I believe that making Juneteenth a federal holiday was a step forward in reparations, as well as making lynching a federal hate crime. Many of the steps forward may simply be simbolic, but they are moving the conversation forward: and they are actually HAVING the conversation.
In “Reparations Pro and Con” by Alfred L. Brophy, he categorizes four general kinds of plans for reparations that have been made in the past. These can give us a starting point for conversation, whether we agree with these points or not (pages 169-175):
A. Truth commissions and apologies
B. Civil rights legislation that gives additional rights of action to victims of racial discrimination
C. Community based reparations payments for slavery (I would suggest creating more programs to work towards solutions to current problems in education, prisons, housing, lending/investing, and trauma/healing. Sometimes this isn’t starting a new program, but tweeking the program that currently isn’t working)
D. Direct cash payments to individuals (This would be letter “z” in our conversation, and something I don’t personally think, from past examples, is a viable solution)
But here is something to think about: Anasa Troutman says “If your concern is ‘What if Black people spend the money unwisely?’ You are living in white supremacy. Is it possible that it will be spent unwisely? Yes. But that’s not Black—it’s human…Consider the amount of money that white men have blown over the history of this country. Why do they get to be frivolous, punitive, and wasteful and, at the same time, treat Black communities with suspicion? The answer is, they don’t. They have to let go. They have to begin to trust.”
While I agree it is very important to learn from the past and not do what we KNOW won’t work—the thing with the governement is that beyond studying history—we DON’T know what will work. We just try different things and hope that the unintended consequences aren’t horrible and the results are generally positive. I think that Black leaders should meet with Indigenous leaders to discuss the numberous ways that throwing money at a persecuted people DOESN’T work.
Lastly, please remember these are just my personal opinions and thoughts about reparations. I hope that they help move you to think your own thoughts and opinions, which won’t look the same as mine, but will move us forward in being diligent to walk in the Biblical principle of reparations, in this specific subject of slavery and all it’s effects, and in all others.