Commentary on Reparations: The Big PayBack Episode 3, "The History of Reparations"
Below are my comments on the podcast, “Reparations: The Big Payback.” Each week, I will listen to an episode and provide my comments. Be sure to visit the show’s website.
The best part of this episode is its focus on Black women in the struggle for reparations. I appreciated that focus even more because its Women’s History Month.
The goal of this episode seems to be to tell the history of reparations to explain how long the effort has been going on. The conversation between Erika and Whitney about how to tell the history of reparations is a little all over the place; it seems to waste time, and it’s a bit too scripted in an attempt to be entertaining.
The first part of the history lesson is given by Cree Summer. One of the stand out quotes is when Summer says, “Unpaid labor and slavery made America the most powerful country in the world.” Summer then goes through Emancipation, Civil War, Reconstruction, Sherman and the Freedmen, and Special Field Order #15 about 40 acres and a mule.
From there we hear about Lincoln’s assassination, Andrew Johnson, Southern Homestead Act, Jail, Marcus Garvey, Segregation, Lynching, Jim Crow, Jim Forman, and then Congressman John Conyers who introduces HR 40 in 1989 and continued to introduce it until he left office in 2017. There was no mention of the sexual allegations against Conyers, or the corruption during his time in Congress, but I’m not sure that’s germane to the fight for reparations. After Conyers, Summer mentions Sheila Jackson-Lee who has taken up the mantle and the bill that still waits on approval from the Judiciary Committee. The history lesson ends with the reparations work in Evanston, Il.
The history lesson left out Ta-Nehisi Coates’s seminal essay, the work by the ADOS movement, and California’s efforts.
Next we hear from Dr. Mary Frances Berry, a historian who wrote a book on Callie House. Callie House started an ex-slave pension movement. During this conversation, there’s a slight mention of slaveholders getting reparations, which should’ve had a more prominent part in the history of reparations. Dr. Berry makes reference to NCOBRA, which was left out of Cree Summer’s history lesson.
Here’s a quote from Dr. Mary Frances Berry on reparations and healing:
“Reparations are the most direct way to target money to ease the disparities, and let Black people decide how to spend the money. But first the country has to acknowledge the disparities, and if people refuse to then that means that they are not acknowledging that slavery was an institution that did not benefit slaves. Once you accept what happened, then, in fact, demanding reparations is easy. We should go after local city councils, local mayors, and local governments and demand that local communities pass measures to do this.”
Dr. Berry makes an important point about the local need to provide reparations. But she focuses mostly on slavery during her talk, and reparations is an active claim. The House Judiciary Committee on HR 40 sometimes makes it clear that reparations is more than slavery and sometimes it focuses on slavery too.
Whitney then offers a white response when he says white Americans bar the door to reparations because they are afraid of what else will come through, almost like reparations is a slippery slope. My response is that everything that has to come through must come through. The entire history of whites in the America is terrorism.
Through Whitney, the show puts out white feelings without addressing them or making it clear that white feelings do not matter. Whitney should’ve been clear that it is racist for whites to oppose reparations.
Again, I still don’t understand the point of his comment. He says he thinks whites bar the door to reparations because it’s a slippery slope but he doesn’t cite any sources for his opinion. Could it be that whites are just racist and don’t want to give up their racist standing, and don’t feel responsible for what happened yesterday and today? Whitney gives me none of that.
After Whitney’s interruption, Erika does a fictional talk with Queen Mother Moore. And finally, we hear from Robin Rue Simmons who is spearheading the reparations effort in Evanston, Il. Unfortunately, the show doesn’t address the concerns residents have about cash payments not being a part of the housing portion of Evanston’s reparations program.
After getting a hopeful boost from Robin Rue Simmons on reparations, Whitney comes back and says, “I always wonder if we owe this, why aren’t we taking the lead on it more.” Whitney is asking why more whites don’t take the lead on reparations.
He apparently didn’t watch the HR 40 hearing or hear the testimony that reparations should be determined and lead by Black people. Perhaps Whitney also doesn’t understand US history. Whites have a way of messing up good efforts: see antiracism. Maybe the best work for whites on reparations is get out of the way.
Whitney does ask an important question, “What does a world that has had reparations paid look like?” But he says we will see in Evanston, Il, in a few months. I think that’s a bit too much pressure on Evanston to create an entire world. Reparations require a whole-of-society approach and in particular the federal government. I found the ending cheesy, but the commercials didn’t bother me as much in this episode.
Overall, the episode gives just enough history to make you curious.
Callie House: see “No Pensions for Ex-Slaves” on the National archives site.
According to the national archives site, the ex-slaves pension was modeled after military pensions. Rep. William Connell of Nebraska introduced the first bill in 1890 at the request of former mayor Walter R. Vaughan of Omaha. Vaughan wanted to frame the bill as a Southern tax-relief bill because the freed people would spend their pensions in the South and revive the economy. His interest convergence and lifting all boats strategy didn’t work.
The National Archives site says there were several organizations working for pensions, but the one with the most documentation is the one headed by Callie House. The pension was for cash payments based on age. The elderly would be eligible for higher payments. Callie used the Constitution as a basis for the claim. But the US government came after Callie and her organization. They accused her of fraud and jailed her.
This history is a reminder that no matter how reparations were represented white America refused. It didn’t matter how recent the case was or how reasonable the case was, white America refused.
Queen Mother Moore
Queen Mother Moore had a long history of activism and social entrepreneurship. She was a founder of the “Committee for Reparations for Descendants of U.S. Slaves,” which as an ADOS ring to it. She called for $200 billion in reparations.
Robin Rue Simmons
Check out her bio. You can also hear from her in the new series Soul of a Nation.