Facebook Publication Date: 43554.460416667

On Reparations/Restitution

As you all know, the work of Lace on Race is not confined to this Page. We engage with others on Facebook and elsewhere, and also produce articles and resources, and speak on the subject of race and relational ethics.

Today, on the interwebs, the question of reparations/restitution came up. A woman who presents as white made this statement:
‘I was already a believer in reparations but after listening to the podcast Scene on Radio series Seeing White and hearing more about the history they don’t teach us growing up I am 100% for it. What would that look like to you? Money? Free college? Low interest loans?’

I have thoughts.

Not to an actual amount; at this stage in the discussion I absolutely refuse to play that game, but in how the query was posed there; actually, as it is posed by almost every white person who takes up the issue.

I am drawing inexact parallels to discussions about my funding model here at Lace on Race, where people are not given a dollar amount, but are instead asked to determine for themselves the quality of the work, and of its value to them, and remunerate accordingly.

Invariably though, a lot of people insist on my stating a dollar amount. It seems fair and equitable, right? Not so much.

It serves to place the onus on the Other; in this case, me, by not wanting to do the interior work themselves, and of outright disingenuousness (they spend large amounts of time on the website; they know its actual worth), and also it’s a game of chicken *to my detriment*–I then have to make mental calculations of not what the work is worth, but what I feel the person is willing to pay.

Just the query itself strongly suggests that the person is looking for a lowball amount, and if I give a number they find distasteful, the conversation ends.

I don’t think it takes much to see the power dynamics in play here.

Similarly, when it comes to reparations, white people want us to come up with a figure, actual or in kind, which they can then pretend to consider only to reject out of hand.

Look. This is not a comprehension issue.

Every white person with a shred of self awareness and integrity knows the contributions of untold black persons, in slavery and beyond, that either has entirely or disproportionately benefited them.

Everything, and I do mean everything has been touched. From medicine (Lacks and the Tuskegee experiments) to housing via zoning, redlining and just plain stealing property, to education policy, to environmental policy (the ‘dirtiest’ areas are forced on black and brown people) to policing (many of the first police forces began as slave patrols), to the workplace (white women were *and are* the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action).

And the benefits afforded to every white person as a result of first chattel slavery, then Jim Crow and the de facto racist soup we all swim in to this day, has negatively affected black people; in earning power, in generational wealth, in health outcomes.

Put bluntly, your life, and your lifestyle, has been and is still on our backs.

And you know it. So do we.

So the conversation around reparations (and I also add restitution–because we are talking about full on theft) leaves me of double mind.

It rankles me when white people speak of us in the third person and leave us out of the conversation. It also is distasteful when white people play chicken with us in asking what we think we and our ancestors and our collective contributions and subsequent oppression and pain have been and are worth.

Left to themselves, we’d all get a neck massager and a 10 buck gift card to Wallyworld . Uh, nope.

This conversation simply has to start with an acknowledgement of the power and economic dynamics in play here. White people have to confront them; otherwise, even in the most earnest queries (as I assume hers was) there will always be a whiff of violence, because to ignore or minimize those dynamics is to the strong benefit of white people.

We have not yet had this conversation. Not as individuals and certainly not collectively as a country.

White people to not believe, or when they do believe, they do not grasp, and when they do grasp, they minimize the full harm and violence of the last half millennia.

That work has to be done, acknowledging and internalizing the full weight of what you have displaced upon us for centuries before a full accounting can be made.

I say here now and in my Page and website that racism and white supremacy are, before they are anything else, *economic constructs*.

Talk of reparations/restitution brings this fact out in full relief.

This work, the work of reckoning and acknowledgement and brutal truth of the plunder every white person hoards that rightfully belongs to black people is not our work to do.

It is yours.

So I ask *you*. What number works for you?

Edited to add: no hearts or likes without comments.

Admin: please add this to pinned posts.

Permalink: https://www.facebook.com/laceonrace/posts/pfbid02kT9E9MJaPbcpJwtPqLLGGziNQv36uN5q3RfzgViPFdvJf4JPHrdh4rtGMCsUS2g9l

Post Type: Text

Caption Type: N/A

Is Cross Post: 0

Is Share: 0

Impressions: 12

Reach: 10

Reactions: 4

Comments: 184

Shares: 6