Reparations Daily (ish) Vol. 1
Welcome!
Welcome!
Welcome to Reparations Daily (ish), a newsletter that will be published every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday gathering news on reparations, reparative justice, and the racial wealth gap from across the country.
Housekeeping
The newsletter will be organized into three sections:
National News
Regional News
Hot Takes
Hot takes will generally be given on Fridays unless there is a news article or recent event that needs to be commented on.
If there is something that you would like to see included in a newsletter, please email tsmith@reparationslab.org. I will try and include all suggestions. I will try and include articles without a paywall but unfortunately, many news outlets have them. If there is a paywall, you can sometimes get around it by reading the article in incognito.
So with that, here’s the first edition of Reparations Daily (ish)!
National News
Politico: Biden plans new housing, small business programs to tackle racial wealth gap
New York Times: Seminary Built on Slavery and Jim Crow Labor Has Begun Paying Reparations
USA Today: Is this Georgia town a model for reparations?
NBC: Tulsa marks 100 years since massacre with somber ceremonies, demands for reparations
Human Rights Watch: What the US Can Do If It Really Cares About the Tulsa Race Massacre
Havard Business Review: Businesses Must Be Accountable for Their Promises on Racial Justice
USA Today: Is Black homeownership in America better than 100 years ago? Well, it's complicated.
The Atlantic: The Neighborhood Fighting Not to Be Forgotten
Regional News
Bloomberg: What Happened When Evanston Became America’s First City to Promise Reparations
The New Yorker: California’s Novel Attempt at Land Reparations
Black Wall Street Times: John Legend supports reparations for survivors, descendants of 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre
NBC: The Tulsa Race Massacre was 100 years ago. But it's not too late to pay reparations. (Op-ed)
CBS New York: Black Wall Street Gallery In SoHo Vandalized On 100th Anniversary Of Tulsa Massacre
New York Times: What I’ve Learned Teaching the Tulsa Race Massacre for Two Decades
Hot Takes
The Courier-Journal published this article on May 31, titled ‘Louisville nonprofit says descendant of slaveholder donated six-figure reparations payment. The story goes that a local nonprofit called Change Today, Change Tomorrow, received a six-figure check from an individual who recently discovered that his great-grandfather owned Black people in Kentucky. 40 percent of the funds will go toward supporting the organizations’ staff, 40 percent will go toward community outreach efforts, and 20 percent will be put in a reserve.
I currently work in philanthropy, and this sounds like a general operating support grant to me. A general operating support grant is money given to an organization’s broad mission rather than a specific project or program and is generally given to support the organization’s day-to-day operations.
While it is admirable that this white person dug into their own family history and interrogated where their wealth comes from — this should not be mistaken as reparations. There are varying definitions from experts on what reparations are and who they should come from, which we will not get into right now, though there are two glaringly obvious reasons as to why this transfer of capital is a simple donation rather than reparations:
The money is going to an organization and not the descendants of those who were enslaved.
The funds are being used for operations, community outreach, and savings.
If Change Today, Change Tomorow were to give the donation directly to Black people in the community, then you might have cause to call it reparations, but since that is not the case, it is actually dangerous to conflate a donation to reparations.
We suggest a local Kentucky organization pen an op-ed or letter to the editor pushing back on this framing.
Thanks for reading through our first edition, we are always open to feedback, questions, or edits!