Reparations Daily (ish) Vol. 19

Call it the Trans-Atlantic People Trade

Jul 14, 2021

Happy Wednesday! No Hot Takes today, just clips.

Though, we are introducing a new section to Reparations Daily (ish) today featuring international news! Thus far, we’ve only been featuring articles within the United States, but as recently detailed by the UN human rights chief, reparations for Black people is a global issue. So please, send this to anyone you might know who lives outside of the U.S. who may be interested in these issues.

Here are the pieces I think you should give a read/listen to:

A number of you sent me The Daily podcast on Evanston, Illinois, effort at reparative justice.
Racism and anti-Blackness in the UK has a bright light on it right now after the abhorrent behavior by English “fans” aimed at their own Black soccer players after their loss to Italy in the Euros this past weekend. The Hill details a new call from Jamaica aimed at England to pay reparations for its role in the transatlantic people trade.
This will be more of a difficult read, but a new paper published in the National Bureau of Economic Research examines the evolution of the racial wealth gap and what historical and current forces have shaped the gap. The biggest takeaway is that “for reparations to be effective over the long run, Black and white households must have at least equal wealth accumulating conditions.” This means that the gap may expand again if we do not create the conditions for Black people to continue accumulating wealth post-reparations policy.
As detailed in Fox News, Asian author Kenny Xu published a new book claiming Asian-Americans are an “inconvenient minority” and are evidence that critical race theory is a farce. I wish I had the time to give my take on this today, but sadly I don’t. I may read his entire book and give my take on it at some point, but please hit my email, tsmith@reparationslab.org, if you have your own thoughts on this article/book.