Reparations Daily (ish) Vol. 33
The State Must Provide: Reparations and HBCU's
Happy Friday! Adam Harris has a new book titled “The State Must Provide,” which explores how slavery and racist policies since then have harmed Black people in higher education. The book I plan to purchase and dive into this weekend gives a deep examination at critical points in higher education. For example, state governments could have made different decisions to create more equitable atmospheres for their Black students.
I had a conversation with a researcher at the Urban Institute yesterday. I asked him if he knew of any research that looked at hiring rates or income post-graduation of students who attend well-known HBCU’s like Howard, Spellman, and Morehouse compared to smaller less-known private and predominately white institutions. My inkling is that despite going to these higher-ranked predominantly Black institutions, the post-graduation economic success of these students lags behind white students who go to predominately white schools that have smaller endowments and lower graduation rates. If anyone does know if there is any actual data on this, please send it my way!
One thing stuck out to me in the NPR interview that Harris gave about his new book. Head to the Hot Takes section to read more about it.
Some articles you may want to check out today include:
This New York Times piece covers the only case where the Supreme Court conducted a criminal trial, and the justices served as jurors.
This piece in Inequaliy.org covers a new report that analyzes the tax returns of commercial donor-advised funds, which found that in 2019 alone, at least one billion dollars in donor-advised fund grants went to other commercial donor-advised funds.
This piece is by a white Californian woman who learned last year that her ancestors owned Black people and how she thinks of reparations in her own personal life.
With radical love,
Trevor
National News
NBC: A new book makes the case that HBCUs are owed reparations
New York Times: When the Supreme Court Couldn’t Stop a Lynching
Bloomberg: U.S. Wealth Gap Rises With Jackson Hole Coming at the Top
Inequality.org: Warehousing Wealth in Donor-Advised Funds
The Guardian: The rightwing US textbooks that teach slavery as ‘black immigration’
New York Times: Racial Inequities Persist in Health Care Despite Expanded Insurance
Yahoo Finance: Biggest Tax Hike on Wealthy Since ‘93 Is Bogged Down in U.S. Congress
Ed Week: Why, Really, Are So Many Black Kids Suspended?
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: The Washington County executive committee approved a resolution supporting what schools could teach on race
CNBC: How much money a single person needs to earn to get by in every U.S. state
CNN: 3 ways companies can help advance racial equity
Upworthy: A guy and his friends shared their travel plans. The results perfectly explain the wealth gap.
New York Times: The Harlem Hellfighters Were War Heroes. Then They Came Home to Racism.
Regional News
Cal Matters: What do reparations have to do with me, a white woman?
Salt Lake Tribune: History packets for Utah high schoolers pulled for claiming ‘most slaves were generally treated kindly’
Washington Post: Arizona has banned talking about uncomfortable things in the classroom. That undermines the future of the state.
WSHU: Slavery on Long Island: The History That We Forget To Remember
The Mercury News: Commentary: SB 9 could help ease racial wealth gap, housing crisis
MLK 50: Racial gulf created by economic recovery efforts will echo for generations
Hot Takes
In the past year, McKenzie Scott has donated over $1 billion to various organizations, many of which have been HBCU’s. For example, Praire View A&M University in Teas received $50 million, and Delaware State University and Lincoln University received $20 million.
While obviously, a generous gift, Harris’ new book highlights the specific work that states and universities must do to examine their role in perpetuating a system of white supremacy. In the NPR interview, Harris states that as momentum seen during Reconstruction started to dwindle, guaranteed appropriations from states like Mississippi to public HBCU’s like Alcorn State started to decrease dramatically. In 1871, the school was guaranteed a $50,000 appropriation a year for at least a decade, but by 1876 it had decreased to $5,500. At the same time, the University of Mississippi, the school designated for white students were being heavily invested in while ensuring Black students could not enroll.
In this NPR interview, Harris did not get into what he thinks reparations should or could look like for this specific harm. We have seen universities like Georgetown create a fund for the descendants of the 272 formerly enslaved people the university sold in 1838 to save it from bankruptcy. Undergraduate students at Brown voted yes on a referendum that recommended the school offer reparations to the descendants of those who were enslaved who “were entangled with and/or afflicted by the University.”
Harris’ book seems to bring the voices and stories of HBCU’s into this conversation and look at the harm caused in higher education post-Civil War. I can’t wait to dig into it.