Reparations Daily (ish) Vol. 45
Is it Cancel Culture or is it Relentlessness?
Happy Tuesday! Our Hot Takes section today is some of my very brief thoughts about the news that the Rolling Stones have decided to stop performing one of their most famous songs, ‘Brown Sugar,’ because of its references to slavery.
Here are some articles you might want to check out:
Today marks the beginning of a student journalism project that investigates American newspapers’ role in promoting lynchings and other racist violence from Reconstruction through the 1960s, as reported by Axios. The Project can be read in full here.
This Atlantic piece on how to utilize rage to combat racism.
This piece in the Undefeated on the story of Evanston, IL.
You may have heard about how a Texas administrator called for an “opposing” perspective on the Holocaust. This Texas Tribune piece gives some great detail around the anti-history bill that prompted that statement.
This Slate podcast features Professor Thomas Mitchell, a law professor at Texas A&M University and MacArthur Genius Grant winner, to discuss reclaiming Black land.
The entire newsletter is filled with great stuff. I hope you get to dig into all of it!
With radical love,
Trevor
National News
Axios: Investigating newspapers’ role in racist violence
Newsweek: Doable Reparations for Native American
Ecologist: Debt cancellation and reparations
NBC News: Rolling Stones pull 'Brown Sugar,' song with lyrics about slavery, from live performances
The Hill: What do African Americans owe America?
Moguldom Nation: New York Congressman Bowman: It’s Time To Vote On HR 40 Reparations Study, Black Voters Are Tired of Excuses
MarketWatch: How America’s 1% build their wealth
Middle Church (event): Rising to Indigenous Reparations
Institute for Policy Studies: U.S. Billionaire Wealth Surged by 70 Percent, or $2.1 Trillion, During Pandemic. They’re Now Worth a Combined $5 Trillion.
FHTE Reparationist Quick Guide: Volume 2 Issue 1
The Nation: How Not to Talk About Race
The Atlantic: How Rage Can Battle Racism
Yahoo! News: Walmart CRT Training Encourages Employees to Accept That ‘White Is Not Right’
NBC News: Covid and critical race theory: Sleepy school board races are waking up
Howard Center for Investigative Journalism: For scores of years, newspapers printed hate, leading to racist terror lynchings and massacres of Black Americans
Local News
Undefeated: History is made as reparations start to flow in Evanston, Illinois
Gothamist: NYC Board Of Health Declares Racism A Public Health Crisis
Slate: Black to the Land
The Texas Tribune: The law that prompted a school administrator to call for an “opposing” perspective on the Holocaust is causing confusion across Texas
The Intercept: OHIO STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION MEMBER DEFENDS WHITE SUPREMACY
San Francisco Chronicle: New California task force grapples with a big question: Who would qualify for reparations?
WHAS: 'This is long overdue' | Louisville Metro Council gets inked support from mayor to study reparations
STL NPR: Ending the racial wealth gap through reparations: Local policies or federal payments?'
Governing: California’s Reparations Task Force Debates Who Qualifies
Spectrum News: 'We deserve reparations and have obviously for a very long time.' Reaction to reparations resolution
Citizen-Times: Asheville reparations commission: How to apply, nominate someone starting Oct. 18
St. Louis Dispatch: White St. Louisans rally for Black reparations in Tower Grove Park
Oakland North: Reparations task force gets to work closing gaps for Black students in Oakland schools
CNN: A slavery petition was the latest racist incident at this school. Parents and lawmakers are fed up
CBS DFW: Critical Race Theory Law Could Be Behind Latest Southlake Racism Controversy
Fox 5 DC: Anne Arundel County Council to debate critical race theory at Monday night meeting
International News
Inter Press Service: We Will Never Give Up the Slavery Reparations Fight, say Caribbean Rastafarians
ABC News: Women taken from mothers in Congo seek Belgian reparations
The Guardian: Built on the bodies of slaves: how Africa was erased from the history of the modern world
Hot Takes
I was thoroughly surprised when I googled “definition of cancel culture,” that a Merriam-Webster link was the top hit. It defines cancel culture as “the practice or tendency of engaging in mass canceling as a way of expressing disapproval and exerting social pressure.”
The word has gotten a bad rep, in my opinion, and has been criticized by celebrities and others with large platforms such as Dave Chappelle, Johnny Depp, or Cardi B.
So it makes sense that those with the most prominent platforms are some of the primary subjects of “canceling,” but others in the public light have also been “canceled,” such as former Senator Al Franken or former Governor Andrew Cuomo.
I won’t be getting into the nuances of cancel culture right now, but rather the recent news that The Rolling Stones have retired one of their most famous songs, “Brown Sugar,” from their current tour — which some might attribute to this growing culture of “canceling.”
I’m not a Rolling Stones fan and couldn’t name three songs without the help of Google or Spotify. I gave the song a listen for the first time today. While reading the lyrics at the same time.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, guitarist Keith Richards said that he is “trying to figure out with the sisters quite where the beef is,” and whether they realized that the song “was a song about the horrors of slavery?”
According to Genius' song interpretation," 'Brown Sugar' runs through different white and Black sexual interactions," including nonconsensual sex between a slave and slave owner, who had "total ownership of Black women but also had total physical and sexual access.” Many would call nonconsensual sex between an enslaved person and an enslaver rape, so it makes sense that a song that is seemingly glorifying the practice would receive backlash, particularly in 2021.
According to Daphne Brooks, the director of graduate studies at Yale University’s African American Studies department, the “fetishizing of Black Women in Brown Sugar” always troubled her. The song, according to Brooks, is the “the most popular song about the systemic rape of Black women in slavery and celebratory anthem of this unspeakable crime.”
Music is, of course, a form of art and expression of creativity, and I believe artists should have the ability to creatively express themselves in ways that push our way of thinking about topics. But, the stories we have told about slavery, particularly the duality of physical and sexual violence that Black women faced, have been misconstrued and distorted. In this case, the physical and sexual violence could easily be interpreted as being celebrated. The song ends by saying, "how come you, how come you taste so good? Just like a, just like a Black girl should,” perpetuating the hyper-sexualization that Black women have always faced within our society. Let us not forget that after the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, that the most valuable Black woman was one that could bear many children.
In a recent interview with The New Yorker, Jon Stewart said that comedians had been allowed to criticize, postulate, opine, and make jokes forever, and now people are having their say. “That’s not cancel culture,” according to Stewart, “that’s relentlessness.”
I couldn’t agree more. Shout out to all the organizers, particularly the Black organizers, for their relentlessness.