Reparations Daily (ish) Vol. 52
Stop, Pause, and Reflect: Rep. Jamaal Bowman on Reparations
Happy Tuesday! Tonight I’ll be speaking alongside Rep. Jamaal Bowman on a panel tonight at 7:00 pm E.T. sponsored by the ACLU of N.Y. (my old workplace)! You can find the link to register for it here.
Representative Bowman has been a staunch supporter of reparations at the federal level since taking office. So in preparation for tonight, I wanted to take a deeper look into some of the statements he’s made publicly about the topic.
Today’s Hot Takes section is a simple curation of Bowman’s quotes on reparations.
I hope you can join us tonight!
With radical love,
Trevor
National News
YES! Magazine: When Reparations Grow From the Grassroots
New York Times: The Impact of the Browning of America on Anti-Blackness
Washington Post: Racism costs Americans trillions. Biden and the Fed say they’re working to change that.
New York Times: Racial Equity in Infrastructure, a U.S. Goal, Is Left to States
NBC News: Republicans deny that infrastructure can be racist, but examples keep popping up
New York Times: How Far-Right Extremism Invaded Mainstream Politics
New York Times: Is America Willing to Tell the Truth About Its History?
L.A. Times: Are ethnic studies classes forgetting the Doctrine of Discovery?
Business Insider: Kyle Rittenhouse's mom says Biden 'defamed' her son by suggesting he was a white supremacist
Entrepreneur: Compounding Inequality to Compounding Success: Bridging the Racial Wealth Gap
USA Today: How critical race theory went from conservative battle cry to mainstream powder keg
Salon: Right's cynical attack on "critical race theory": Old racist poison in a new bottle
Local News
WDET: Black Detroiters Weigh in on What They Hope a Reparations Task Force Will Endorse
San Francisco Chronicle: S.F.'s first reparations for Black residents? Leaders ask city to give Fillmore Heritage Center to nonprofit
Brunswick News: Confederate monument covered to prevent vandalism
Seattle Times: How young is too young to teach white kids about race?
Westport News: Brown expands slavery report, but no plans for reparations
AZ Central: Critical race theory wasn't the only reason we pulled our daughter from her school
International News
Jerusalem Post: Luxembourg to pay one million Euros in reparations for Holocaust survivors
Hot Takes
Bowman has been one of the most vocal supporters of H.R. 40, reparations, and the need for this country to finally reckon with how the numerous racial disparities that exist today, most notably the racial wealth gap, are a direct result of our past explicitly racist policies. His tweet and various quotes below sum it up.
NPR, 11/12/21: “We haven't taken a moment to stop and pause and reflect and look ourselves in the mirror as a country and really be honest with ourselves about how those harms continue to persist.”
NPR, 6/17/21: “Let’s go through the process of asking the right questions, searching for the right answers. And throughout it all, I believe we heal as a country. And when I say heal as a country, I mean all of us, not just the African American community. We all need to do better as a nation. The human race needs to do better.”
Free Press, 6/30/21: “It was my honor to lead that letter to the FCC yesterday. As we all know, we are dealing with a racial reckoning in our country, since the murder of George Floyd, and even going back further to the murder of Eric Garner, and many other things that continue to happen to Black and Brown communities across the country. This is a time to go through a process of truth and collective healing and assessing American institutions to see where racial bias and racial injustice occur. But, unfortunately, when we look at our communications structure, this has been going on for a long time.”
The Guardian, 4/28/21: “The U.S. needs to finally step back and have honest conversations about race and racism in this country. Because it’s not just police — it’s housing discrimination, and wage theft, and Black maternal mortality, it’s environmental injustice, and all of the ways racism is built into the very fabric of America. More than anything, America needs a process of truth and collective healing. We have to be honest with ourselves about the ugliness of our history and the discrimination that persists. Only then will we meet the ideals of democracy and get one step closer to realizing the American experiment.
NPR, 4/14/ 21: “Understanding that the compounding nature of racism has created a dynamic where Black people today must not only grapple with living in a country built on our sustained oppression but also observe the modern manifestations in our daily lives.”
The Hill, 12/27/20: “We got to bring H.R. 40 to the floor for a vote. We need reparations for the African American community. We need a federal jobs guarantee. We need Medicare for all.
Vox, 7/1/2020: “What we are trying to introduce to the conversation as well is us as a nation taking a step toward reconstruction — a third-time’s-the-charm sort of approach to reconstruction. We tried it after the Civil War, but it was stopped by Klansmen and white supremacists really targeting and terrorizing Black communities. We tried it again after the civil rights movement, but that was followed by mass incarceration. So this time, we want to try it again, focus not just on police reform and police brutality but starting with a process of truth and reconciliation, which provides an opportunity for us to heal as a nation and reckon with our history and the legacy of racism and how it continues to impact all of us, similar to what happened in South Africa after apartheid. So truth and reconciliation, discussions around reparations, discussions around reallocating resources from our military and our police departments toward public health, and massive investments in infrastructure that have been historically neglected.”
New York Times, 6/18/20: “Voters have been telling me this is long past due. For a very long time, we’ve talked about the study of the need for reparations, but the data is already available.”