Reparations Daily (ish) Vol. 54
The Anti-History Movement is Putting Bounties on Teachers who Talk About Race
Happy Monday! We’re into the final stretch of our second year living with COVID, and the Omicron variant has me feeling very similar to how I felt this time last year; tired, confused, and anxious. If you’re feeling similar, I hope you find ways to relax your mind and body while engaging with your support systems.
There are so many great articles in today’s edition. I often wish I could spend my days hopping around to different coffee shops reading through all of the beautiful pieces of journalism that I get to curate every week. I hope to take some time in the next few weeks to go back through previous editions and publish my top 5 favorite reparations-related pieces this year. If folks have any suggestions, hit my line, tsmith@reparationslab.org.
Today’s Hot Takes section again focuses on the ongoing anti-history campaign that has wrongly been dubbed the critical race theory fight. As I’ve explained before, this fight is of the utmost importance for the reparations conversation, because if as a country’ we can not even teach kids about basic historical facts relating to race and racism, then we will never be able to have the difficult and needed truth and reconciliation process that must be a component of any federal reparations effort.
What’s going on in New Hampshire is quite literally scary and reminiscent of things one would see in a country like North Korea. As some of you know, I had the pleasure of living in South Korea for three years and finishing my junior and senior years of high school there. Like all Americans sent to South Korea by the U.S. government, I had to live on the military base, where I got an up-close and personal look at how we trained our soldiers for the threat that North Korea might attack. The stories of indoctrination, threats, and brutality that we hear coming out of North Korea are not too far off from what is happening right now across the country in my opinion. Head to the Hot Takes below section to hear more.
As I noted, some great articles have been published over the last few days. My recommendations are below:
The USA Today Editorial Board published this editorial this morning where they have offered some specific policies of what reparations could look like in the various sectors (housing, education, entrepreneurship). I’ve contributed to a forthcoming book alongside some other thinkers (who have been featured in the newsletter) on this topic that should be out next year, so please be on the lookout for it. Some would argue that some of the policies the USA Today Editorial Board are proposing should not be considered reparations/are policies that we are already doing. It is one of the few (if not the only) piece from an Editorial Board that I can recall that proposes specific policies (I’ve noted some below). Check out the article for yourself and let me know what you think; I’m very curious to hear your thoughts.
“In the area of housing, reparations should take the form of federal vouchers that would help Black residents in formerly redlined neighborhoods, where investments historically have lagged, to raise the down payment for a home.” The nation must also invest in “affordable housing, and those developments need to be built not only in historically Black neighborhoods but also in wealthier suburban and urban communities that have been traditionally white enclaves.”
“On education, vouchers for Black families would provide students access to high-quality public and private schools that too often are out of reach to them because of income.”
“Finally, to help build generational wealth, Congress should designate funds specifically to help Black entrepreneurs launch and sustain businesses.”
The piece also points to a popular McKinsey paper that says that the “Black-white wealth gap costs the economy $1 trillion to 1.5 trillion per year.” The Editorial Board declares that “this last point is critical because addressing the lingering consequences of racism and closing the wealth gap will benefit all Americans.” Too often think we lead with this narrative because it is more digestible to audiences. Yet, this country has a moral imperative to initiate a reparations process for Black Americans, and this is the narrative that we must lead with.
The Washington Post published a great piece on the various efforts spurred by the recent win in California to return land stolen back to the Bruce family.
The New York Times covered this fascinating story of Tim Gilbert, who was arrested and charged in 2018 for aggravated assault. Gilbert’s lawyers argued that the grand jury and the trial jury argue in a room named after the United Daughters of the Confederacy is inherently prejudicial and violated his right to a fair trial. However, an appeals court has granted Gilbert a new trial.
I’ve only been to Boston once, and it was a weird experience. My typical experience in cities is diverse, but with Boston, it felt as if you could feel the segregation and racism in the air. So it’s why this story is so interesting to me. As reported by WBUR, the at-large City Councilor, Julia Mejia, is leading an effort to establish a commission that would examine the adverse effects of slavery and racial discrimination in the area. It’s exciting also because there is a pretty significant infrastructure built in Boston by Dr. Ibram Kendi and his anti-racist center at Boston University. So it’ll be fascinating to see what, if any, role they will play in this.
Honestly, I think any article that still uses the word “minorities” should just be thrown in the trash. But, this Forbes article that discusses how the racial wealth gap could be closed through artificial intelligence is one you should check out. I can't entirely agree with most of it, but it still was thought-provoking.
At this point, I have the most faith in Gen Z than any other generation, including my own. They’re brave, intelligent, determined, and get stuff done. D.C. Students are organizing virtual town halls to get the adults in their city to address racism, as reported by NBC Washington meaningfully.
With radical love,
Trevor
National News
USA Today: Repair legacy of racism: Explore reparations in housing, education, entrepreneurship
USA Today: Why America's journey toward racial justice shouldn't include reparations
Washington Post: Advocates push nationwide movement for land return to Blacks after victory in California
New York Times: Black Man Wins New Trial Over Confederate Memorabilia in Jury Room
USA Today: A critical time: Small handful of educators losing jobs for lessons linked to race, not CRT
USA Today: It's not just Virginia. Education and critical race theory are on the ballot across the US in 2022.
Business Insider: I went to 'the shuttlecock of the Confederacy' to hear what people there thought about critical race theory. I heard about equity instead.
CNN: Black parents say movement to ban critical race theory is ruining their children's education
Fast Company: The 1619 Project grapples with the horrors of slavery. This artist brilliantly translated it into a book for kids
Wall Street Journal: Gordon Wood on Slavery
Mother Jones: Foreclosures Are Fueling America’s Racial Wealth Gap
Forbes: How A.I. Can Help Close The Racial Wealth Gap
Aspen Institute: Three lessons for boosting postsecondary education and wages in Black-majority cities
NBC News: Fixing America's poverty problem starts with telling a new story
Tech Crunch: Don’t let new hybrid workplaces keep the old systemic racism
Regional News
WBUR: Boston could be next city to consider reparations for Black residents
Evanston Roundtable: National symposium on municipal reparations to include town hall with Danny Glover
Wehoville: WeHo may give reparations to Black residents for housing discrimination in last century
Citizen-Times: New Asheville director of equity & inclusion to lead reparations, bring on new staff
Evanston Roundtable: Dec. 15 is new deadline for Reparation applications to be approved; grants to come in 2022
NJ.com: N.J. needs to finally study reparations over slavery, faith leaders and advocates say
Ebony: Descendents of a Displaced Black Community Are Reparations from the University of Georgia
Seattle Times: Even a day to remember slavery divides us
NBC Washington: D.C. Students Take On Racial Justice Issues to Produce Town Halls, Videos
International News
Reuters: The international campaign for slavery reparations
Hot Takes
There have been plenty, arguably too many, articles written on how this anti-history fight started. The story goes that Christopher Ruffo, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, created a strategy to toxify critical race theory and expand what falls underneath it to rally a base of supporters around the narrative the meta-narrative that “wokeness” is taking over and teaching white kids to hate themselves.
The strategy has been largely successful as 24 states have introduced 54 separate bills that seek to restrict issues relating to race or racism. According to PEN America, some have specifically targeted “critical race theory,” others have specifically banned the 1619 project. Some have gone much further and sought to target and punish any teacher deemed to be violating the law, such as the “Right to Freedom from Discrimination in Public Workplaces and Education” law that the New Hampshire state legislature passed earlier this year. The law allows parents to file a complaint if they believe that their child is being taught anything related to race, racism, gender, or sex in a “manner that made their children feel they were being blamed or cast as a source of the problem,” according to the AJC.
Another bill was introduced just last week to take these restrictions even further. The new bill, titled “An Act Relative to Teacher’s Loyalty,” (seriously, that’s what it’s called) seeks to “ban public school teachers from promoting any theory that depicts U.S. history or its founding in a negative light,” according to New Hampshire Public Radio.
It goes on to further say that “no teacher shall advocate any doctrine or theory promoting a negative account or representation of the founding and history of the United States of America in New Hampshire public schools which does not include the worldwide context of now outdated and discouraged practices. Such prohibition includes but is not limited to teaching that the United States was founded on racism.”
You can read the full text of the bill here.
The United States was quite literally built on stolen Indigenous land, and its wealth was quite literally built on the backs of stolen African people. These actions were grounded in racist thoughts and beliefs. It is not disloyal to say this statement. In fact, I would argue, we owe it to the authors of our Constitution to bring us closer to the ideals that they declared this country was founded on. The ideals of freedom, equality, and liberty were certainly not practiced by the founders and the majority of Americans when they were written, and one of the largest reasons we currently live in a country that has inched closer to living up to those ideals is because of Black people, many of whom have had to die for it to happen. We could also argue that the way we currently teach kids the history of America leaves already leaves out the critical context that should shape how we think about this country.
I certainly was not taught that Thomas Jefferson said that “Blacks are inferior to whites in the endowments both of body and mind. Or, that George Washington relentlessly sought to recapture enslaved people who escaped to freedom, both before and during his presidency. Or that people such as Elizabeth Freeman used the Courts to win her freedom.
I was taught nothing about Reconstruction or the historic feats that Black people accomplished during that time. The story of Hiram Revels and other Black people who held public office is one of America's most spectacular and inspiring stories that need to be told more, not less, often.
Against the backdrop of the political discussion happening in New Hampshire about how educators should portray slavery is a frighteningly worrying organizing effort led by white parents who are offering $500 to anyone who turns in a teacher talking about slavery. The Moms for Liberty tweeted last month they would give $500 for the person who first successfully catches a public school teacher breaking the New Hampshire law.
As a high school teacher noted in Forbes, "the term bounty is not hyperbole,” as the group also publicly stated to mark the payment “CRT Bounty” when successful.
We’ve reached a low point. Teachers, who are already vastly underpaid, are now being targeted and threatened for doing their jobs. These bills and the actions behind them threaten teachers’ First Amendment rights and encourage parents to file arbitrary complaints that we can only assume will target teachers of color, particularly Black teachers.
The issue at hand here, as Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute, Dr. Rashawn Ray, states, “many Americans are not able to separate their individual identity as an American from the social institutions that govern us — these people perceive themselves as the system. Consequently, they interpret calling social institutions racist as calling them racist personally.”
He goes on to say that this “speaks to how normative racial ideology is to American identity that some people just cannot separate the two. There are also people who may recognize America’s racist past but have bought into the false narrative that the U.S. is now an equitable democracy. They are simply unwilling to remove the blind spot obscuring the fact that America is still not great for everyone.”
It’s why narrative change, as a concept, is so important and why it’s so important that anyone supportive of racial and social justice must also be dedicated to changing the dominant narratives that surround race, racism, Blackness, repair, and reparations in this country.
We have to act more intentionally because our opponents are winning so far.