Reparations Daily (ish) Vol. 71
How the #SayTheWord Campaign is Pushing for Reparations in New Jersey: A Conversation with Jean Pierre Brutus
Happy Monday!
I took the week off last week because, as Tricia Hersey, the founder of the Nap Ministry, wrote in the New York Times two years ago, “rest is resistance, it’s reparations.”
But, we are back and have a great interview with Jean-Pierre Brutus, Senior Counsel at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, and one of the leaders within the ‘Say the Word. Reparations,’ campaign that is pushing the state legislature to establish a Reparations Task Force.
The campaign features a diverse list of organizations scattered across the state of New Jersey and has galvanized enough support to push seven localities to pass resolutions urging the state to create the task force. You can read the text of the bill here, the fact sheet about slavery in New Jersey here, and an op-ed about the campaign published last year here. Head to the Hot Takes section for the fill Q&A.
Some news you might want to check out today:
I’ve been following the story of the launch of the largest guaranteed income program in the American South, where most recipients will be Black women. Vox published an in-depth look into the program.
Last week, The New Yorker published a story about West Ford, an enslaved Black person founded on the oldest surviving freedmen’s villages, Gum Springs, and whose descended family believe he was the son of George Washington.
The last public Confederate monument in Marytland was taken down, according to ABC.
As reported by PBS, the Alabama state legislature voted unanimously to delete racist language, such as that the goal of the state was to establish a “white supremacy in the state” in the Alabam state constitution.
With radical love,
Trevor
National News
Washington Post: When saving a symbol of white supremacy is a way to resist it
Vox: The simplest, most revolutionary approach to ending poverty
The New Yorker: Did George Washington Have an Enslaved Son?
Business Insider: Trump calls on supporters to 'lay down their very lives' to defend US against Critical Race Theory
The Guardian: Anti-CRT laws want to ban texts about systemic racism. What about the US constitution?
Complex: ‘Shark Tank’ Star Daymond John Calls NCAA Tournament ‘Modern-Day Slavery’
Bloomberg: Baby Bonds Eyed as Way to Close US Racial Wealth Gap
The New Republic: Evictions Are Back. Black Renters Are Suffering the Most—Again.
Fast Company: There are no quick fixes to white supremacy’–Sherrilyn Ifill on leaving NAACP Legal Defense Fund
USA Today: How Native women activists fought racist Washington team nickname and won
The Root: NAACP Report Shows That A Lack Of Black Hollywood Executives Has Been Detrimental To Black Youth
The Guardian: Anti-CRT laws want to ban texts about systemic racism. What about the US constitution?
The New Yorker: Metaphysical Horror Becomes All Too Real in the Audacious “Master”
Vanity Fair: TRUMP TELLS SUPPORTERS THEY MUST FIGHT TO THE DEATH TO STOP SCHOOLS FROM TEACHING KIDS ABOUT SYSTEMIC RACISM
Spectrum News 1: Legislature President LaMar leading Monroe County to reparations
Tap Into Plainfield: Plainfield’s Council to Vote on NJ Reparations Act Resolution Monday
Pennsylvania Capital-Star: Reparations are possible — they happened for Asian Americans
Education Week: What Is Really Polarizing Schools Right Now?
Moguldum: Top Reparations Scholar Dr. Sandy Darity Receives Another Award, WEB DuBois Fellowship
MSNBC: Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio serves as a brown face of white supremacy
New York Times: Overlooked No More: Louise Little, Activist and Mother of Malcolm X
Regional News
PBS: Racist language may soon be gone from Alabama’s constitution
ABC News: Maryland’s last public Confederate monument removed
Berkeleyside: Berkeley may explore making reparations to Black residents
Baltimore Sun: The Baltimore Sun must tell the whole story; a half-apology is insufficient (paywall)
Baltimore Sun: Maryland Episcopal diocese accepting applications for grants under landmark reparations program (paywall)
The News & Observer: Fight against ‘white supremacy’ is urged following mock ‘slave auction’ at NC school
The Guardian: California plan would give $100m to Indigenous leaders to buy ancestral lands
WBUR: How one Mass. school board got caught in the culture wars
WPTV: Florida's governor praises passage of controversial education bills
US News & World Report: Report on Top Cop's Racist Comments Must Be Released
Washington Informer: Blacks Built Virginia Homes Post-Slavery, Now Descendants Billed $10,000 For Demolition of “Blight”
Baltic News Network: Ukraine counting infrastructure damages to demand reparations
Philly Voice: Pennsylvania had more white supremacist propaganda than any other U.S. state last year
Mississippi Free Press: Gov. Reeves Claims Critical Race Theory ‘Humiliates’ White People At Bill Signing
Lohud: Bailey Initiative takes on racial gaps in homeownership, generational wealth
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Georgia leaders weaken schools to appease uneasy white voters
International News
Bloomberg: William and Kate to Face Protests and Call for Slavery Reparations in Jamaica
National Geographic: Their identity was forged through resistance: Inside thves of Brazil’s quilombos
NPR: South Korean slavery victim seeks U.N. justice as time runs out
Hot Takes
The following conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Trevor: Thank you for joining me today, I’m excited about this conversation! Tell me a bit about your role and what you do.
Jean-Pierre: I’m a Senior Counsel within the Economic Justice Program within the Institute. I work on reparations advocacy, higher education funding and student loan work, and universal basic income.
Trevor: Interesting — so the reason I reached out was that I came across the #SayTheWordCampaign. Could you tell me a bit about the campaign, how it came about, and the main goals?
Jean-Pierre: So, the ‘Say The Word Campaign Reparations, is led by the Institute, and we have a multi-racial and multi-faith coalition of partners.
It’s called #SayTheWord because we found that individuals and groups found reparations as a divisive term throughout the state. We wanted people to focus on the word reparations because there is specificity about the harms that have emerged from the institution of slavery in New Jersey.
Some people might ask why is a Northern state calling for a reparations task force. Well, New Jersey was once known as the slave state of the North. It was a slave colony and depended on slave labor to produce different goods. There was a grain surplus in New Jersey, and that surplus would feed enslaved populations in the Caribbean.
In 1704, New Jersey passed a series of slave codes that impacted Black life and incentivized settlers to come to New Jersey through a racialized land distribution system. White families who came to New Jersey were given 150 acres of land, and for each enslaved person they owned, they were given an additional plot of land.
By the time you get to 1850, the federal government passed the Fugitive Slave Act, and New Jersey was the only Northern state to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. In 1821, the highest court in New Jersey, the presumed position of Black people was enslavement, so they had no rights. New Jersey did not abolish slavery until after the federal government ratified it.
Jersey has one of the largest racial wealth gaps in the country — the average median wealth for a white family is $322,500, and for a Black family, it is $17,700 — one of the largest gaps in the country. The campaign calls for a task force to study institutional slavery in this state, its aftermath that led to contemporary discrimination, and then propose policies and programs to address those specific harms.
Trevor: I appreciate that in-depth overview. I want to revisit the racial wealth gap. Can you talk about why it is so important to close that? You also mention in your report the need for reparations and a guaranteed income. Can you talk about why you advocate for both of these policies?
Jean-Pierre: So, my colleague Luara Sullivan just published a report titled ‘Making The Two New Jersey’s One,” and part of the reason it is so important to close the racial wealth gap is that you don’t want to have a percentage of your population significantly behind. It doesn’t help New Jersey as a democracy or economy to have such economic inequality.
It’s also a reflection of the harms produced by slavery that New Jersey has never directly addressed — there needs to be a way of repairing that in a meaningful way, including reparations and guaranteed income. There are some pilot programs in some cities across the state like Newark and Patterson, and we know it will positively affect communities.
Trevor: Right, but how are reparations and guaranteed income different? I’d imagine an opponent to reparations might say ‘yes, let’s give everyone money,’ and call it reparations.
Jean-Pierre: Reparations are specific to the harms of slavery. Dr. William Sandy Darity has called for a model called ARC — acknowledgment, redress, and closure.
It’s more than providing money. There has to be acknowledgment like an apology, and there has been an apology for slavery from the state of New Jersey in 2009, but it hasn’t gone far enough. The state should also ask how the institution of slavery is memorialized in public space and how it is taught in public schools. How do we understand slavery’s impact currently?
Then there has to be redress — simply providing a universal basic income wouldn’t close the racial wealth gap.
Then there has to be closure. New Jersey has to think about how it caused racial harm — universal basic income would seek to address some of these harms, but it’s not to be confused with reparations. After the Second World War, there was a Marshall Plan for Europe, and Randall Robinson called for a Marshall Plan for Black Americans in The Debt. What would that look like in New Jersey to invest significantly in Black communities?
Trevor: It looks like its gaining steam in New Jersey. Three municipalities have “said the word” and passed reparations resolutions. What has been the overall reception to this campaign?
Jean-Pierre: We’re beginning to see a lot of support at the local level. Last year, Trenton passed a resolution supporting the reparations task force bill. We’ve seen Newark and Montclair in more recent weeks, and I’m hoping we see other towns and cities support this bill as well. Your readers can go to the Say the Word landing page and our 400 Years page, where they can directly contact the Senate President and Assembly Speaker and urge them to hold a hearing for this bill.
People have been using our toolkit and more legislators supporting this bill, so we hope that the bill can be posted for a hearing soon.
Trevor: So, there is a legal aspect to this, as you know. As a lawyer, what would you say to someone who would call reparations for Black Americans unconstitutional?
Jean-Pierre: I’ll give you the classic lawyer answer — it depends.
So, it depends on the way that New Jersey designs this program. California is going through this debate and sorting through various questions, such as whether it should be race-based or lineage-based. The Court gives deference to legislators in designing legislation, but when you enter the realm of race, particularly when designed to address past harms, the Court is not so good.
Given the make-up of the Court right now, it doesn’t look like they would be in favor of certain kinds of formulations around reparations. Evanston has a specific designation for reparations, and we haven’t seen any legal contest against Evanston's reparations law because it is designed very specifically.
Depending on how it is designed in New Jersey, it may not be subject to legal or Constitutional challenges.
Trevor: So you brought up Evanston, where the legalization of marijuana played a role in the reparations effort there. New York and New Jersey both recently legalized marijuana. How might that play a role in your efforts?
Jean-Pierre: New Jersey has yet to implement the retail sale of marijuana. But, that is something that the task force can look at — how do we fund some of these policies? I’m sure California will look into this as well, and Evanston has provided a model, so there is no reason why New York or New Jersey shouldn’t do the same. This is the point of the task force — to look into all of this.
Trevor: I think the words we use are so important because it is the building blocks for how we construct our society. Why is the campaign called #SaytheWord, and why is it so important for us to talk about reparations in the context of Black people?
Jean-Pierre: You’re exactly right, and I had a professor who used to say that language structures reality. In reference to reparations in the U.S., part of the difficulty is that it is so closely tied to slavery, and we have an issue with talking about slavery in this country.
You can argue that the U.S. wasn’t a democracy until 1968, and its vision and goals were compromised because of its relationship to slavery. To talk about reparations is to talk about some of the failures in the U.S., but rather than see it as a condemnation, we should look at it from a place of repair. Reparations are viewed negatively rather than as something that can be to make the U.S. realize its goals of a true multiracial democracy.
Trevor: The coalition is pretty diverse. Are there divergent views within the coalition on any of the specifics of what reparations for Black Americans might look like? If so, how have you all approached these conversations?
Jean-Pierre: Conversations around lineage versus race are going to come up. People should consider that there are three eras of racial regimes in the United States. There was a period of slavery until 1865, then between 1865 to 1968, and then there was a contemporary moment. You might have different policy proposals for each era. If you take that logic, then it would include all Black people at some point. Depending on how you develop the programs and policies, some of those populations will overlap. Folks should remember that Black Liberation movements have always been diasporic and exceeded the groups and individuals involved. People like Marcus Garvey who called for reparations aren’t from the United States — let’s take a step back and think about the forms of power that may be reproduced through reparations.
Trevor: What is next in the New Jersey fight? What does New Jersey look like as a state after it has passed reparations for Black Americans?
Jean-Pierre: We have to remember that slavery was hundreds of years, and Jim Crow was a hundred years. It will take a concerted, sustained, and protracted effort to implement. It’s also going to take a lot of will. It will take decades to close all of these massive inequalities. It’s not going to change overnight. It will be a domino effect if New Jersey can pass a taskforce bill and then reparations. It will take a while, given the amount of time, there was disinvestment.
Trevor: Thank you, this has been super insightful. Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Jean-Pierre: We have to remember things like the Homestead Act and GI Bill, both of which subsidized the white middle class. Now we need to subsidize and support and invest in Black communities. It has been a long fight, and we cannot expect things to happen overnight. It will require a lot of effort, mobilization, and solidarity to get this moving.