Reparations Daily (ish) Vol. 72

The Dawn of a New Racial Justice Paradigm: A Conversation with Kyle Strickland

Happy Tuesday!

Last year, I applied for a newsletter fellowship run by one of my favorite writers, Roxane Gay. A few weeks ago, I received an automated message from Submittable that I was not selected for the fellowship. I was upset briefly but didn’t think much of it.

Last week, a couple of friends sent me the announcement of the winners and congratulated me for “making it so far.” Reparations Daily (ish) was a runner-up for the fellowship. While we didn’t receive the $25,000 that the fellowship would have offered or get the chance to work with Roxane, it’s reassuring that this newsletter has potential.

Joel Gay Creative Fellowship Winners

The good news is that the publicity from the announcement has given us a considerable bump in subscriptions — so welcome to all the new readers!

Today’s Hot Takes section features a conversation I recently had with Kyle Strickland, the Deputy Director of Race and Democracy at the Roosevelt Institute.

Kyle is one of the co-authors of a new report titled ‘A New Paradigm for Justice and Democracy: Moving beyond the Twin Failures of Neoliberalism and Racial Liberalism,” which examines a new racial justice paradigm “emerging in racial liberalism’s wake.”

Through a sweeping landscape of more than 200 different scholars and activists within the racial justice field, Kyle, alongside Roosevelt Institute Executive Director, Felicia Wong, found that today’s racial justice movement fall into three core categories:

• Freedom and Liberation: A vision for individual and collective self-determination, free from systemic oppression

• Repair and Redress: An honest reckoning of America’s legacy of white supremacy and violence, followed by concrete, reparative action to redress those harms; and

• Material Equity: An equitable distribution of resources, decision-making power, and material outcomes

In addition to analyzing this emerging paradigm, they also highlight the failures of neoliberalism and racial liberalism, which they argue produced policies that were “too thin and brittle to produce equity or agency for people of color.”

It’s not often that a piece of scholarship so clearly speaks to a current moment and, in many ways, serves as an X-Ray into the innards of the United State’s system of racial capitalism. Anyone remotely interested in solving the issues of racial inequality must read and re-read this report for months and years to come. Hopefully, through it, we can finally develop policies that bring us closer to this dream of a true multiracial democracy.

The full report can be read here.

Head to the Hot Takes section for the full interview with Kyle.

Some reparations-related news you might want to check out today:

• The California Reparations Taskforce resumes its hearings today, where it will conclude discussions on who will be eligible for reparations in the state.

• The University of Richmond removed the names of people who supported slavery or racial segregation from six of its buildings, including its founding President.

• A new report expands on the economic framework that centers Black women.

• The Biden administration included a 20% minimum tax on all income, realized and unrealized, in its proposed budget.

• Leaders across the Caribbean are calling on the United Kingdom to provide reparations to the nations it colonized.

With radical love,
Trevor

National News

Associated Press: Black reparations panel could decide who gets compensation

Center for American Progress: Black Men and the U.S. Economy: How the Economic Recovery Is Perpetuating Systemic Racism

NPR: To help everyone, help the most marginalized first, says new congressional report

ProPublica: Taking Aim at Billionaire Tax Avoiders, Biden Proposes Minimum Tax for Ultrarich

Washington Post: Protecting Black women shouldn’t be a choice between violence and silence

Washington Post: The House might pass a long-ignored bill to study reparations for slavery. Why now?

Washington Post: Home values soared during the pandemic, except for these Black families

The Center for Public Integrity: How can we close our racial wealth gap? 

Fortune: Pro sports and Black banks together can help close America’s racial wealth gap

CNN: A White couple is accused of killing a man because he was Black, a California district attorney says

Brookings: Monetary policy and racial inequality

Washington Post: In ‘social-emotional learning,’ right sees more critical race theory

Chronicle of Philanthropy: MacKenzie Scott’s Gifts Are Game Changers for Racial-Justice Groups. But Now We Need to Do More.

CNBC: Vice President Kamala Harris set to tout corporate giants’ $4.7 billion pledge to minority-owned businesses based near Washington D.C.

New York Times: ‘Confederates’ Talks Race in Double Time

Business Insider: Anti-Biden 'Let's Go Brandon' flags have become as conspicuous as Confederate flags once were at NASCAR races

WAMU: Honoring the memory of George Floyd through music, nearly two years later

Local News

KQED: Unpacking Reparations Eligibility in California

Reuters: Racial justice activists awarded $14 million in landmark case against Denver police

Washington Post: University of Richmond strips names of enslavers from campus buildings

Sacramento Bee: His ancestor came to California in enslavement. His new children’s book reveals untold history

Wall Street Journal: For Georgetown, Jesuits and Slavery Descendants, Bid for Racial Healing Sours Over Reparations

The Nation: Reefer Reparations in the New New Amsterdam

The Observer: Reparations Advocates Host Townhall Ahead of Task Force Mtg Next Week

NHPR: A year after Keene’s racial-justice report, work continues to make it a reality

Commercial Appeal: Will Collierville petition state to change Confederate marker in Town Square? Maybe

International News

The Guardian: Sorrow and regret are not enough. Britain must finally pay reparations for slavery

The Hill: Jamaicans demand apology, slavery reparations ahead of visit by Prince William, Duchess Kate

Los Angeles Times: A ‘blood money’ betrayal: How corruption spoiled reparations for Armenian genocide victims

Washington Post: William and Kate, touring the Caribbean to celebrate queen’s jubilee, draw anti-colonial protests, demands for reparations

Democracy Now!: Jamaica Moves to Become a Republic as Calls Grow for Slavery Reparations Following U.K. Royal Visit

Atlantic Council: Action must be taken to award reparations to victims of Russian war crimes

Hot Takes

The following conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Trevor: Can you tell me the story behind the report? What prompted it?

Kyle: What prompted this report is rooted in Roosevelt’s work around post-liberalism. Over the past 50 years, we have seen an economic paradigm that has been rooted in neoliberalism and trickle-down economics — the idea that somehow markets will bring economic prosperity for everybody and let the markets be the solution to all of our problems. Of course, we know that has failed.

In 2016, Felicia Wong worked with folks across the economic justice space to sketch out what a new paradigm in a post-neoliberalism world might look like. She realized that there was a lack of focus on race and racial equity throughout the economic space. She then wanted to think about how we can infuse racial equity within our economic lens.

I connected to Felicia when I was still at the Kirwin Institute working with Darrick Hamilton. We thought about doing a landscape analysis of our own that looked into the theories of change in the current racial justice movement. We started this project in early 2020, before the racial uprisings, to understand how we got here and what the worldview is moving forward.

Trevor: Let’s pretend that I’m in middle school for a second. Explain to me what the most significant takeaways are in this report.

Kyle: I’d say right now we live in a society where we want to ensure that everyone has access to the opportunity to thrive, but because of many factors, not everyone has the same opportunity.

We need to build a world in which we believe in the values of freedom, equality, and justice, especially for those left behind, which has been Black Americans and other people of color in this country. We believe that Black lives matter and that we all have a role in ensuring everyone can achieve their dreams.

Trevor: That was pretty good — I think you did better than most folks I ask to do that. What has the reception been from the folks who want to use this report?

Kyle: It’s been exciting, and it’s been a generative report. We made clear that we didn’t want to report the data or the landscape as is but to be driven by a set of values that connect to a larger paradigm rooted in racial justice. One that understands that a multiracial egalitarian inclusive democracy is one we must have but that we can’t get if we silo the issues of economics and racial justice.

So, we got insights from others who are doing work in different spaces and realized that the movement is more coherent around a set of issues than the mainstream media might make it out to be.

Trevor: You mentioned a larger paradigm. In the report, you all say that “this isn’t about any single policy or even a policy agenda. It’s an approach to policymaking for this moment that would center race and racial justice.” What is the difference between a policy agenda and a paradigm, and why is the distinction important?

Kyle: It comes down to what level you are viewing your problems, challenges, and solution. If you are looking at it from a policy agenda level, then you are thinking about the current challenges on a specific set of issues and the solutions to some of those challenges. When looking at it from this level, you tend to have an individualized approach to what is practical and what can get done.

You need to have a policy agenda to advance your causes. The problem, though, particularly on the Left, is that there has not been a set of visions counter to the neoliberalism frame. So, as a result, no matter what policies you have, if it doesn’t connect to a larger worldview, then it is easy for those policies to get co-opted by somebody that has a countervision to what you are trying to accomplish. So we need to connect people to a larger narrative.

Trevor: You perfectly described why I think it’s crucial that my title at Liberation Ventures is the Director of Narrative Change and why language and storytelling are so important. On the topic of language, I think that neoliberalism is a phrase that many people know, but I’m not quite sure that racial liberalism is as commonly understood. Can you break it down for us?

Kyle: As we started to review the history of how we got here, we asked ourselves, ‘what does racial justice require?’ We began to see that these issues are not static; they change over time.

We put a marker around 1954 and examined how racial liberalism was situated within neoliberalism. The common understanding was that racial equality would be achieved through access to opportunity. Education, job opportunities, and eliminating overt bigotry would help us achieve racial justice.

We are arguing that it is a form of liberalism that is insufficient in dealing with the structural barriers that persist over time. If you are solely focused on individual issues, you are missing out on the larger picture. We differentiate racial liberalism and racial justice. Racial liberalism has an individualized framework that doesn’t confront the issues of domination and structural issues, while racial justice does.

Trevor: Thank you, that was super clear. I hope folks get a chance to dive into the report, but if they don’t, that answer gives a clear definition of racial liberalism. My favorite part of the report was part two, where you all outlined the landscape analysis of the current racial justice movement. What are the issues within these three buckets of freedom and liberation, repair and redress, and material equity? Would it be fair to say that freedom and liberation relate to the abolition movement, repair and redress relate to the reparations movement, and material equity relates to the guaranteed income movement?

Kyle: Yes, I’d say it like that. It’s an analytical framework for schools of thought around these issues and different approaches to aligning different values and visions.

We laid out a lot at the beginning of the report on what is wrong. The second part is a set of guideposts that should help us in our policymaking, knowing there will be overlap.

So if you are talking about reparations, yes, that would fall into repair and redress, but it could also fall within material equity and how that ties into addressing the racial wealth gap.

If you are thinking about issues of abolition, then you are squarely focused on freedom and liberation.

If you are thinking about material equity, you are likely thinking about the redistribution of resources and power and how they connect to material conditions on the ground.

Trevor: Right, and in the report, you all state that we should “center race in every policy decision and be aggressive and attentive to racialized policy outcomes.” I get that, but what do you say to the person who works in, let's say, transportation policy, who says to you, ‘I work on issues relating to roads, sidewalks, and bridges, that everyone uses, why should I center race in my work?

Kyle: Well, I’d take a step back and talk about how America’s understanding of history is fundamentally ahistorical. We often talk about race as some linear path of progress and that we are now in a color-blind era of society — where now if you talk about race, it is seen as divisive.

We argue that if you avoid discussions of race, then you avoid the daily reality of many people’s lived experiences because how the U.S. has come to be, is shaped by race and racism. So, we have to look at the impact of policy decisions made through a racial lens; otherwise, we will continue to see disparities and inequality.

Avoiding discussions about race, gender, or anything to deal with equity, means that you are avoiding how this impacts different groups. Many people think that if I’m not intentionally racist or discriminatory, then I’m good, but knowing our history, we know that equal doesn’t always mean equal.

Trevor: Right, and this myth of racial progress is something that I’ve been studying recently. In the report, you all say that “we hope to build on this existing work by helping to build a narrative based on a new racial justice paradigm.” You might not have it all laid out, but how do you change a narrative?

Kyle: So, you are the expert in this more than I am, but I’m going to give it a try. You have to connect people’s everyday experiences with how they make sense of the world.

On the economic side, there is a powerful narrative of individualism tied to how we view racial inequality. It’s a powerful narrative because it means that if you are talking about inequality, it can reinforce the idea that you are taking away someone’s agency by talking about structures.

Then, when you have a propaganda machine that peddles a narrative that anything related to race is unpatriotic, folks don’t know where they stand within the racial justice paradigm.

This false notion of the American dream is not working for all people, so we have to challenge it and offer a counter vision of what a world can look like.

The most important thing we can do is connect their experiences to this new vision — which is hard because you are holding up things that people don’t think are possible while also relating to their everyday experiences.

An old worldview is usually focused on zero-sum thinking, that one person’s gain is another person’s loss, and a new narrative must be one of abundance. We need to start to meet people where they are and create a new common sense of what is possible in the future.

Trevor: Last question. What do you want the person who doesn’t work in advocacy or organizing spaces? Let’s say that they are a nurse who spends their days saving lives and helping people, and when she gets home, they usually relax by watching something on Netflix. They read the report and want to get engaged, but they don’t know what to do with this information. What would you tell them?

Kyle: I would like them to talk to others about these issues. We have to reach people and point them toward this new vision to get a new paradigm. We know that there is an organized opposition focused on undermining democracy right now. So, we have to get organized in our local communities and workplaces to discuss where these challenges are coming from and then plug into a broader community. So, I hope they can get organized and bring people along on their journey.