Reparations Daily (ish) Vol. 88

Labor & Capitalism & Slavery, Oh My!

Sep 06, 2022

Happy Tuesday —

Since yesterday was Labor Day, I revisited some related essays and books and dissected Jay-Z’s latest comments on capitalism.

Greg Carr @AfricanaCarr

Every #LaborDay we remember that theft of our bodies & labor enabled a settler state called USA. There is no pride in that. It was a crime. First nations were ravaged. The afterlives of and refusals to address those crimes explain the US's future and shape it’s fate to this day.

Some news you should check out:

The entire world should be focused on Pakistan right now. Over 1,300 people have died, and a third of the country is underwater. The climate minister is, rightfully, calling for climate reparations.

Jason Hickel @jasonhickel

The tragedy in Pakistan is a stark reminder of climate injustice. The top map shows which nations are most responsible for excess emissions. The bottom map shows which nations are most impacted by it. Climate breakdown is playing out along colonial lines.

The entire country should be focused on Mississippi and the water crisis that has been unfolding there.

Frederick Joseph @FredTJoseph

Jackson, Mississippi (82% Black residents) not having clean/usable water and it not being a trending conversation daily is just an example of how America normalizes the dehumanization and trauma of Black people.

Vox launched a podcast series focused on reparations.

Vox @voxdotcom

“Everything that’s going on today leaves me very, very hopeful that [reparations] will in fact happen in my lifetime.” —@Nkechi_Taifa, on why reparations is a policy issue “whose time has come”

vox.comReviving the case for reparationsLawyer and activist Nkechi Taifa explains why reparations is a policy issue “whose time has come.”

The Pew Research Center released findings from a national survey of Black people on issues of racial inequality and social change in the US.

Germany rejects Poland’s claim it owes over a trillion in war reparations.

Mariame Kaba and Andrea Ritchie published a new book and vision for a world without police or prisons.

The Nation @thenation

In their new book "No More Police," Andrea Ritchie and Mariame Kaba explain why we must abolish policing altogether. Reforms that leave policing’s core functions in place, they argue, will not prevent state violence against Black people.

bit.lyWhy We Don’t Say “Reform the Police”Reforms that leave policing’s core functions in place will not prevent state violence against Black people. To build a better society, we must abolish policing altogether.

With radical love,
Trevor

Opinion

Late last week, veteran rapper and business mogul Jay-Z took to Twitter to defend Black capitalism. As he discussed other recent Black billionaires (Rihanna, Kanye West, Lebron James), he offered a valid critique of the American dream before taking a major left turn. “When we start getting in, they tried to lock us out of it, they start inventing words like you know, ‘capitalist, you know, things like that,” he stated.

Like many celebrities, philanthropists, and others who have accumulated immense wealth, Jay-Z conflates building Black wealth with the liberation of Black people.

I think there are two things that Jay-Z overlooks in his analysis:

Racial justice will not be achieved through building the wealth of a few Black people.
Economic exploitation is a critical factor of the American experiment.

Adam Smith, often regarded as “The Father of Economics,” stated that the prosperity of a new colony depended on one economic factor — “plenty of good land.”

And as Dr. Greg Carr stated in his Labor Day tweet, the theft of land, bodies, and labor enabled the United States to become what we now see today.

Greg Carr @AfricanaCarr

It’s essential in our ongoing fight for social, racial, and gender justice to understand European colonization of the Americas as a continuous structure rather than a series of past events.

In other words, the project of the United States was not just founded on the need to control Indigenous land and Black labor — it is still driven by this need.

In their latest book, Histories of Racial Capitalism, Destin Jenkins and Justin LeRoy argue that “if race came into being to justify the social dynamics of capitalism, then racial justice cannot thrive under capitalism.” Racial capitalism’s adaptability, LeRoy argues, “ensured the transferability of systems of inequality beyond the slavery/freedom divide.”

Therefore, our emancipation from racial capitalism is a necessary precondition to complete liberation.

With that, I’ll leave you with this James Baldwin quote:

“They needed us for labor and for sport, now they can’t get rid of us. We cannot be exiled, and we cannot be accomodated, Now, something’s got to give.”