A resolution on reparations for slavery was presented at the 2016 Episcopal Diocesan Convention. For some, the mere mention of the word reparations brings a visceral response. For me, this resolution inspired a personal research project dealing with race relations, both past and present, to see if reparations are required, not only within the Episcopal Church, but in the United States.
Over the summer, I traveled to Montgomery and Birmingham Alabama. I toured the National Peace and Justice Museum (Lynching Museum), the Legacy Museum, and the Civil Rights Institute, located across the street from the 16th Street Baptist Church where four young girls lost their lives to a KKK bomb in the 1960’s. Also, Kelly Ingram Park where young African American school children were punished with water canons for protesting. Through my travels and research I learned that lynching of African Americans was socially accepted; African Americans faced domestic travel restrictions within my life time; Jim Crow segregation laws denied African Americans rights ensured to U.S Citizens by the Constitution; and, this infringement continues today.
My travels and discoveries have opened my mind’s eye to sorrow and pain. We are not a colorblind society no matter how much we pretend to be. Racism is not a historical element that resides in the past. It did not go away but simply went underground and came up in forms more socially accepted. This Country has declared war on drugs and crime. We have allowed our cities and towns to arm themselves against these wars and have painted the face of public enemy number one in the minds of our citizens. We have sold society a bag of fears that continues to cause new ways to keep people segregated and impoverished. According to Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, one in three African American young men will spend some time in the criminal justice system. This does not mean that African Americans commit more crimes than their Caucasian counterparts but it does show the inequality in the justice system. Society hides behind fear and, to be fair, crime is scary. It is easy for the media to paint the face of crime in our minds and we can justify correctional system’s racial bias by accepting this picture. But isn’t it just another way to keep the less accepted demographic out our mainstream America? This way of thinking and reacting needs to change.
Reparations means to repair or atone for past wrongs. Perhaps a debt is owed to descendants of former slaves because slave labor resulted in slave owners’ wealth. However, doesn’t that way of thinking assign a monetary value, once again subjecting African Americans to the slave auction block. We cannot pay away the past. We can not “throw money” at a current situation and expect it to be fixed especially after hundreds of years of status quo. Rather, all citizens of the United States should repair the generational class system that has prioritized one race and subjugated all outliers by its socially accepted mores and norms. It is time that we did something to level the playing field, to even the score, to right this vessel we call America. Imagine if the money currently spent to arrest, convict, and sentence non violent offenders were used instead to create equal access to education, housing, and jobs. We could see a reduction in crime, drugs, and decrease the needs for prisons. Instead of spending money on punishing people subservient to the power class, let’s empower all people. We should embrace the fact that we are not colorblind, acknowledge our differences, and learn to love each other as part one body in Christ. However, that can not be accomplished without our time, treasures, and talents. Money is a tool for our ministry and for reparations. The need to make and/or pay reparations is necessary to start us in the right direction.