April 15, 2021 • 45 mins
Erika’s mother, Sammie Alexander, grabs the mic and tells the story of her Black experience, growing up, raising Black children and facing racism, but she drops the mic to deliver a dire prediction for Black America’s reparations in a red, white n’ blue future. Then billionaire Tom Steyer rolls his ‘money ball’ to expose the financial barriers that continue to limit the economic growth of Black Americans. And Dr. William Darity returns to teach a master class, on how reparations can make our country a more perfect union. Finally, former Flint, MI Mayor Karen Weaver, tells a dark water story about the challenges she faced getting compensation for Flint residents and why it may never be enough.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
I'm Eric Alexander, and I'm whitneyed out. Welcome to Reparations,
The Big Payback, a production of Color Farm Media, I
Heart Radio and The Black Effect podcast Network. I like
that poem indictious and it talks about being bloody, but
I'm bowed and that from the minute I read that
(00:26):
poem in elementary school, I made that my creed. I
may be bloody, but every time you knocked me down,
I'm gonna be like that punch clown. I gotta get up.
I felt that, and maybe I felt that because I
was this orphan and sometimes I knew I had to
(00:48):
keep my head down. But all of those lessons I
tried to teach my kids, not so much about sitting
down talking to y'all, but letting you see me live
through that. And I think that I got a pretty
strong group of kids that expected that dude had certain
expectations of them. Is that your mom? Now I know
(01:14):
where you get such self confidence? Yeah? Yeah, that's Sammy
Jean Amy Holman Alexander, and I am her daughter, and
she is my north star. She has three last names
because she's had a lot of lives, not because she's
Liz Taylor Kim Kardashian. She's like a cat, and I
think she's on her seventh right now. That's a lot
of lives and a lot of names. Did she also
(01:36):
give you the Great at the end of yours? No,
but she was fought a teacher that wanted me to
take it off my papers. I used to sign all
my papers and class with Eric Alexander the Great. Now
she likes all that, But Whitney, when we started this
rock in Reparations Adventure, we said that we would talk
more about our origin story. So I decided to talk
to my mother. And she's like a walkman. You can
(01:58):
push play and she's off to the races. She's a
real grio and she remembers everything but her origin story.
It's pretty awesome. She's one of eleven. I think I've
told you a little bit of about her. She was
her mother's last child. She was born in Karneck, Texas.
That's where Lady Burt Johnson is from. She was raised
in Carl's Bad, New Mexico. She was orphaned twice, first
(02:21):
by her mother and father when she was young, and
then when she was adopted. Her adopted mother passed away
when she was a teenager, and she basically was sent
out of the house and had to hit the road
with my father. They we both were traveling evangelists and
he was itinerant. She married him, my preacher father, who
was also an orphan. They had six kids. I am
(02:41):
one of them. You're welcome, America. And though she was
widowed a forty nine, she earned a master's degree in
early childhood education and she started to write children's books. Yeah. Oh,
and here are hobbies. She likes Macromay, tea cakes and
Dr Pimple Papa. Yeah. But you know, I was talking
to my mom about our reparations journey and the Privileged game,
(03:01):
the game that we did when we were in front
of Grant's tomb and we would ask each other's questions,
and you know, you go forward and then I would
end up stain back, and you know, you're halfway up
the block because you're white and male and privileged and
all the other good stuff you get from being in
the Book of Doo. But anyway, I asked her, what
were her thoughts about white privilege and or just privilege
(03:23):
in general. Well, I'm certain that there is white privilege
anytime one group can make laws and enact them to
benefit themselves, whether they're white or whatever their color. If
they can benefit them to themselves and use them to
deny other people their equality, then of course that's privilege.
(03:49):
And in America that happens to be primarily wide privilege,
white privilege. That's really America's origin story, right. And what
it's so interesting listening to your mom talk about this
is that the idea of white privilege means something very
different in two thousand twenty one than it did when
she was a child. And back then, I think white
(04:09):
privilege was just white people doing their thing. Yeah, they
were doing a thing and they still are doing their thing. Well. Anyway,
my mother starts reminisce and she's talking about her life,
how she grew up. Even told me stories about my
life as a child. It was pretty cool. Yeah, our
origin stories, the ones that our family tells us about ourselves,
about our family, our history. They're so important because they
(04:31):
kind of help us think about how we're going to
chart our way through the world, that we're sort of
carrying the story with us as we go. Yeah, it's
nature versus nurture. Think of America as this big oak
tree with these deep roots and we fit it, and
we're pretty fertilizer and watering it. But you know, we
are judged by the fruit it bears, you know. And
(04:53):
so I think, now we're getting a load of types
of juicy stuff that's fallen off of it. But you're
what I'm thinking, I've had a lot of fun, Whitney,
It's now time to get down to the nitty gritty
and talk about how to make reparations. That's epic stuff.
We're dealing with, high stakes, So we need to anchor
ourselves to an African American voice talking about just living
(05:14):
their experience. So I choose my mom that see the
world through Sammy's eyes. She can stand in for the community.
Like after Schindler's List, one of my favorite movies, Spielberg
created a committee to take down the stories of the
survivors of the Holocaust. So she'll tell her story whatever
she wants and we get to know her and then
build out from there. And my mom's a rock, she
(05:35):
can take it. Meanwhile, we'll check in with Dr. William
Daherty and former presidential candidate and billionaire Tom Steyer and
Mayor Karen Weaver of Flint, Michigan. Yeah, that's good. We'll
talk with them and find out how to make reparations.
What do you say, Whitney, I think it's a good plan.
We You know, we've spoken to economist William Daherty before
and he has a lot of interesting things to say
(05:56):
about reparations. But all three of those people have been
really at the war front of the thought process around this.
But the thing I like best about this plan, Erica,
is I think everybody would benefit from just spending a
little time seeing the world through your mom Sammy's eyes.
When you're a little kid and you're walking down the street,
are on a bus, and somebody comes up to you
(06:19):
but no reason at all, look you in the face
of white person and says, you know, that little girl
would be cute if he wasn't so bad. I mean,
why why would you address her child in that way?
It's nothing, It added nothing to me, It wasn't making
(06:40):
me feel better. Why would you go out of your
way to insult someone in such that way? Did that
happen to your mom? Yes, plenty of times. Yeah, it's interesting.
What can happen to you when you're just living I
can't even comprehend a story like that. Erica. I think
about what's in people's hearts and how they live in
(07:03):
the world, and I'm trying to imagine understand what's happening
inside someone that they would feel they could say that
to a young child. You know. I think about a lot, Erica,
about this idea of what makes people empathetic and what
makes people hard. And you know, I did a lot
of interviews for the Whiteness Project, and I really couldn't
(07:25):
find a correlation. The only correlation I could find that
it wasn't about money, it wasn't about privation, It wasn't
not anything that I thought, Oh, someone was raised this,
they would have this experience. It was really about true
self reflection and the people could actually reflect on their
experience in the world were people that could actually be empathetic. So,
(07:46):
you know, someone who I think about a lot in
this way, somebody we've talked to, Tom Steyer, who made
billions of dollars, has pledged to give it all away
and ultimately sold out of his hedge fund, became a philanthropist,
and even ran for president recently. I wonder if he
has enough money to remake the minds of that type
of human that's a lot of money Erica, but we're
(08:08):
going to have to be you know, making reparations means
we have to remake our minds. Cat Taylor and I
started a bank fifteen years ago harshly to redress the
systemic racism in the financial system and the banking system
in the United States that specifically addressed economic justice, environmental sustainability,
(08:29):
and supported businesses owned by women and people of color
because there was systemic attempt to shut those people out
of ownership of wealth in this country. And that's what
redlining was. Don't lend to black people. It's against the
rules of our bank to lend to blank people. So
we're gonna draw a red line around African American neighborhoods
and you can't lend in there, which shut black people
(08:50):
out of home ownership, which is the basic wealth creation
historically for American citizens. If you talk to my African
American friends who are business people, have a much harder
time getting business loans, which means you're shut out of
the private sector's wealth creation of being an entrepreneur and
building a businesship in terms of ownership. And so we
(09:11):
started a bank from scratch fifteen years ago. It's now
over a billion dollars in assets, and it's basically we
measure every loan not just on whether it's profitable, because
we need to be profitable so we can continue in business,
but also what is the impact on the community in
terms of job creations, in terms of who owns the bank,
(09:33):
in terms of sequestrian carbon And if you can't do that,
then that's not alone for us. And we want to
prove that you can do that and be profitable. That
actions have to be taken not just to be fair
within the bank, but to redress the long time deep
racism of the banking system and actually be you know,
not trying to be fair, but to be specifically pointing
(09:55):
out the people who have been discriminated against and trying
to give them the opportunit and these that have been
systemically taken away from them. So say, there's more of
these types of institutions that pop up, and there's a
different way to sort of assess people's credit worthiness and
they're not judged by that, Like come in and say
I'm black, Can I get Alan? And they said, yes,
you qualify. You know, you know, that's what people are
(10:18):
kind of wanting because they're saying, Look, I spent my
life being beat up by all these things that are
coming at me. I have no way to sort of
convince people that I'm a good bet. Is my black
skin enough to say, y'all owe me a shot? What's
the shot looked like? Some people say, look, just write
me a check. First, write me a check. Do you
think that's part of it? Obviously in education, mental health,
(10:40):
those types of things, you say, housing stability, can people
also just get a check? This is the point of
the study, Erica, because I recognize every single one of
the areas that you're looking at, and I know that
they're all subject to possible solution, so that you know
you are talking about education. I mean, one of the
(11:02):
things I pushed for when I was running for president
was a huge increase in the money devoted to historically
black colleges and universities because I felt as if here
is a very specific and successful lifeline to people who've
been discriminated against, that's being relatively starved for public money,
and yet has succeeded in producing, you know, way disproportionate
(11:26):
numbers of successful professional African Americans across the country. And
I said, it's a system that works. It's a system
that exists, why don't we make it a lot better
funded and a lot bigger to give people an equal
opportunity to see how far they can go. And in general,
when you talk about a systemic change in society, and
(11:47):
particularly one that's centered around values and justice, the appropriate
place for that is the government, the human embodiments of
the will of the people. This is not something that
I think should be voluntary. It's not something that I
think we're hoping people will do because we're hoping, you know,
that they'll acknowledge this individually. This is something that has
(12:09):
to be organized through the government. There's no doubt about
that in my mind. So when I think about how
this is going to be actually enacted, both studied, decisions made,
and then carried out, I believe that has to be
in effect the will of the people. People who have
gotten that impromatur of saying you have a right to
do this, you represent the will of your constituents, and
(12:33):
therefore that's how it's gonna happen. First of all, I
don't think it will happen otherwise. The second, I don't
think it's appropriate for it to happen otherwise. I think
that is what a democracy looks like. That is what
this democracy is supposed to look like. And if this
is going to happen, that's the only way I believe
that it has the authority and the clear intent that
(12:54):
it speaks for everybody. You know, when there's a chance
to stand up for what's right, that a chance. The
whole point is to be trying to push for justice,
to try and push for the values you believe in.
That's a great opportunity in life, I think, And that's
how I see this, just trying to think in the
context of this conversation anything we didn't touch on that
(13:15):
you think that white Americans should hear, or know or
ask themselves in order to understand, you know, this issue.
You know what I would really ask somebody on a
personal level, another white American. I would say, look, we
need to retell the story of America. Have you ever
put yourself in the context of being somebody from another race?
(13:38):
And if you think about slavery in America and you
think about the long time before when white people were
debating it in Congress and in the White House and
in elections, it would be a completely different conversation. If
the people who are having that conversation were themselves enslaved,
if their children were enslaved, if their families, We're going
(14:02):
to have something horrible happen that day. That's what I
would ask quite Americans to do. If that's you, not
somebody else you see is different from you, but you,
in the most profound senses an American. Now, can we
start talking about what we're going to do going forward? Now?
Can we start talking about this history. That's the emotional
(14:26):
courage we need as white people to be part of
the solution here instead of clinging to something that you
know clearly has been based in injustice and wronged them.
I gotta ask the os question for all my friends
and people who would expect me to ask, when you
get there? When you pull and when you when I say,
(14:47):
they're like, you've made enough money to live your life
and finally get there. People think all sorts of magic
happens to you that you pull back behind the curtain
and subtenly things happen. Is that what it feels like?
Do you feel more empower? Here's what I would say, Erica.
So when I was twenty six years old, I go
to see my grandmother who's kind of a tough old
(15:08):
lady to be honest. And when it was over, I
said to her, you know, do you have any advice
for me? And I'm thinking she's gonna say, it's all
about family, it's all about love, and she goes, money
is more important than you think, Tom, And I'm thinking,
oh my gosh, really that's what you've got for me,
money's And she said, there's not a lot of difference
between being comfortably off and being rich, but there's a
(15:31):
gigantic difference, Tom, between being poor and being comfortably off.
And she said, I've been all three. I know what
it is to be poor. I know what it is
to have to figure out how to cobble together bus
fair to get across town. So and answer your question, Erk,
I think there is a huge difference between being comfortably
off and feeling safe about health care and rent and
(15:53):
food and education, you know, the basics for a family,
and having to worry about every single one of those
on a day, constant grind about how are you going
to deal with us? But I don't think there's a
lot of difference between being comfortably off and being rich.
I really don't you know, Erica We talk a lot
about white allies on what they can do, and I
think one of the most interesting things that Tom touches
(16:15):
on is actually thinking about what it would mean if
we could see the world through black eyes, or we
could actually experience that that the policies that we have
would fundamentally be changed if the paradigm was different, and
if white people could truly see what was like to
live in the world as Black Americans. The policies that
(16:36):
we have just they simply wouldn't exist. No, they wouldn't.
They wouldn't, but it wouldn't be interesting is if they
could see what it's like to live in the world
in their white existence. I guess because I keep thinking
it can't be that pleasurable if the community is fixated
on oppression of people with darker skin and larger noses
(16:57):
and bigger lips and wooly hair. Um, imagine if somebody
could step out of themselves and say, are we really
just focusing on that? Am I going to spend my
day in my time pushing against that? That's that's nuts.
But you know, I like Tom Styre a lot, and
I really appreciate him because I think he's proved positive
that biology is not always destiny. I know Freud wrote
that about women, but he's going against Once you get
(17:19):
to have a certain amount of money, you're supposed to
be a certain way, you know, gain more money and
build buildings and put my name on it. But no,
he's not doing that. And part of the reason why
people come here is because they believe in the American dream.
You're supposed to be able to achieve your dreams, and
they're supposed to be a level playing field. But we
all know the dream machine is rigged, and it certainly
(17:41):
has a bias for vanilla covered and testosterone, so you
know it's tough, but he's making it more chocolatey. Bless him.
Speaking of rigged system, my mother told me a story
about when I was a child in fourth grade, how
she had to go to my school to confront a
teacher who had changed my grades to a lower grade
(18:04):
because he wanted to advance a white child instead of me,
and she confronted him, I have to start the year
before you has had a teacher I think of his
third grade. She and I had gone to the same church.
She was white and we had going to the same church,
and she was just in awe of you all the time.
She was telling me, Erica did this in school or whatever.
(18:27):
And I would go to your teacher's meeting. I had
seen all of your reports, your grades and all, and
you were in her gifted group. And the next year
she moved away. You moved to the next grade. And
this teacher was actually Hispanic, but at that time, most
(18:52):
of the time when people wrote what race you are,
if they were Hispanic, they usually wrote his wife. His
name is Mr Vega. Yes, But anyway, you were in Mr.
Baker's room. And when it came time for a teacher
parent conference, I went and here were all of the
(19:14):
grades that I had seen with your former teacher, which
had had been written in ink. He had recorded your
grade like you had made, say nine seven on a
particular test, the math part of whatever party in the
area of the focus of the test was written and
(19:36):
the grade beside it well on his recording. This is
a record that's gonna follow you through elementary school. So
each year is recorded on the same tests for those
same areas, and your last year grade now have been
marked out with just a line across the grade, and
(20:01):
then there's something pencil then that's last and he's telling
me that he is going to send you to the
group mentally agecable and I said, what, why, what are
you doing? I also knew the teacher there because I
did work back and forth in the school and was
(20:23):
very well known in that school. And uh, also never
missed a parent conference, so I had known the teacher
who taught that group. And I said, well, why would
you be sending Erica there? And he said, well, look
at her test goods and I said, those are not
Erica's tech courts. And by the way, you do know
(20:45):
that her teacher last year and I had a very
close relationship. So anyway, we established all of that, and
I asked him, why are these grades change here? I
saw this original grade. I've never missed the parent teacher meeting,
and I know that Erica was in the gifted class.
(21:06):
So how now she hasn't had a brain injury or
nothing has happened that has changed her situation. Why are
you trying to convince me that she needs to go
to the mentally ethecable group. That's not my child. And uh,
of course he and I got into some pretty heated
(21:26):
thing here, and I ended up telling him that I
would give him a month to straighten that out, and
not said, then I'm going to the board of education,
and I want to understand, I said, by way, you
do know that I have teacher training, and I know
what the games are. I know how teachers can manipulate
(21:51):
children's situations by changing grades so that they can advance
one child over another child old and a child who
was showing last year gifted. You're gonna tell me, with
no outside or external interventions or anything, that this child
(22:13):
now is going to be somebody that needs special help,
special ad And you can't explain to me why you
remember that you had me come in. I was outside
and he made him apologize to me. You and Dad, well,
you know he needed to apologize to you. And he's
telling me all the things about, oh, how he liked
(22:35):
you and you were a likable kid, and he didn't
know why. You know, you should be very happy because
everybody like you. But I said, well, maybe she doesn't
like you, and I don't like you, and it's not
about who's liking what. You are trying to hinder my
(22:55):
child and you're gonna affect her education for the rest
of her life. Oh that was a close call. Did
you hear that, Whitney. My life was nearly derailed because
my teacher, my favorite teacher, decided I was disposable. I
was the only black student in his class, we were
the only black family in the school, and if my
(23:16):
mother hadn't caught it, it would have changed everything for me.
I think about what all the women Robert Ruth Simmons
is doing in Evanston, Illinois, and they're making reparations right now,
But I know that question and a lot of that
energy needs to be put into what are they doing
around education inside of that type of subject. Well, I
(23:36):
know what is more distressing about that story for me
Erica the idea that this teacher would change your graves
to advance in other students or the fact that he
was your favorite teacher. That's really heartbreaking. When we talked
about what exactly reparations are, it is about reimagining and
rebuilding systems. And yeah, and Evans Illinois, not only are
they paying reparations to some of their black residents, they're
(24:00):
also trying to reimagine the school system. And I think,
like a lot of places around the country, they're looking
at tracking and testing and I think they're they're completely
eliminating tracking and a p classes because they see so
many of the times that it leaves black students behind
while at the same time advancing white students. So I
think when you talk about how do you make reparations,
(24:21):
you have to have an imagination that sort of probes
into every part of our society. And someone who's thought
a lot about this, actually, how do you functionally create reparations?
What are the things that go into do it? Is
economist William Darety. I think about the ways in which
reparations might impact the American community at large, which obviously
(24:42):
includes Americans who are black and white Americans who are
of other ethnic and racial backgrounds. And I think if
America is going to actually fulfill its ambition as being
a truly democratic society that is open to providing every
(25:03):
one of its citizens with the capacity to fully participate
in national life and social life and to make their
deepest contributions to the entire American community, that that's going
to require a dramatic and bowl step like a reparations
project for black American descendants of US slavery. Otherwise the
(25:25):
nation as a whole will continue to lose a well
spring of talent that remains untapped and in many cases repressed.
You know, from the standpoint of the reparations plan that
we describe and from here to equality, we're not thinking
that any individual white person owes a debt to the
black community. We are thinking that the United States government
(25:49):
is the culpable party. It's the culpable party because it
is the United States government that established the laws and
the authority framework that permitted all of these atrocities to
take place, and in many instances, sanctioned the atrocities. And
it's the federal government that permitted slavery to be something
(26:11):
that was treated as a legal practice in the United States.
It's the federal government that's responsible for the legal framework
that produced nearly a century of legal segregation in the
United States. So what I would hope would be the
responsibility that would be borne by white Americans is to
(26:34):
take a political position that is in favor of a
reparations plan. But the financing and the execution of the
reparations plan has to be something that's conducted by the
federal government because it's the federal government that bears the responsibility. Ultimately,
how could the government pay this I'm an advocate of
(26:56):
a number of social programs that are somewhat dramatic, including
proposal like baby bonds, which is to provide an endowment
for each newborn infant, every newborn infant in the United
States that is calibrated on the basis of their family's wealth.
But programs that are universal or should reach all Americans
(27:21):
will not accomplish the goal of eliminating the racial wealth differential.
And that's the task of a reparations project that should
be done by making direct payments to all of the
eligible recipients, in the same way in which reparations plans
in the past have made direct payments to eligible recipients.
(27:44):
A couple of major examples that come to mind are
the German governments payments that were made to the victims
of the Holocaust. Another example closer to home is the
Civil Liberties Act that provided payments to the Japanese Americans
(28:04):
who were unjustly incarcerated during the course of World War Two.
They were subjected to a form of mass incarceration. There
are other instances where reparations have been given and not
necessarily when the donor is responsible for the harm. So
in the US context, the United States government made payments
(28:27):
to the families that lost loved ones during the course
of the nine one one terrorist attacks, and those were
again direct payments, So I think there should be nothing
different about the way in which it's done for Black Americans.
If the issue is how is it financed, then I
would argue that it will be financed, or it should
(28:49):
be financed in much the same way that overnight the
federal government came up with huge sums of money to
try to address the coronavirus crisis, But there has been
no increase in taxes, so the federal government can fund
virtually anything it wants. I think we've been consistent in
saying that the only significant barrier to additional federal spending
(29:13):
is the possibility of triggering inflation. So you would have
to design any new expenditure program in such a way
that you're conscious of that, and that you structure it
so that it minimizes the possibility of triggering high rates
of inflation of prices in the US econy. You know, Erica,
(29:33):
I find Derity really fascinating because of his specificity. He
has such clear ideas. Whether you agree with him or not,
he has really clear ideas about who should get preparations
and how they should be structured, what they should be.
And you know, a lot of times this makes think
I've said this to you before, but it makes me relieved.
I'm white, Like I have the simple job that's advocating
(29:54):
for preparations. The actually how you do it? What are
the mechanics for it? You know, I'm lucky that I
believe that white people shouldn't have a say in that.
So that's on you. You're gonna have to figure that out. Well,
you guys got a big job, because you know, we
need more white people to help make this happen. But
you know, Whitney, as I was talking to my mother,
(30:16):
I realized that I'm not experiencing her fresh out of
the oven. You know, she's a little hardened. She's gone
through a lot, and her answers reflect that once again.
I you know, not only can I do I often
say like, I can't possibly pretend that I could imagine
what it's like to live in the United States as
a black American. I can't possibly, I really can't possibly
(30:40):
imagine what it was like to live as a black
American eighty years ago. Oh No, And she is eighty
years old, and so she's absorbed a lot of disappointments
and challenges in her life, more than most people I know.
Miss Sammy is battle tested, you know, her remedy, her
default setting is Lord, give me the straight I mean,
(31:01):
we talked about that, but I see why they needed
the strength. And it takes a while to get through
that buffalo stance. You know. She's real sweetie, but she's
very tough, and when it comes to herself, she doesn't
know the difference between ouch and pain. She just keeps moving.
She experiences disadvantages and challenges so often it becomes de rigour,
(31:24):
you know, playing for the worst full stop. And it's
like she knows if you walk with a pebble in
your shoe long enough, it'll burrow into your heel, settle in,
and become part of your soul. She has no memory
of when that pain fused with her normal senses. She
just accepts the pain in her heel as payment due
for walking. And that's black people. So many black people
(31:48):
every day because of their race, that's what they go through.
And it's deceptive because it's disguised as plain o ordinary
American life and repackaged as the American dream, like you're here,
you're part of the American dream, and it's supposed to
feel that way, but it's painful. One example Erica is
the people in Flint, Michigan. You know, their American dream
(32:11):
turned to an American nightmare when the politicians in Flint,
during a budget crisis, decided to get the water supply
that was coming from Michigan. They shifted over to the
Flint River and that literally poisoned the majority black community
in Flint. Mayor Karen Weaver was leadership during that period
and it became her job to make sure that both
the state of Michigan and the federal government made things right.
(32:34):
I remember saying, if there's not a check for Flint,
I won't be there because I'm trying to get what
you know, and everybody else knows we deserve. And it
was so amazing to me because this was something that
wasn't just documented in Flint or the state of Michigan.
This was documented across the country and the world what
had gone on. And so I've got to try and
(32:57):
you know, continue to speak up and speak out for Flint.
Right now, you have to say you were either going
to accept the settlement as is, you're satisfied with it
the way it is, or you could say I want
to be part of the settlement, but I'm objecting, or
I want no parts of anything. So I opted in.
I said, I want to be part of this settlement,
(33:18):
but I want to object. And that's one of the
objections is the attorneys getting more than the victims. The
most that a victim will get as if they lost
a loved one to legionneers, if they were forty nine
and younger, they'll get one point five million. Fifty and older,
the amount you get goes down to three hundred thousand dollars.
So they've put a value on people's lives. And they
(33:41):
put a cap on property damage of a thousand dollars,
which is absurd. Which is absurd. I mean people's water
heaters were damaged, uh, dishwashers, refrigerators, a thousand dollar cap.
What can you do with that? Not much? It is
absolutely absurd. That's another objection. One of the other objections
(34:01):
is the documentation. There is so much documentation you have
to have. You know, the more documentation you have, I guess,
the more money you get. However, a lot of the
testing that needed to be done wasn't even available, not
only in Flint, but the state of Michigan. They've just
started getting the access to the testing available to us
(34:23):
within the last month. So people have to opt in
and object. So there is a fairness hearing that is
in July, and we go before the judge who will
hear the objections. The judge has says she will listen
to you know, however long it takes to hear the
objections of the people. So we had to have everything
in by last Monday, and now we wait. You know,
(34:46):
one of the things we've always said is what happened,
and Flint happened as a result of race and class.
And I've always told people Flint wasn't about water, and
it wasn't about infrastructure. Those were the symptoms of this
underlying racism, the systemic racism, and this and this payment
is reflective of that. You know, we said, this is
(35:06):
another slap in the face to the residents and and
this payment is reflective when you know, when you look
at the payments I just brought up, you know, and
you and you say the the amount for the amount,
the number of people, and then you say, now, how
Flint get this, and why did they keep saying this
is such a great deal when we know it's not.
But I'll tell you if we were a different persuasion,
(35:27):
a different complexion, or a different socioeconomic status, this would
not have happened. I think some people have gotten worn down.
You know, they're just tired. I've heard some people say
anything is better than nothing, and that's a sad place
to be. What do you think is needed to heal?
And by the way, you are a psychologist, so I'm
very interested on the psychological damage and the repair of that,
(35:49):
and what do you think needs to happen. The money
needs to come, and it needs to be more money.
We want more than charges. We want convictions. We want
healthcare for the residents here and we wanted to follow
them no matter where they go. We want access to
college and trade school for the people. We need to
look at a small business and entrepreneurship and putting some
(36:13):
equity there. So we need different kinds of programs and
services and resources put in place. If you want to
try and make Flint whole, but starting with a deserving
a fair, just amount of money, plus all of those
other things that we should have access an opportunity for McAra.
(36:33):
What have you learned about human nature from this experience?
Sometimes you just really expect people to do the right
thing and you can't. One of the things I always
talk about is never underestimating the power of your voice
and don't let anybody take it. You know. I was
listening to you and Whitney. I think one of the
questions you all have imposed was you're talking about reparations,
(36:57):
do you think it will happen? You weren't sure when
it would happen, if it would happen, or when it
would happen. But one of the things is you don't
stop talking about it. You don't stop demanding what is right.
You don't stop speaking up for what is right and
putting that information out there, because as soon as you
do that, you have been defeated. And there are so
many ways to be worn down as a human and
(37:19):
as a black person. And I've just really learned how
strong we are here. I think people have thought we'd
go away, People thought we wouldn't still be speaking up
and still fighting. But one thing I've always said is
I'd rather show up for the fight and lose than
to not show up. And that's what we're doing, because
I think we do recognize that this isn't just about us.
(37:39):
I mean were impact that we know what we deserve.
We're fighting for other black and brown communities and we
have said use us for that, because we know this
should never happen any place else. And it it's just
showed me what strength and resilience and courage and determination
will do. But it also lets you see how easily
(38:00):
worn down we can get as well. And that's what
people want to see. That's what people want to have hapen.
We want you to be quiet, we want you to
be tired, we want you to go away. I can't
do it, but wherever you are, you can make a
difference and your voice can be heard. And that's what
we have to show people. She's phenomenal. I just love her.
(38:22):
Karen Weaver. She was mayor then and from where she
is now, she's still working hard to repair her city.
But again we're talking about the loss of trust and
the betrayal of a system that said you are disposable
and not even worthy of clean water. You know, I
set in the room Whitney with women from Flint who
lost their family members to disease from that crisis. What
(38:44):
do you say to them? Making repairs and reparation and
restitution won't heal their heart, won't bring their loved one back,
won't heal black people's hearts. There's not enough money in
the world to do that. It's like the Great Al
Green saying, courtesy of burying Robin Gibb, how can you
(39:04):
mend a broken heart? How can you stop the rain
from falling down? What makes the world go around? They
knew they gave it to a brother to sing that
song because they weren't just talking about love lost. They
were talking about something deeper than that. Don't you wonder sometimes, Erica,
that the idea of outcome is focused on too much
(39:24):
as opposed to just the act of like the act
of trying to make reparations. I think you're right. I
don't know what actually would heal Black Americans, and I
don't know what would actually heal white Americans either. I
think it's a really complicated place that we're in. But
I think in some ways it's a leap of faith,
It's a leaf of imagination that you have to take
(39:45):
the step that you know is right, regardless of the consequences.
That's true but I think I know a little bit
about what would heal black and white and brown and
all colors in between. It's and justice for all, liberty
and justice for all. And we started our adventure. I
told you that reparations would be too late for my
(40:07):
mother to benefit from, and um, that's unfortunate because she
deserves it. But talking with her and just listening to
her stories, when they finally start talking about how to
do this, the making and the repair towards this deliberate injury,
the most care and attention should be to create a
salve of bomb to soothe the broken hearts of a
(40:30):
lost people who feel stateless and are exhausted and tired
of talking about all this stuff. And this salve it's
gonna need to penetrate and detoxify the hardened shelve of
many white people and how they've been raised in this
and moral wicked stew for so long. Now that said,
(40:50):
I asked my mom the question that we've been asking
everybody that we've been talking to throughout this journey. Do
you think there should be reparations and do you think
will get them in our lifetime? I learned to the
second part person, No, I don't think you'll ever get them.
I think you may get portions are partial. I think
(41:12):
America cannot face its own darkness, in its own soul
to the point that it can say yes. They keep
telling themselves, especially since the Barack Obama the twenty Center,
I say African American both ways, since he made it,
(41:38):
that's what they put up in our face. But their
souls are so dark and so dead and so weak
that they can't say yes. This squarely is on us.
We owe loads of minorities. Look what they can do
to the Indians. For years they give them a little
bit of land, and oh, y'all, now we've done them right,
(42:01):
no matter that you've taken back a large part of it,
or you broken treaties after treaties that you've almost decimated
a large percentage of their tribes. No, I don't think
America is ever going to be morally that strong, morally
(42:22):
that just. But I think we will get like little
like the puzzles, a little piece here, a little piece there,
And every time they put a little piece, they will
try to use that for justification as to being enough.
How much more do they want? We want the whole plate?
Why shouldn't we have the whole plate? You want the
(42:43):
whole plate I want, said to a white minister at
Lutheran Church that hired us to do social ministry. How
come you want so much for you and so little
for me? Why is that? What is it about your soul?
Your being? Why is it that you can't see me
(43:06):
as a full human being? If you've got a bold fool,
why wouldn't not want a bold fool? What's different about me?
I don't live in a different life. I don't have
less build or have a hand out that says I
only have half a need. I have a full need.
And the more, if you are just and thinking righteously,
(43:33):
you would know, the more self sufficient I am, the
more productive I can be, the more we both benefit.
Why can't you get that? That's a doctor in a wholenets,
of true health, of true humanity. Why can't you see it?
(43:54):
Next time? On reparations, the big payback? If you are
going to who have reparations for everybody? Then one you're
not talking about the wealthcare and the disparities and getting
rid of it. And I have no problem with everybody
getting something. What I do have a problem with is
(44:15):
not directing targeted funds towards black people who are slave descendants,
who we know that right here in the United States
were the ones to suffer and to be used to
prop up capitalism all these years. So anybody who was
a slave here in the United States and is a
(44:35):
descendant of a slave here in the United States ought
to get reparations. Other people can argue for their own.
This podcast is produced by Eric Alexander, Ben Arnon and
Whitney Down. The executive producers are Charlemagne the God and
Dolly S. Bishop. The Supervising producer is Nicole Childers and
(44:58):
the lead producer is Devin Madock Obbins. The producer writer
is Serres Castle, and the Associate producer is Kevin Phamm.
With additional research support provided by Nile Blast. Original music
by d J D T p R Reparations. The Big
(45:18):
Payback is a production of color Farm Media, I Heart
Radio and The Black Effect Podcast Network in association with
Best Case Studios. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
I'm Eric Alexander, and I'm whitneyed out. Welcome to Reparations,
The Big Payback, a production of Color Farm Media, I
Heart Radio and The Black Effect podcast Network. I like
that poem indictious and it talks about being bloody, but
I'm bowed and that from the minute I read that
(00:26):
poem in elementary school, I made that my creed. I
may be bloody, but every time you knocked me down,
I'm gonna be like that punch clown. I gotta get up.
I felt that, and maybe I felt that because I
was this orphan and sometimes I knew I had to
(00:48):
keep my head down. But all of those lessons I
tried to teach my kids, not so much about sitting
down talking to y'all, but letting you see me live
through that. And I think that I got a pretty
strong group of kids that expected that dude had certain
expectations of them. Is that your mom? Now I know
(01:14):
where you get such self confidence? Yeah? Yeah, that's Sammy
Jean Amy Holman Alexander, and I am her daughter, and
she is my north star. She has three last names
because she's had a lot of lives, not because she's
Liz Taylor Kim Kardashian. She's like a cat, and I
think she's on her seventh right now. That's a lot
of lives and a lot of names. Did she also
(01:36):
give you the Great at the end of yours? No,
but she was fought a teacher that wanted me to
take it off my papers. I used to sign all
my papers and class with Eric Alexander the Great. Now
she likes all that, But Whitney, when we started this
rock in Reparations Adventure, we said that we would talk
more about our origin story. So I decided to talk
to my mother. And she's like a walkman. You can
(01:58):
push play and she's off to the races. She's a
real grio and she remembers everything but her origin story.
It's pretty awesome. She's one of eleven. I think I've
told you a little bit of about her. She was
her mother's last child. She was born in Karneck, Texas.
That's where Lady Burt Johnson is from. She was raised
in Carl's Bad, New Mexico. She was orphaned twice, first
(02:21):
by her mother and father when she was young, and
then when she was adopted. Her adopted mother passed away
when she was a teenager, and she basically was sent
out of the house and had to hit the road
with my father. They we both were traveling evangelists and
he was itinerant. She married him, my preacher father, who
was also an orphan. They had six kids. I am
(02:41):
one of them. You're welcome, America. And though she was
widowed a forty nine, she earned a master's degree in
early childhood education and she started to write children's books. Yeah. Oh,
and here are hobbies. She likes Macromay, tea cakes and
Dr Pimple Papa. Yeah. But you know, I was talking
to my mom about our reparations journey and the Privileged game,
(03:01):
the game that we did when we were in front
of Grant's tomb and we would ask each other's questions,
and you know, you go forward and then I would
end up stain back, and you know, you're halfway up
the block because you're white and male and privileged and
all the other good stuff you get from being in
the Book of Doo. But anyway, I asked her, what
were her thoughts about white privilege and or just privilege
(03:23):
in general. Well, I'm certain that there is white privilege
anytime one group can make laws and enact them to
benefit themselves, whether they're white or whatever their color. If
they can benefit them to themselves and use them to
deny other people their equality, then of course that's privilege.
(03:49):
And in America that happens to be primarily wide privilege,
white privilege. That's really America's origin story, right. And what
it's so interesting listening to your mom talk about this
is that the idea of white privilege means something very
different in two thousand twenty one than it did when
she was a child. And back then, I think white
(04:09):
privilege was just white people doing their thing. Yeah, they
were doing a thing and they still are doing their thing. Well. Anyway,
my mother starts reminisce and she's talking about her life,
how she grew up. Even told me stories about my
life as a child. It was pretty cool. Yeah, our
origin stories, the ones that our family tells us about ourselves,
about our family, our history. They're so important because they
(04:31):
kind of help us think about how we're going to
chart our way through the world, that we're sort of
carrying the story with us as we go. Yeah, it's
nature versus nurture. Think of America as this big oak
tree with these deep roots and we fit it, and
we're pretty fertilizer and watering it. But you know, we
are judged by the fruit it bears, you know. And
(04:53):
so I think, now we're getting a load of types
of juicy stuff that's fallen off of it. But you're
what I'm thinking, I've had a lot of fun, Whitney,
It's now time to get down to the nitty gritty
and talk about how to make reparations. That's epic stuff.
We're dealing with, high stakes, So we need to anchor
ourselves to an African American voice talking about just living
(05:14):
their experience. So I choose my mom that see the
world through Sammy's eyes. She can stand in for the community.
Like after Schindler's List, one of my favorite movies, Spielberg
created a committee to take down the stories of the
survivors of the Holocaust. So she'll tell her story whatever
she wants and we get to know her and then
build out from there. And my mom's a rock, she
(05:35):
can take it. Meanwhile, we'll check in with Dr. William
Daherty and former presidential candidate and billionaire Tom Steyer and
Mayor Karen Weaver of Flint, Michigan. Yeah, that's good. We'll
talk with them and find out how to make reparations.
What do you say, Whitney, I think it's a good plan.
We You know, we've spoken to economist William Daherty before
and he has a lot of interesting things to say
(05:56):
about reparations. But all three of those people have been
really at the war front of the thought process around this.
But the thing I like best about this plan, Erica,
is I think everybody would benefit from just spending a
little time seeing the world through your mom Sammy's eyes.
When you're a little kid and you're walking down the street,
are on a bus, and somebody comes up to you
(06:19):
but no reason at all, look you in the face
of white person and says, you know, that little girl
would be cute if he wasn't so bad. I mean,
why why would you address her child in that way?
It's nothing, It added nothing to me, It wasn't making
(06:40):
me feel better. Why would you go out of your
way to insult someone in such that way? Did that
happen to your mom? Yes, plenty of times. Yeah, it's interesting.
What can happen to you when you're just living I
can't even comprehend a story like that. Erica. I think
about what's in people's hearts and how they live in
(07:03):
the world, and I'm trying to imagine understand what's happening
inside someone that they would feel they could say that
to a young child. You know. I think about a lot, Erica,
about this idea of what makes people empathetic and what
makes people hard. And you know, I did a lot
of interviews for the Whiteness Project, and I really couldn't
(07:25):
find a correlation. The only correlation I could find that
it wasn't about money, it wasn't about privation, It wasn't
not anything that I thought, Oh, someone was raised this,
they would have this experience. It was really about true
self reflection and the people could actually reflect on their
experience in the world were people that could actually be empathetic. So,
(07:46):
you know, someone who I think about a lot in
this way, somebody we've talked to, Tom Steyer, who made
billions of dollars, has pledged to give it all away
and ultimately sold out of his hedge fund, became a philanthropist,
and even ran for president recently. I wonder if he
has enough money to remake the minds of that type
of human that's a lot of money Erica, but we're
(08:08):
going to have to be you know, making reparations means
we have to remake our minds. Cat Taylor and I
started a bank fifteen years ago harshly to redress the
systemic racism in the financial system and the banking system
in the United States that specifically addressed economic justice, environmental sustainability,
(08:29):
and supported businesses owned by women and people of color
because there was systemic attempt to shut those people out
of ownership of wealth in this country. And that's what
redlining was. Don't lend to black people. It's against the
rules of our bank to lend to blank people. So
we're gonna draw a red line around African American neighborhoods
and you can't lend in there, which shut black people
(08:50):
out of home ownership, which is the basic wealth creation
historically for American citizens. If you talk to my African
American friends who are business people, have a much harder
time getting business loans, which means you're shut out of
the private sector's wealth creation of being an entrepreneur and
building a businesship in terms of ownership. And so we
(09:11):
started a bank from scratch fifteen years ago. It's now
over a billion dollars in assets, and it's basically we
measure every loan not just on whether it's profitable, because
we need to be profitable so we can continue in business,
but also what is the impact on the community in
terms of job creations, in terms of who owns the bank,
(09:33):
in terms of sequestrian carbon And if you can't do that,
then that's not alone for us. And we want to
prove that you can do that and be profitable. That
actions have to be taken not just to be fair
within the bank, but to redress the long time deep
racism of the banking system and actually be you know,
not trying to be fair, but to be specifically pointing
(09:55):
out the people who have been discriminated against and trying
to give them the opportunit and these that have been
systemically taken away from them. So say, there's more of
these types of institutions that pop up, and there's a
different way to sort of assess people's credit worthiness and
they're not judged by that, Like come in and say
I'm black, Can I get Alan? And they said, yes,
you qualify. You know, you know, that's what people are
(10:18):
kind of wanting because they're saying, Look, I spent my
life being beat up by all these things that are
coming at me. I have no way to sort of
convince people that I'm a good bet. Is my black
skin enough to say, y'all owe me a shot? What's
the shot looked like? Some people say, look, just write
me a check. First, write me a check. Do you
think that's part of it? Obviously in education, mental health,
(10:40):
those types of things, you say, housing stability, can people
also just get a check? This is the point of
the study, Erica, because I recognize every single one of
the areas that you're looking at, and I know that
they're all subject to possible solution, so that you know
you are talking about education. I mean, one of the
(11:02):
things I pushed for when I was running for president
was a huge increase in the money devoted to historically
black colleges and universities because I felt as if here
is a very specific and successful lifeline to people who've
been discriminated against, that's being relatively starved for public money,
and yet has succeeded in producing, you know, way disproportionate
(11:26):
numbers of successful professional African Americans across the country. And
I said, it's a system that works. It's a system
that exists, why don't we make it a lot better
funded and a lot bigger to give people an equal
opportunity to see how far they can go. And in general,
when you talk about a systemic change in society, and
(11:47):
particularly one that's centered around values and justice, the appropriate
place for that is the government, the human embodiments of
the will of the people. This is not something that
I think should be voluntary. It's not something that I
think we're hoping people will do because we're hoping, you know,
that they'll acknowledge this individually. This is something that has
(12:09):
to be organized through the government. There's no doubt about
that in my mind. So when I think about how
this is going to be actually enacted, both studied, decisions made,
and then carried out, I believe that has to be
in effect the will of the people. People who have
gotten that impromatur of saying you have a right to
do this, you represent the will of your constituents, and
(12:33):
therefore that's how it's gonna happen. First of all, I
don't think it will happen otherwise. The second, I don't
think it's appropriate for it to happen otherwise. I think
that is what a democracy looks like. That is what
this democracy is supposed to look like. And if this
is going to happen, that's the only way I believe
that it has the authority and the clear intent that
(12:54):
it speaks for everybody. You know, when there's a chance
to stand up for what's right, that a chance. The
whole point is to be trying to push for justice,
to try and push for the values you believe in.
That's a great opportunity in life, I think, And that's
how I see this, just trying to think in the
context of this conversation anything we didn't touch on that
(13:15):
you think that white Americans should hear, or know or
ask themselves in order to understand, you know, this issue.
You know what I would really ask somebody on a
personal level, another white American. I would say, look, we
need to retell the story of America. Have you ever
put yourself in the context of being somebody from another race?
(13:38):
And if you think about slavery in America and you
think about the long time before when white people were
debating it in Congress and in the White House and
in elections, it would be a completely different conversation. If
the people who are having that conversation were themselves enslaved,
if their children were enslaved, if their families, We're going
(14:02):
to have something horrible happen that day. That's what I
would ask quite Americans to do. If that's you, not
somebody else you see is different from you, but you,
in the most profound senses an American. Now, can we
start talking about what we're going to do going forward? Now?
Can we start talking about this history. That's the emotional
(14:26):
courage we need as white people to be part of
the solution here instead of clinging to something that you
know clearly has been based in injustice and wronged them.
I gotta ask the os question for all my friends
and people who would expect me to ask, when you
get there? When you pull and when you when I say,
(14:47):
they're like, you've made enough money to live your life
and finally get there. People think all sorts of magic
happens to you that you pull back behind the curtain
and subtenly things happen. Is that what it feels like?
Do you feel more empower? Here's what I would say, Erica.
So when I was twenty six years old, I go
to see my grandmother who's kind of a tough old
(15:08):
lady to be honest. And when it was over, I
said to her, you know, do you have any advice
for me? And I'm thinking she's gonna say, it's all
about family, it's all about love, and she goes, money
is more important than you think, Tom, And I'm thinking,
oh my gosh, really that's what you've got for me,
money's And she said, there's not a lot of difference
between being comfortably off and being rich, but there's a
(15:31):
gigantic difference, Tom, between being poor and being comfortably off.
And she said, I've been all three. I know what
it is to be poor. I know what it is
to have to figure out how to cobble together bus
fair to get across town. So and answer your question, Erk,
I think there is a huge difference between being comfortably
off and feeling safe about health care and rent and
(15:53):
food and education, you know, the basics for a family,
and having to worry about every single one of those
on a day, constant grind about how are you going
to deal with us? But I don't think there's a
lot of difference between being comfortably off and being rich.
I really don't you know, Erica We talk a lot
about white allies on what they can do, and I
think one of the most interesting things that Tom touches
(16:15):
on is actually thinking about what it would mean if
we could see the world through black eyes, or we
could actually experience that that the policies that we have
would fundamentally be changed if the paradigm was different, and
if white people could truly see what was like to
live in the world as Black Americans. The policies that
(16:36):
we have just they simply wouldn't exist. No, they wouldn't.
They wouldn't, but it wouldn't be interesting is if they
could see what it's like to live in the world
in their white existence. I guess because I keep thinking
it can't be that pleasurable if the community is fixated
on oppression of people with darker skin and larger noses
(16:57):
and bigger lips and wooly hair. Um, imagine if somebody
could step out of themselves and say, are we really
just focusing on that? Am I going to spend my
day in my time pushing against that? That's that's nuts.
But you know, I like Tom Styre a lot, and
I really appreciate him because I think he's proved positive
that biology is not always destiny. I know Freud wrote
that about women, but he's going against Once you get
(17:19):
to have a certain amount of money, you're supposed to
be a certain way, you know, gain more money and
build buildings and put my name on it. But no,
he's not doing that. And part of the reason why
people come here is because they believe in the American dream.
You're supposed to be able to achieve your dreams, and
they're supposed to be a level playing field. But we
all know the dream machine is rigged, and it certainly
(17:41):
has a bias for vanilla covered and testosterone, so you
know it's tough, but he's making it more chocolatey. Bless him.
Speaking of rigged system, my mother told me a story
about when I was a child in fourth grade, how
she had to go to my school to confront a
teacher who had changed my grades to a lower grade
(18:04):
because he wanted to advance a white child instead of me,
and she confronted him, I have to start the year
before you has had a teacher I think of his
third grade. She and I had gone to the same church.
She was white and we had going to the same church,
and she was just in awe of you all the time.
She was telling me, Erica did this in school or whatever.
(18:27):
And I would go to your teacher's meeting. I had
seen all of your reports, your grades and all, and
you were in her gifted group. And the next year
she moved away. You moved to the next grade. And
this teacher was actually Hispanic, but at that time, most
(18:52):
of the time when people wrote what race you are,
if they were Hispanic, they usually wrote his wife. His
name is Mr Vega. Yes, But anyway, you were in Mr.
Baker's room. And when it came time for a teacher
parent conference, I went and here were all of the
(19:14):
grades that I had seen with your former teacher, which
had had been written in ink. He had recorded your
grade like you had made, say nine seven on a
particular test, the math part of whatever party in the
area of the focus of the test was written and
(19:36):
the grade beside it well on his recording. This is
a record that's gonna follow you through elementary school. So
each year is recorded on the same tests for those
same areas, and your last year grade now have been
marked out with just a line across the grade, and
(20:01):
then there's something pencil then that's last and he's telling
me that he is going to send you to the
group mentally agecable and I said, what, why, what are
you doing? I also knew the teacher there because I
did work back and forth in the school and was
(20:23):
very well known in that school. And uh, also never
missed a parent conference, so I had known the teacher
who taught that group. And I said, well, why would
you be sending Erica there? And he said, well, look
at her test goods and I said, those are not
Erica's tech courts. And by the way, you do know
(20:45):
that her teacher last year and I had a very
close relationship. So anyway, we established all of that, and
I asked him, why are these grades change here? I
saw this original grade. I've never missed the parent teacher meeting,
and I know that Erica was in the gifted class.
(21:06):
So how now she hasn't had a brain injury or
nothing has happened that has changed her situation. Why are
you trying to convince me that she needs to go
to the mentally ethecable group. That's not my child. And uh,
of course he and I got into some pretty heated
(21:26):
thing here, and I ended up telling him that I
would give him a month to straighten that out, and
not said, then I'm going to the board of education,
and I want to understand, I said, by way, you
do know that I have teacher training, and I know
what the games are. I know how teachers can manipulate
(21:51):
children's situations by changing grades so that they can advance
one child over another child old and a child who
was showing last year gifted. You're gonna tell me, with
no outside or external interventions or anything, that this child
(22:13):
now is going to be somebody that needs special help,
special ad And you can't explain to me why you
remember that you had me come in. I was outside
and he made him apologize to me. You and Dad, well,
you know he needed to apologize to you. And he's
telling me all the things about, oh, how he liked
(22:35):
you and you were a likable kid, and he didn't
know why. You know, you should be very happy because
everybody like you. But I said, well, maybe she doesn't
like you, and I don't like you, and it's not
about who's liking what. You are trying to hinder my
(22:55):
child and you're gonna affect her education for the rest
of her life. Oh that was a close call. Did
you hear that, Whitney. My life was nearly derailed because
my teacher, my favorite teacher, decided I was disposable. I
was the only black student in his class, we were
the only black family in the school, and if my
(23:16):
mother hadn't caught it, it would have changed everything for me.
I think about what all the women Robert Ruth Simmons
is doing in Evanston, Illinois, and they're making reparations right now,
But I know that question and a lot of that
energy needs to be put into what are they doing
around education inside of that type of subject. Well, I
(23:36):
know what is more distressing about that story for me
Erica the idea that this teacher would change your graves
to advance in other students or the fact that he
was your favorite teacher. That's really heartbreaking. When we talked
about what exactly reparations are, it is about reimagining and
rebuilding systems. And yeah, and Evans Illinois, not only are
they paying reparations to some of their black residents, they're
(24:00):
also trying to reimagine the school system. And I think,
like a lot of places around the country, they're looking
at tracking and testing and I think they're they're completely
eliminating tracking and a p classes because they see so
many of the times that it leaves black students behind
while at the same time advancing white students. So I
think when you talk about how do you make reparations,
(24:21):
you have to have an imagination that sort of probes
into every part of our society. And someone who's thought
a lot about this, actually, how do you functionally create reparations?
What are the things that go into do it? Is
economist William Darety. I think about the ways in which
reparations might impact the American community at large, which obviously
(24:42):
includes Americans who are black and white Americans who are
of other ethnic and racial backgrounds. And I think if
America is going to actually fulfill its ambition as being
a truly democratic society that is open to providing every
(25:03):
one of its citizens with the capacity to fully participate
in national life and social life and to make their
deepest contributions to the entire American community, that that's going
to require a dramatic and bowl step like a reparations
project for black American descendants of US slavery. Otherwise the
(25:25):
nation as a whole will continue to lose a well
spring of talent that remains untapped and in many cases repressed.
You know, from the standpoint of the reparations plan that
we describe and from here to equality, we're not thinking
that any individual white person owes a debt to the
black community. We are thinking that the United States government
(25:49):
is the culpable party. It's the culpable party because it
is the United States government that established the laws and
the authority framework that permitted all of these atrocities to
take place, and in many instances, sanctioned the atrocities. And
it's the federal government that permitted slavery to be something
(26:11):
that was treated as a legal practice in the United States.
It's the federal government that's responsible for the legal framework
that produced nearly a century of legal segregation in the
United States. So what I would hope would be the
responsibility that would be borne by white Americans is to
(26:34):
take a political position that is in favor of a
reparations plan. But the financing and the execution of the
reparations plan has to be something that's conducted by the
federal government because it's the federal government that bears the responsibility. Ultimately,
how could the government pay this I'm an advocate of
(26:56):
a number of social programs that are somewhat dramatic, including
proposal like baby bonds, which is to provide an endowment
for each newborn infant, every newborn infant in the United
States that is calibrated on the basis of their family's wealth.
But programs that are universal or should reach all Americans
(27:21):
will not accomplish the goal of eliminating the racial wealth differential.
And that's the task of a reparations project that should
be done by making direct payments to all of the
eligible recipients, in the same way in which reparations plans
in the past have made direct payments to eligible recipients.
(27:44):
A couple of major examples that come to mind are
the German governments payments that were made to the victims
of the Holocaust. Another example closer to home is the
Civil Liberties Act that provided payments to the Japanese Americans
(28:04):
who were unjustly incarcerated during the course of World War Two.
They were subjected to a form of mass incarceration. There
are other instances where reparations have been given and not
necessarily when the donor is responsible for the harm. So
in the US context, the United States government made payments
(28:27):
to the families that lost loved ones during the course
of the nine one one terrorist attacks, and those were
again direct payments, So I think there should be nothing
different about the way in which it's done for Black Americans.
If the issue is how is it financed, then I
would argue that it will be financed, or it should
(28:49):
be financed in much the same way that overnight the
federal government came up with huge sums of money to
try to address the coronavirus crisis, But there has been
no increase in taxes, so the federal government can fund
virtually anything it wants. I think we've been consistent in
saying that the only significant barrier to additional federal spending
(29:13):
is the possibility of triggering inflation. So you would have
to design any new expenditure program in such a way
that you're conscious of that, and that you structure it
so that it minimizes the possibility of triggering high rates
of inflation of prices in the US econy. You know, Erica,
(29:33):
I find Derity really fascinating because of his specificity. He
has such clear ideas. Whether you agree with him or not,
he has really clear ideas about who should get preparations
and how they should be structured, what they should be.
And you know, a lot of times this makes think
I've said this to you before, but it makes me relieved.
I'm white, Like I have the simple job that's advocating
(29:54):
for preparations. The actually how you do it? What are
the mechanics for it? You know, I'm lucky that I
believe that white people shouldn't have a say in that.
So that's on you. You're gonna have to figure that out. Well,
you guys got a big job, because you know, we
need more white people to help make this happen. But
you know, Whitney, as I was talking to my mother,
(30:16):
I realized that I'm not experiencing her fresh out of
the oven. You know, she's a little hardened. She's gone
through a lot, and her answers reflect that once again.
I you know, not only can I do I often
say like, I can't possibly pretend that I could imagine
what it's like to live in the United States as
a black American. I can't possibly, I really can't possibly
(30:40):
imagine what it was like to live as a black
American eighty years ago. Oh No, And she is eighty
years old, and so she's absorbed a lot of disappointments
and challenges in her life, more than most people I know.
Miss Sammy is battle tested, you know, her remedy, her
default setting is Lord, give me the straight I mean,
(31:01):
we talked about that, but I see why they needed
the strength. And it takes a while to get through
that buffalo stance. You know. She's real sweetie, but she's
very tough, and when it comes to herself, she doesn't
know the difference between ouch and pain. She just keeps moving.
She experiences disadvantages and challenges so often it becomes de rigour,
(31:24):
you know, playing for the worst full stop. And it's
like she knows if you walk with a pebble in
your shoe long enough, it'll burrow into your heel, settle in,
and become part of your soul. She has no memory
of when that pain fused with her normal senses. She
just accepts the pain in her heel as payment due
for walking. And that's black people. So many black people
(31:48):
every day because of their race, that's what they go through.
And it's deceptive because it's disguised as plain o ordinary
American life and repackaged as the American dream, like you're here,
you're part of the American dream, and it's supposed to
feel that way, but it's painful. One example Erica is
the people in Flint, Michigan. You know, their American dream
(32:11):
turned to an American nightmare when the politicians in Flint,
during a budget crisis, decided to get the water supply
that was coming from Michigan. They shifted over to the
Flint River and that literally poisoned the majority black community
in Flint. Mayor Karen Weaver was leadership during that period
and it became her job to make sure that both
the state of Michigan and the federal government made things right.
(32:34):
I remember saying, if there's not a check for Flint,
I won't be there because I'm trying to get what
you know, and everybody else knows we deserve. And it
was so amazing to me because this was something that
wasn't just documented in Flint or the state of Michigan.
This was documented across the country and the world what
had gone on. And so I've got to try and
(32:57):
you know, continue to speak up and speak out for Flint.
Right now, you have to say you were either going
to accept the settlement as is, you're satisfied with it
the way it is, or you could say I want
to be part of the settlement, but I'm objecting, or
I want no parts of anything. So I opted in.
I said, I want to be part of this settlement,
(33:18):
but I want to object. And that's one of the
objections is the attorneys getting more than the victims. The
most that a victim will get as if they lost
a loved one to legionneers, if they were forty nine
and younger, they'll get one point five million. Fifty and older,
the amount you get goes down to three hundred thousand dollars.
So they've put a value on people's lives. And they
(33:41):
put a cap on property damage of a thousand dollars,
which is absurd. Which is absurd. I mean people's water
heaters were damaged, uh, dishwashers, refrigerators, a thousand dollar cap.
What can you do with that? Not much? It is
absolutely absurd. That's another objection. One of the other objections
(34:01):
is the documentation. There is so much documentation you have
to have. You know, the more documentation you have, I guess,
the more money you get. However, a lot of the
testing that needed to be done wasn't even available, not
only in Flint, but the state of Michigan. They've just
started getting the access to the testing available to us
(34:23):
within the last month. So people have to opt in
and object. So there is a fairness hearing that is
in July, and we go before the judge who will
hear the objections. The judge has says she will listen
to you know, however long it takes to hear the
objections of the people. So we had to have everything
in by last Monday, and now we wait. You know,
(34:46):
one of the things we've always said is what happened,
and Flint happened as a result of race and class.
And I've always told people Flint wasn't about water, and
it wasn't about infrastructure. Those were the symptoms of this
underlying racism, the systemic racism, and this and this payment
is reflective of that. You know, we said, this is
(35:06):
another slap in the face to the residents and and
this payment is reflective when you know, when you look
at the payments I just brought up, you know, and
you and you say the the amount for the amount,
the number of people, and then you say, now, how
Flint get this, and why did they keep saying this
is such a great deal when we know it's not.
But I'll tell you if we were a different persuasion,
(35:27):
a different complexion, or a different socioeconomic status, this would
not have happened. I think some people have gotten worn down.
You know, they're just tired. I've heard some people say
anything is better than nothing, and that's a sad place
to be. What do you think is needed to heal?
And by the way, you are a psychologist, so I'm
very interested on the psychological damage and the repair of that,
(35:49):
and what do you think needs to happen. The money
needs to come, and it needs to be more money.
We want more than charges. We want convictions. We want
healthcare for the residents here and we wanted to follow
them no matter where they go. We want access to
college and trade school for the people. We need to
look at a small business and entrepreneurship and putting some
(36:13):
equity there. So we need different kinds of programs and
services and resources put in place. If you want to
try and make Flint whole, but starting with a deserving
a fair, just amount of money, plus all of those
other things that we should have access an opportunity for McAra.
(36:33):
What have you learned about human nature from this experience?
Sometimes you just really expect people to do the right
thing and you can't. One of the things I always
talk about is never underestimating the power of your voice
and don't let anybody take it. You know. I was
listening to you and Whitney. I think one of the
questions you all have imposed was you're talking about reparations,
(36:57):
do you think it will happen? You weren't sure when
it would happen, if it would happen, or when it
would happen. But one of the things is you don't
stop talking about it. You don't stop demanding what is right.
You don't stop speaking up for what is right and
putting that information out there, because as soon as you
do that, you have been defeated. And there are so
many ways to be worn down as a human and
(37:19):
as a black person. And I've just really learned how
strong we are here. I think people have thought we'd
go away, People thought we wouldn't still be speaking up
and still fighting. But one thing I've always said is
I'd rather show up for the fight and lose than
to not show up. And that's what we're doing, because
I think we do recognize that this isn't just about us.
(37:39):
I mean were impact that we know what we deserve.
We're fighting for other black and brown communities and we
have said use us for that, because we know this
should never happen any place else. And it it's just
showed me what strength and resilience and courage and determination
will do. But it also lets you see how easily
(38:00):
worn down we can get as well. And that's what
people want to see. That's what people want to have hapen.
We want you to be quiet, we want you to
be tired, we want you to go away. I can't
do it, but wherever you are, you can make a
difference and your voice can be heard. And that's what
we have to show people. She's phenomenal. I just love her.
(38:22):
Karen Weaver. She was mayor then and from where she
is now, she's still working hard to repair her city.
But again we're talking about the loss of trust and
the betrayal of a system that said you are disposable
and not even worthy of clean water. You know, I
set in the room Whitney with women from Flint who
lost their family members to disease from that crisis. What
(38:44):
do you say to them? Making repairs and reparation and
restitution won't heal their heart, won't bring their loved one back,
won't heal black people's hearts. There's not enough money in
the world to do that. It's like the Great Al
Green saying, courtesy of burying Robin Gibb, how can you
(39:04):
mend a broken heart? How can you stop the rain
from falling down? What makes the world go around? They
knew they gave it to a brother to sing that
song because they weren't just talking about love lost. They
were talking about something deeper than that. Don't you wonder sometimes, Erica,
that the idea of outcome is focused on too much
(39:24):
as opposed to just the act of like the act
of trying to make reparations. I think you're right. I
don't know what actually would heal Black Americans, and I
don't know what would actually heal white Americans either. I
think it's a really complicated place that we're in. But
I think in some ways it's a leap of faith,
It's a leaf of imagination that you have to take
(39:45):
the step that you know is right, regardless of the consequences.
That's true but I think I know a little bit
about what would heal black and white and brown and
all colors in between. It's and justice for all, liberty
and justice for all. And we started our adventure. I
told you that reparations would be too late for my
(40:07):
mother to benefit from, and um, that's unfortunate because she
deserves it. But talking with her and just listening to
her stories, when they finally start talking about how to
do this, the making and the repair towards this deliberate injury,
the most care and attention should be to create a
salve of bomb to soothe the broken hearts of a
(40:30):
lost people who feel stateless and are exhausted and tired
of talking about all this stuff. And this salve it's
gonna need to penetrate and detoxify the hardened shelve of
many white people and how they've been raised in this
and moral wicked stew for so long. Now that said,
(40:50):
I asked my mom the question that we've been asking
everybody that we've been talking to throughout this journey. Do
you think there should be reparations and do you think
will get them in our lifetime? I learned to the
second part person, No, I don't think you'll ever get them.
I think you may get portions are partial. I think
(41:12):
America cannot face its own darkness, in its own soul
to the point that it can say yes. They keep
telling themselves, especially since the Barack Obama the twenty Center,
I say African American both ways, since he made it,
(41:38):
that's what they put up in our face. But their
souls are so dark and so dead and so weak
that they can't say yes. This squarely is on us.
We owe loads of minorities. Look what they can do
to the Indians. For years they give them a little
bit of land, and oh, y'all, now we've done them right,
(42:01):
no matter that you've taken back a large part of it,
or you broken treaties after treaties that you've almost decimated
a large percentage of their tribes. No, I don't think
America is ever going to be morally that strong, morally
(42:22):
that just. But I think we will get like little
like the puzzles, a little piece here, a little piece there,
And every time they put a little piece, they will
try to use that for justification as to being enough.
How much more do they want? We want the whole plate?
Why shouldn't we have the whole plate? You want the
(42:43):
whole plate I want, said to a white minister at
Lutheran Church that hired us to do social ministry. How
come you want so much for you and so little
for me? Why is that? What is it about your soul?
Your being? Why is it that you can't see me
(43:06):
as a full human being? If you've got a bold fool,
why wouldn't not want a bold fool? What's different about me?
I don't live in a different life. I don't have
less build or have a hand out that says I
only have half a need. I have a full need.
And the more, if you are just and thinking righteously,
(43:33):
you would know, the more self sufficient I am, the
more productive I can be, the more we both benefit.
Why can't you get that? That's a doctor in a wholenets,
of true health, of true humanity. Why can't you see it?
(43:54):
Next time? On reparations, the big payback? If you are
going to who have reparations for everybody? Then one you're
not talking about the wealthcare and the disparities and getting
rid of it. And I have no problem with everybody
getting something. What I do have a problem with is
(44:15):
not directing targeted funds towards black people who are slave descendants,
who we know that right here in the United States
were the ones to suffer and to be used to
prop up capitalism all these years. So anybody who was
a slave here in the United States and is a
(44:35):
descendant of a slave here in the United States ought
to get reparations. Other people can argue for their own.
This podcast is produced by Eric Alexander, Ben Arnon and
Whitney Down. The executive producers are Charlemagne the God and
Dolly S. Bishop. The Supervising producer is Nicole Childers and
(44:58):
the lead producer is Devin Madock Obbins. The producer writer
is Serres Castle, and the Associate producer is Kevin Phamm.
With additional research support provided by Nile Blast. Original music
by d J D T p R Reparations. The Big
(45:18):
Payback is a production of color Farm Media, I Heart
Radio and The Black Effect Podcast Network in association with
Best Case Studios. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
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