April 22, 2021 • 35 mins
Erika and Whitney ask the trillion dollar question, “Who qualifies for reparations?” To find answers they take to the streets of downtown Brooklyn. They also consult ‘who gets it’ experts, Killer Mike, Dr. William Darity, Mary Frances Barry and ADOS co-founder Yvette Carnell. But if you’re still unsure you’d qualify, they reveal a helpful service that with a ‘ding!’ or a ‘dong!’ can tell you if you qualify for the big payback. Cool, right? You’re welcome Black America!
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Who get it. It's really hard to talk about who
qualifies for reparations. I think genealogy like who came from slaves?
Whose great great parents where slaves. You have to find
a way to prove that. So no matter what, if
you're a person of coloring this country, you faith still
freshness some type of way in America needs to repent
(00:25):
for it. Every Black person that's been harmed by the
system because and then then no matter where you go
in the world, black people is the one who's mainly
dominated how those countries run. Because you know, even in America,
you're talking at least of America's wealth comes out of
black people, and a lot of black people don't even
realize that. Well, you have to do the history because
we don't know who ancestors. You gotta go back and
(00:46):
put the ancestors, Like I said, who family been a slave.
I'm Erica Alexander and I'm Whitney down. Welcome to Reparations
The Big Payback, a product sh of Color Farm Media,
I Heart Radio and The Black Effect Podcast Network. Erica,
(01:08):
I want to ask you a question. Okay, I was
about to say shoot, but yeah, okay, ask away. It's
just like the most basic question, say you Erica persuade
people that reparations are something that America can do and
should do. Who gets them? While I'm rooting for everybody black,
I gets them. That's all I know. But how about this,
(01:28):
let's ask Killer Mike who gets it? I think the
people who gets to other people who are the descendants
of the people who came in sixty nineteen, right. That
means to be very plainly, if the Obama daughters we're
getting some type of reparations, it would be because of
their mother's lineage, not because of their father's. That simple
does not mean that I don't love all black people.
Doesn't mean that the diasporas and oh you know, I
(01:50):
think Portugal ols, the Dominican Republic, France, Old Haiti. I
think we should all be fighting a worldwide fighting for reparations.
But in terms of America, everybody who's descendant was brought
off those boats at the port and Savannah, Charleston, South Carolina,
and beyond, whether Louisiana and Florida deserves absolutely deserves it.
And it ain't hard to find out who you are.
(02:12):
And I always encouraged black folks to fill out the
senses I'm able to look at the senses from the
late eighteen hundreds and see exactly who my great grandparents
belong to. So I think that that's important thing, because
that will be part of the way you prove your
ancestry right. So for me, everybody who is an ancestor
of the people that were brought here from six nineteen
(02:32):
into the embolishment of the trans Atlantic slave trade should
be eligible before reparations in this country. Boom, well, I
guess that settles it not so fast Erica Mark Moreal.
You know, I don't think he's exactly down with that.
He used to be mayor of New Orleans, so you
know they've seen a few things. But Mark says that
colonial powers collectively owe adept to enslaved descendants in the
(02:54):
Western hemisphere. I heard some people suggest, and I disagree
with it completely, that people of Caribbean descent in the
United States did not deserve to enjoy reparations. If there
are some I said, hey, what you're missing is is
that slavery in the Western Hemisphere didn't start in Jamestown
in sixty nineteen. Slavery in the Western Hemisphere started in
(03:15):
the fifteen hundreds in South America and the Caribbean. Huge
slave port Cartagena, Colombia, was the main slave port in
the Caribbean. There was slavery raging in the Caribbean and
in parts of South American places like what is now
Panama and Cuba and Haiti even before sixty nineteen. So
(03:37):
most Americans of Caribbean descent are descended from a slave
system which was created by colonial powers. And I think
one of the interesting things about reparations is due former
colonial powers oh a participation in reparations France, Spain, the
United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Portugal who fundamentally created, nurtured, and
(03:59):
sustained the system of slavery before the United States was
founded in seventeen seventy six, you know. And that's a
discussion we haven't handed. I think it's a legitimate discussion
because it didn't start in the the seventeen seventy six. It
started when the British is, French and the Spanish head
colonies and the Portuguese own boats. There's a long, long story.
(04:21):
So in this context of discussing racial justice, reparations equity
in the current sense, we also have to go back
and understand the origins the Western hemisphere. Can you imagine
coordinating reparations payments with all those countries? I know what
(04:42):
a wreath would say, nice harmony America. Thanks. Well, that's
the rub, isn't it? Like? America is full of African Americans,
but not all of them are descendants of a slaved Americans.
So well, one case be made is that the descendant
of slaves suffered things such as bondage, torture, family separation,
(05:04):
forced labor Jim Coro, and of course four years of oppression.
That say, recent immigrants from Haiti, Jamaica, Africa, Latin America
didn't suffer. So believe me, Erica, I appreciate your what
would you call it your socratic method here, but no, seriously,
I'm saying, so, wouldn't you say that America remains a
two tiered society, one with one kind of justice, one
(05:27):
set of rules for white people and another for black
people wherever they come from. Yeah, of course I agree
with that. But it seems also that this whole series,
we've really been talking about slavery and it's after effects,
and I'm talking about that, but those after effects affect
more people than a strict definition would take in say,
Kevin Durant and Gianna's anti to Kompo. Like how I
(05:50):
said that? Yeah, say they're driving in a nice car
in a white neighborhood at night in Georgia. Wait, you
know Gianna Suntokumpo Whitney, he's a four time all are well,
they're both in the car. Okay, who's in danger? Only Durant,
you think racist cops or systematically racist justice system are
gonna split that here? Step out of the car in words.
(06:11):
Oh no, wait, not you, Mr antikotone Compo. We know
you're not an actual descentant of slaves. Yeah, I get it,
I get it. But isn't there a larger social justice problem?
Isn't that beyond the scope of what reparations really can
or should do. I'm just making the point and I
don't even know if I agree with it that reparations
(06:32):
is or should be about more than bloodlines. Of course,
American black slavery was a unique crime in history, and
of course that suffering in societal disempowerment got passed down
and in many ways reinforced through the generations. But another
thing that got passed down for everybody was a gym
crow society that persists to this day, where all Black
(06:54):
people in America suffer from unequal education, unequal opportunity, unequal
will access to health, to capital formation, to simple justice.
Will reparations really change that? You know, I'm seeing reparations,
this specific remedy of reparations is a practical way to
help right or wrong, to lift people up who are
kept down, to put money in people's hands, no doubt,
(07:16):
And I'm with you on that. I'm all for putting
money in black people's hands, but who and how many people? Right?
I mean, to your point, there's a racial wealth gap
that has persisted in this country for decades and according
to two thousand and nineteen study, the average white wealth
is seven times that of average black well seven times,
and that gap it hasn't narrowed since ninety two. Yeah,
(07:38):
well that's right. But I'm I'm just saying that maybe
the who of reparations has a larger dimension, or a
moral one, or even a teaching dimension, not just a
practical one. Maybe it's a way of recognizing that in
an unequal society, all Black Americans need an apology, all
Black Americans need a reset of the scales, and all
(08:00):
Black Americans need is Dr King said a check. So
it's not the ato's point of view, right, I really
don't want to get into that, at least under that
rubic But let's take a better look at your suggestion
that reparations only be given to descendants of slaves in America.
How do you even do that? How do you parse
out who's a slave descendant and who's not? Well, you know,
(08:22):
economist William Darty says in his recent book From Here
to Equality that reparations should go to people who have
and I quote, a consistent pattern of identification as a
black American. And he said a lot more than that,
Yes he did. Now, I'm not into the degrees of
blackness or the fractions thing myself. But what's central to
(08:45):
the criteria that we offer in From Here to Equality
is whether or not an individual has an ancestral connection
to persons who were supposed to have received the forty
acres and restitution for the years of bondage. So essentially,
we argue that the folks who should receive reparations, and
(09:07):
the folks for whom reparations always has been intended, are
the Black Americans who are descendants of persons enslaved in
the United States. That's the community that bears the weight
of the intergenerational effects of slavery, one years of Jim
Crow and ongoing atrocities like mass incarceration, police executions of
(09:34):
unarmed blacks, and ongoing discrimination and credit, housing, and employment.
You know, the reparations should have been given to the
ancestors of the living descendants. The failure to do so
triggered a chain of events that cripple the lives of
those who are living today. And if we want to
(09:56):
remove that burden, that's the community that received reparations. Sorry,
Stacy Dash no cookies for you. Well, I'm not going
to get into that one. She crossed the line. But
you know, he says you could use census records, birth records,
death records, DNA even um I think twenty three and me, yeah,
(10:19):
because the record keeping has always been so good for
black folks in America. True, true, but those things will
certainly be a good place to start. I know another
place to start. Yvette Carnell, co founder of ADOS American
Descendants of Slaves, She's been very specific about the who
of reparations. She certainly has, and you know, Killer Mike
suggested that we should talk to her, and I bet
(10:41):
she's got a lot to say. Name me one other
group that has been oppressed from slavery and then has
had the entire government, local and federal mechanized against them, right,
and the citizens three of the United States, like the
citizens and the KKK that citizens mechanized against us. That's
internal torture, that's internal terrorism. No other group can claim that. Now,
(11:05):
some other groups can claim during this period, we got
discriminated against during this period, some of our people got
hung or lynched. But you do not have a history
that stretches from sixteen nineteen. You don't have that. And
so I think people look at that and say, listen,
this is four years and we will pressed this group.
We don't got that kind of money, So we gotta
kind of paint eid Dolls out as some kind of
(11:28):
rag tag, controversial, radical group because we're never gonna try
to pay them. And so I think what you see
is just powerful people who have decided that they have
built their lives and they've built America or an injustice
and it's gonna keep being that way. And a way
to keep being that way is to just smear eight
dolls and say we are controversial as opposed to just
(11:48):
saying listen, okay, you're right, reparations needs to happen, and
it needs to go to a specific group. Let's talk
about how we do that. American culture sits on top
of eight or culture. That's just a fact. It's about
our inventions, it's about our music, it's about everything that
you do. America. You don't really have a culture outside
of us. The people you can't. You brought here and enslaved.
(12:10):
You have no culture outside of that, So that makes
us specific. You know, our culture is not Haitian culture.
Our culture and our contribution is not the name. It's
not South American, it's not Kingan. It doesn't mean I
have anything against them or anybody else. We're just different.
We're just different groups. It doesn't mean better or worse.
(12:31):
That's what people mix up. I'm not saying I'm superior
to you. What I'm saying is that we're different. And
in terms of America, the descendants of Chaddel slavery have
made a different and a heavier contribution to America than
anybody else. And we did it unwillingly, and we got
abused because of it. And we have a specific cost. Now,
when you have a specific cost, that means a specific
(12:51):
payment that comes only to me, comes only to you, Erica,
that's what it means. You have to have that and listen.
Like I tell everybody, if the Haitians get reparations from
the French, I'm gonna be the first one that Papabolis
champagne in the street and celebrate. You deserve it. I'm
not gonna say I deserve it. I don't. My people
don't come from Toussaint's people. It don't. I don't deserve that.
(13:13):
I should celebrate it, and I will celebrate it because
I disagree. I oppose oppression anywhere everywhere. So I will
absolutely salute you, dance in the street with you, everything.
But I don't deserve that because my people didn't fight
for that. But everything that happened in this country, my
people fought for and deserved. And we have a specific
debt that is old to us that shouldn't be controversial.
(13:33):
So to be clear, how outside of everything that others
might define you, how did you find yourself and what
is ados well? We defined ourselves as American descendants of slavery, right,
slavery as an institution Slavery was institution in this country.
It wasn't just something that happened. It was the government
weaponized against us, and that these people are less than
(13:54):
These people are slaves, they're designed to be slaves, and
out of that we created something beautiful. So that's how
I defined myself. I define myself by my ancestors and
what they fought through and what they encountered, and the
fact that I'm still here. That's why the fight still
happens because I think we have to be freedom fighters
in this space. That's what our people were and that's
what we owe to them. There's a certain debt that
(14:16):
is old to the ancestors in terms of, yeah, you
gotta fight because we fall, We fought and died. You
gotta fight too. You gotta keep this fight going. So
that's how I define AIDS in terms of who we
are politically and otherwise. My people have been here four
hundred years, contributing to this country and not getting the
wealth of this country, not getting the milk and honey
of this country. Like Martin Luther King said, you know,
(14:38):
it's one thing to be poor, it's another thing to
be poor in a country of wealth. So we are
in a country that we built. We built all this
wealth for this country. America would not be a country
without AIDS, and we're still a bottom cast in this country.
That's different. I'm not the same as somebody else. I'm
not the same as any other person because of melanin.
(14:58):
Melanin doesn't make us the same. And so I think
that's the point where people say, oh my god, event
at also being divisive. But Meldon is a trait, it's
a biological trait. It doesn't mean we're the same in
terms of our contributions to America, and it doesn't mean
that you should get reparations the same as me can
A question just on sort of like how you think,
you talk about specificity, how you think about the mechanics
(15:19):
of things, because I'm guessing you would also agree that
whether or not you're ads, if you have black skin
in this country, you still suffer from the legacy of slavery,
that even if you're a second generation Caribbean immigrant, that
you still suffer from the structures that were put in
place that are sort of built around white supremacy. Would
you agree on that front, Yes, absolutely right, because America
(15:41):
is too tiered. They don't ask who you are. They
just you know, see you black, but go ahead. So
the question I have is that if there's repreation, do
you believe that black Americans who have suffered under the
legacy of slavery also deserve some sort of compensation or
on some sort of a structure that allows them to
play and even on an even playing field with white Americans.
(16:01):
And should that be part of reparations. Do you imagine
that it's a separate bill or mechanism, or how do
you deal with that other group of Americans who continue
to suffer under the legacy of slavery but are not
necessarily Ito's descendants. Well, let me just point out one
thing first before I deal with what you just said.
The meat of what you just said, American descendants of
(16:22):
slavery came here in slave ships. Every other group came
here either on foot on a plane. You came here voluntary.
Voluntary versus involuntary has consequences in terms of reparations. Now,
you do not get reparations because you came here voluntarily.
You decided to come here because you will have a
better life. That was your choice. You don't get reparations
for that. What I will say is this, we have
(16:44):
a Black agenda, So you don't get reparations, no, but
you do get to access this Black agenda that we have.
The Black agenda is antidiscriminatory, so it is with the
lived experience of what we deal with in terms of
racism and discrimination. There's a lived experience of racism. That's
what a lot of black immigrants deal with, right or
(17:06):
children of black immigrants. What ADOS deals with is not
only the lived experience, but the inherited experience in terms
of the lack of wealth. So you would not have
access to reparations as a Caribbean person who came here voluntarity,
but you would have access to our Black agenda in
terms of our anti racism, anti black policies. Those things
(17:27):
are part of our Black agenda. We have an ADOS agenda,
which is reparations and a Black agenda. What black immigrants
deal with is discrimination, and we have things in our
Black agenda that mitigate that. What we're saying is that listen,
as a black immigrant, you absolutely are able to access
our transformative Black agenda. The only thing that you don't
(17:47):
access is reparations, because reparations is a delineation between who
came here in slaveships and who came here on a
plane or on foot. That's it. So you can access
this because you have a lived experience of this scrimination,
and we want to help you take care of that.
But there's another thing in terms of inheritance, a d
O S should have far more in terms of our wealth.
(18:09):
Our wealth has been stolen, were plundered group from slavery,
Jim Crow and then on. We're taking care of that.
That is what reparations is for. That is specifically for
aid us. That is an inheritance that we have been
robbed of. So the inheritance that we have been robbed
of were taking care of specifically of a d O S. Now,
you have a specific experience, a lived experience of discrimination.
(18:31):
We're gonna try to deal with that, my black immigrant
ally in terms of our black agenda. But there are
two different aspects of what we're doing. How do you
think reparations should be done? Well? Reparations for us is
very different because no other group in the world has
come from slavery and been multigenerationally oppressed. No group can
(18:51):
say that, no group can say that. Listen, we were
slaves and then the country decided to weaponize itself against
US local and federal. So, oh, there is no framework,
There is no blueprint. Now, what I will say is
that I do appreciate Holocaust reparations in the sense that
they understand that there are people who stand in the shoes.
So there are people who stand in the shoes of
(19:13):
Holocaust survivors, just like in America we have people who
stand in the shoes of slaves. So that is us.
So the framework would be to begin a repayment of
the wealth plundering. Right, that's part of what we have
to do. You have to do a repayment. There has
to be a check, but there has to be a
check for several generations. Because one thing I always say
(19:33):
is that it takes much more time to repair a
wound than it takes to inflict a wound. If I
take a knife right now and slash you, it's gonna
take much the more time for you that wound to
heal than it took for me to hurt you. So
that's the same thing in terms of what we have
to deal with. Right, Slavery happened, Jim Crow happened, reconstruction happened,
Mass and conceerration happened, but it's gonna take a lot
(19:55):
more time than four hundred years to fix what you
did to us. In four hundred years of reparations is
just the beginning of the fix. And I think that's
why America doesn't want to do to fix because they
know what they did to us, and they know how
long it's gonna take to fix that, and they don't
want to make that an American program. But that's what's
gotta happen. So when you're talking about the Germans, just
(20:15):
so where we get what you were talking about, what
did they do specifically that you said you feel at
least addressed in a way that you think was direct
in terms of the payments around the world, not just Germany,
in terms of the payments to Holocaust survivors. They've said
that this listen, it's not just Holocaust survivors, it's the heirs.
It's the people who are considered to be standing in
(20:37):
the shoes of those people who still bear the cost.
And I think they captured that perfectly, because there are
people who are still standing in the shoes of Holocaust
survivors who still bear the cost of that. In that
very same way, in America, we have American descendants of
slavery who are still bearing the cost. Because you have
to understand what's happened in America. Let's just really break
(20:59):
it down. The weaponization of America and American citizens against
ads has been very intentional. It's not just because some
people are racist. That's not what happened. We've had race,
the creation of race, which is really a construction. It's
not real. Merlandan doesn't make you a race of people.
What's happened is that America said that this race is
going to be on the bottom and they're going to
(21:21):
eat the failure of American They're gonna be America's garbage disposal.
So we're gonna put We're not only gonna just put
you in jail so you can work for free and
be new slaves. We're also going to put plants in
your neighborhood that puff out chemicals that kill you. We're
also going to have you be the ones that drink
lead water. When the country needs jobs, we're gonna just
build prisons and how people work in prisons, and have
(21:44):
construction companies build industrial prison complexes. So we're going to
use you to feed the rest of the country. You
are going to not only eat the failure, but you're
going to provide prosperity to the rest of the country.
And that has been very intentional from slavery all the
way to now. And there's a cost that comes with that,
but that's a very specific cost to us that nobody
(22:05):
else bears. How do you pay it? Say, everything sort
of lines up the way you want. And frankly, if
you say pump your brake, let's wait, it maybe past
your lifetime, in my lifetime that we will see anything
that's close to what you're talking about. But who and
what type of processes is going to be. It has
to be multifold and multifaceted. And I don't think anybody
(22:25):
has ever talked about that. I've never seen anybody talk
about it. So it has to be a redistribution of
wealth because wealth will stolen, wealth has to be repaid.
That's number one. The second thing is you have to
have protections in place. What happened to us during the
Great Recession was that people were able to come down
in our communities and take away from us to plunder
our group. That's always happened. You have to have some
(22:47):
protections in place for people who have recently received reparation. Now,
this is just the beginning. Like I said before, this
is not the end. But you have to have protections
in place because capitalism can be predatory and one of
the things that we have seen is the only capital
that we've had access to has been predatory capital. You
have to have protected the place saying that you cannot
target this group with subprime anything. You cannot target this
(23:11):
group with scams. We have to be a protected class.
You can protect a spot at our but you can't
protect AIDS. You absolutely can, and that have to be
consequences for that. The other thing that has to happen
to we talk about plugs and outlets. So a lot
of AIDS come out of school and we're the plug
and we don't have an outlet. That's one thing an
Tonio Moore has talked about. We have a plug, we
don't have an outlet. There have to be places that
(23:33):
are set asized for us to build. Well, right, people
can say, now listen, as we know y'all got reparations.
Y'all want to own land, but guess what, we don't
want to sail to you, and so you don't have none.
There has to be something in place that says we
get a preference in terms of how we go about
becoming the ownership class. There have to be plugs, so
they have to be mechanisms and incentives for people to
(23:57):
kind of bring aidos into what we have been locked
out of. We've been locked out of wealth in this country,
and there has to be some kind of incentives to
bring us back into that. There have to be protections,
to say Lessen, I'm a fan of quotas in terms
of ads. You have to sell this much land. You
have to have this media aid our students, you have
to have these media aidos who are in this part
(24:17):
of check. You have to do that. All of that
is a part of what we're doing. It's not just
a check because if you make it just a check,
we become consumers and we try to buy stuff and
everybody says no. And eventually what happens is that people say,
you know what, I've tried to buy everything. I've tried
to become everything. There are no protections. Capitalists are still
(24:37):
weaponizing themselves against me. I'm just gonna take this money
by Lamborghini because I want to do something with the money.
The money has to move, and we have to have
places to plug into. When we have that money, there
have to be protections and places for us to plug
that money into to create our own ownership class. I
want to know again because I got to go back
to this, because this is where sometimes the reberen met
(25:00):
the road. How do you figure out the who? Why me?
Why you? Why not? Nicki Minaj whose people are from
the Caribbean or Drake from Canada? How do you figure
out who? If we get what you want? How do
we figure that out? Do you have one parent who
comes from American childel slavery and I'm gonna tell you
(25:20):
how to best figure that out? If you have a
parent who's a share cropper, like people say, oh my god,
it's really hard to do. We can't figure that out.
It's gonna be really hard. No, it's not. Before the
Immigration Act of nineteen sixty five, the overwhelming majority of
us right, it was mostly black and white. I'm not
saying oh, but disproportionately, that's what it was. So if
you have a grandfather, great grandparent who was a sharecropper
or whatever, you come from slaves, that's just what it is.
(25:42):
It's not hard to figure out we have records, but
if you're a black immigrant or if you come from
black immigrants, no you don't get reparations. This is a
specific justice claim is sacred. And see, the thing is,
we don't have any problem understanding that when we talk
about Native Americans. We understand that when we talk about
Native Americans and what they get, they get a specific satiside.
We don't have any problem talking about that. When we
(26:04):
talk about Holocaust survivors and their children, we don't have
any problem talking about how that's a specific satiside. The
same thing happens here. We're a specific group with a
specific justice claim. Now in terms of the people that
you talk about who come from the Caribbean and black
immigrants and their children, because we have children of black
immigrants who are not Black immigrants, they're Black Americans. What
(26:25):
we have for them are protections and a Black agenda
because they have a lived experience of discrimination. They don't
have the inheritance, the plunder, they don't have ancests who
came and slaveships, but they have an experience in this
country which is racialized. So the Black agenda helps protect
them as well as us against this racialized kind of discrimination.
(26:46):
So that is there for them, the reparations piece, though
it's just for us a lived experience of discrimination, not
the inheritance. Interesting duality. Our lives are all about opposites, Erica.
I mean, look at you and me doing this talk
about a lived experience? Yeah, well what what? What? Quick?
(27:06):
Whitney changed the subject, Erica, did you know? And preparing
to introduce his reparations bill in the Senate, Corey Booker,
for instance, he discovered his family came from Sierra Leone.
Well that spangs of red beans and rice. I don't
even know what that means. But there's also the process
of elimination. Process of elimination. Well, it's this theory that
it might be easier and faster to determine which Black
(27:29):
Americans are not descendants of slaves. Okay, this sounds like
a get pretty divisive. Okay, how do you do that? Then? Well,
you start with this, there are very few quote voluntary
black immigrants, if you know what I'm saying. You know,
with the exception of students in the United States prior
to the Immigration and Nationality Act of Hey, chuck out
(27:52):
the big brain on Whitney. Mind, if I have a
bite of your tasty burger. I'm just getting started on this,
so here we go. So what you do is you
comb through immigration records from then to now. Oh yeah, okay, no,
I I see where this is going. Go in, okay,
and you see who wouldn't be eligible for reparations target
only to American slave descendants, like Kamala Harris, like Barack Obama.
(28:16):
Like I'm not going to be the one to say
but yet like that, like you could remove one set Okay,
now when you just did say, but when I put
a name to it, you're back off, all right. Well,
leaving the people who do get the checks is the point, right,
And that's interesting. Well, we talked to Mary Francis Barry.
She's a historian, she's a lawyer, she's an activist. She's
a former chair of the United States Commission on Civil Rights.
(28:38):
Let's see what she says. If you are going to
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 not directing targeted
(28:59):
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 descendant of
a slave here in the United States ought to get reparations.
(29:23):
Other people can argue for their own. What I'm talking
about is what do we do about the descendants of
slaves here? People should demand reparations from the ones who
profited from their labor. It's so interesting America to see
if there are more sides to this than just whether
you're a descendant of American slaves or not. No, it's true,
(29:45):
and we don't talk a lot about class in America.
But while there are huge disparities and average income and
an average family generational wealth, the fact is that there
are poor black people, middle class black people, and there's
rich ones. I'm not one of them. I'm working on it. Yeah,
But I mean, so are you saying, does Oprah get
(30:06):
a check? Does Kanye? I don't know much, but I
do know this, Kanye has got a check tonight. Oh
Kanye is good, trust and believe. So where do we
say the cutoff is is individual income? Let's say over
eighty thousand a year family income over a hundred and
sixty thousand, Like for the stimulus is that you do
it that way? It just occurred to me that to
(30:26):
get some folks behind reparations, we should call it stimmy
two point Oh okay, agreed, you know, yeah, I like that,
you know, stimmy two point Oh, let's get it there.
I like that. Okay, But back to the money here, Yeah,
well money. What if what if while we're at it,
what if a smart financially nuanced reparations policy could address
(30:47):
disparities of economic justice and capital formation in the black community?
What if the who questions could be addressed in a
smart way by the how? So, how are you going
to do this? Here's what I mean? And let me
see if I can tie some of this together as
we go. We've been talking about, or thinking of reparations
as a system of direct payments to descendants of slaves, right,
(31:09):
prove your ancestry, don't be Kanye, get a check. What
if that's too simple a model. What if we looked
at uh yeah, separate payments for separate classes of damages. Yeah, exactly, So,
like small business loans to support black owned businesses, to
combat traditional bank redlining and black neighborhoods things like that, yeah, right,
(31:30):
or a program of home loans to combat the longtime
patterns of discrimination and segregation in housing. What about targeted
aids to schools in black neighborhoods. Don't forget the schools,
you know, what do you mean? You know America hates
its children. You know nobody ever votes for schools. True,
(31:52):
but let's get back to your larger point. You're saying
that by tailoring the how reparations, you can finesse the
who is that what you're saying? Yes? Yes, And by
doing what I'm proposing, You send a check to the
descendants of slaves on a hundred and sixty one street,
You give a small business loan to her next door neighbor,
the Jamaican dry cleaner, and both of them qualify for
(32:13):
anti gentrification tax abatements to stay in their homes and
keep their neighborhood intact. So I see what you're saying.
You give them housing revitalization grants to keep their homes
up to market value, and then you give both their
kids student loan forgiveness so they can pursue graduate degrees. Right, right,
And support the HBC used. They go to then give
(32:33):
those kids down payment grants so they can purchase first homes.
And in all of these things, the who and the
how interact, all of them could be part of a
targeted reparations package. I'm very impressed, Erica, But I have
one question for you. Is you still have no love
for Kanye? Yeah? I got nothing but love for Kanye.
(32:55):
You hear me, go Kanye? But what if there was
a way to see if you qualify for reparations? Ever
wondered if you qualify for reparations as an American descendant
of slaves. Let's see if these all stars do. Daniel Kaloya, Killer,
Mike Mohammad, Ali, Busta Rhymes, Shirley Chisholm, Lenny Kravitz, Michelle Obama,
(33:20):
Barack Obama, Colin Powell, Will Smith, Sasha and Malia Obama,
Holly Berry, Stacy dash Viola, Davis, Clint Black, Cecily Tyson,
Alfonso Ribiero, Nicki Minaj, Tracy Ellis Ross, Charlie's there on, Drake,
(33:44):
Nia Long, Notorious b I, g Rihanna. Next time on reparations,
The Big Payback in Jade, Christian Banking in the Old Testament,
there was always reparation rations. You never just took from people.
In fact, every fiftieth year there was something called the
(34:07):
season of Jubilee, and in that season of Jubilee, all
slaves were to be free, all debts were to be canceled,
all people were to be restored. And there was a
thinking among the earlier Jewish rabbis and all that if
it ever actually happened, that the Kingdom of God would
come in its fullness. In the New Testament, Jesus clear
(34:28):
they taught that if you stole from somebody, you didn't
just replace what you stole. You had to replace two, three,
fourfold what you stole and then salvation. And so we
have to understand the issue of reparation is a serious theological, moral,
and constitutional issue. This podcast is produced by Erica Alexander
(34:55):
ben arn On Whitney Down. The executive produced Who's Our
Charlemaine the God Dolly as the Bishop. The super Busy
Producer is Nicole Childers, and the lead producer is Devin
Maverick Robbins. The producer writer is serethe Castle, and the
associate producers Kevin fam This episode was written by Tony
(35:17):
per year, with additional research support provided by Nile Blasts.
Original music by d J d t P Reparations. The
Big Payback is a production of color Farm Media, I
Heart Radio, and The Black Effect Podcast Network in association
(35:40):
with Best Case Studios. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Who get it. It's really hard to talk about who
qualifies for reparations. I think genealogy like who came from slaves?
Whose great great parents where slaves. You have to find
a way to prove that. So no matter what, if
you're a person of coloring this country, you faith still
freshness some type of way in America needs to repent
(00:25):
for it. Every Black person that's been harmed by the
system because and then then no matter where you go
in the world, black people is the one who's mainly
dominated how those countries run. Because you know, even in America,
you're talking at least of America's wealth comes out of
black people, and a lot of black people don't even
realize that. Well, you have to do the history because
we don't know who ancestors. You gotta go back and
(00:46):
put the ancestors, Like I said, who family been a slave.
I'm Erica Alexander and I'm Whitney down. Welcome to Reparations
The Big Payback, a product sh of Color Farm Media,
I Heart Radio and The Black Effect Podcast Network. Erica,
(01:08):
I want to ask you a question. Okay, I was
about to say shoot, but yeah, okay, ask away. It's
just like the most basic question, say you Erica persuade
people that reparations are something that America can do and
should do. Who gets them? While I'm rooting for everybody black,
I gets them. That's all I know. But how about this,
(01:28):
let's ask Killer Mike who gets it? I think the
people who gets to other people who are the descendants
of the people who came in sixty nineteen, right. That
means to be very plainly, if the Obama daughters we're
getting some type of reparations, it would be because of
their mother's lineage, not because of their father's. That simple
does not mean that I don't love all black people.
Doesn't mean that the diasporas and oh you know, I
(01:50):
think Portugal ols, the Dominican Republic, France, Old Haiti. I
think we should all be fighting a worldwide fighting for reparations.
But in terms of America, everybody who's descendant was brought
off those boats at the port and Savannah, Charleston, South Carolina,
and beyond, whether Louisiana and Florida deserves absolutely deserves it.
And it ain't hard to find out who you are.
(02:12):
And I always encouraged black folks to fill out the
senses I'm able to look at the senses from the
late eighteen hundreds and see exactly who my great grandparents
belong to. So I think that that's important thing, because
that will be part of the way you prove your
ancestry right. So for me, everybody who is an ancestor
of the people that were brought here from six nineteen
(02:32):
into the embolishment of the trans Atlantic slave trade should
be eligible before reparations in this country. Boom, well, I
guess that settles it not so fast Erica Mark Moreal.
You know, I don't think he's exactly down with that.
He used to be mayor of New Orleans, so you
know they've seen a few things. But Mark says that
colonial powers collectively owe adept to enslaved descendants in the
(02:54):
Western hemisphere. I heard some people suggest, and I disagree
with it completely, that people of Caribbean descent in the
United States did not deserve to enjoy reparations. If there
are some I said, hey, what you're missing is is
that slavery in the Western Hemisphere didn't start in Jamestown
in sixty nineteen. Slavery in the Western Hemisphere started in
(03:15):
the fifteen hundreds in South America and the Caribbean. Huge
slave port Cartagena, Colombia, was the main slave port in
the Caribbean. There was slavery raging in the Caribbean and
in parts of South American places like what is now
Panama and Cuba and Haiti even before sixty nineteen. So
(03:37):
most Americans of Caribbean descent are descended from a slave
system which was created by colonial powers. And I think
one of the interesting things about reparations is due former
colonial powers oh a participation in reparations France, Spain, the
United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Portugal who fundamentally created, nurtured, and
(03:59):
sustained the system of slavery before the United States was
founded in seventeen seventy six, you know. And that's a
discussion we haven't handed. I think it's a legitimate discussion
because it didn't start in the the seventeen seventy six. It
started when the British is, French and the Spanish head
colonies and the Portuguese own boats. There's a long, long story.
(04:21):
So in this context of discussing racial justice, reparations equity
in the current sense, we also have to go back
and understand the origins the Western hemisphere. Can you imagine
coordinating reparations payments with all those countries? I know what
(04:42):
a wreath would say, nice harmony America. Thanks. Well, that's
the rub, isn't it? Like? America is full of African Americans,
but not all of them are descendants of a slaved Americans.
So well, one case be made is that the descendant
of slaves suffered things such as bondage, torture, family separation,
(05:04):
forced labor Jim Coro, and of course four years of oppression.
That say, recent immigrants from Haiti, Jamaica, Africa, Latin America
didn't suffer. So believe me, Erica, I appreciate your what
would you call it your socratic method here, but no, seriously,
I'm saying, so, wouldn't you say that America remains a
two tiered society, one with one kind of justice, one
(05:27):
set of rules for white people and another for black
people wherever they come from. Yeah, of course I agree
with that. But it seems also that this whole series,
we've really been talking about slavery and it's after effects,
and I'm talking about that, but those after effects affect
more people than a strict definition would take in say,
Kevin Durant and Gianna's anti to Kompo. Like how I
(05:50):
said that? Yeah, say they're driving in a nice car
in a white neighborhood at night in Georgia. Wait, you
know Gianna Suntokumpo Whitney, he's a four time all are well,
they're both in the car. Okay, who's in danger? Only Durant,
you think racist cops or systematically racist justice system are
gonna split that here? Step out of the car in words.
(06:11):
Oh no, wait, not you, Mr antikotone Compo. We know
you're not an actual descentant of slaves. Yeah, I get it,
I get it. But isn't there a larger social justice problem?
Isn't that beyond the scope of what reparations really can
or should do. I'm just making the point and I
don't even know if I agree with it that reparations
(06:32):
is or should be about more than bloodlines. Of course,
American black slavery was a unique crime in history, and
of course that suffering in societal disempowerment got passed down
and in many ways reinforced through the generations. But another
thing that got passed down for everybody was a gym
crow society that persists to this day, where all Black
(06:54):
people in America suffer from unequal education, unequal opportunity, unequal
will access to health, to capital formation, to simple justice.
Will reparations really change that? You know, I'm seeing reparations,
this specific remedy of reparations is a practical way to
help right or wrong, to lift people up who are
kept down, to put money in people's hands, no doubt,
(07:16):
And I'm with you on that. I'm all for putting
money in black people's hands, but who and how many people? Right?
I mean, to your point, there's a racial wealth gap
that has persisted in this country for decades and according
to two thousand and nineteen study, the average white wealth
is seven times that of average black well seven times,
and that gap it hasn't narrowed since ninety two. Yeah,
(07:38):
well that's right. But I'm I'm just saying that maybe
the who of reparations has a larger dimension, or a
moral one, or even a teaching dimension, not just a
practical one. Maybe it's a way of recognizing that in
an unequal society, all Black Americans need an apology, all
Black Americans need a reset of the scales, and all
(08:00):
Black Americans need is Dr King said a check. So
it's not the ato's point of view, right, I really
don't want to get into that, at least under that
rubic But let's take a better look at your suggestion
that reparations only be given to descendants of slaves in America.
How do you even do that? How do you parse
out who's a slave descendant and who's not? Well, you know,
(08:22):
economist William Darty says in his recent book From Here
to Equality that reparations should go to people who have
and I quote, a consistent pattern of identification as a
black American. And he said a lot more than that,
Yes he did. Now, I'm not into the degrees of
blackness or the fractions thing myself. But what's central to
(08:45):
the criteria that we offer in From Here to Equality
is whether or not an individual has an ancestral connection
to persons who were supposed to have received the forty
acres and restitution for the years of bondage. So essentially,
we argue that the folks who should receive reparations, and
(09:07):
the folks for whom reparations always has been intended, are
the Black Americans who are descendants of persons enslaved in
the United States. That's the community that bears the weight
of the intergenerational effects of slavery, one years of Jim
Crow and ongoing atrocities like mass incarceration, police executions of
(09:34):
unarmed blacks, and ongoing discrimination and credit, housing, and employment.
You know, the reparations should have been given to the
ancestors of the living descendants. The failure to do so
triggered a chain of events that cripple the lives of
those who are living today. And if we want to
(09:56):
remove that burden, that's the community that received reparations. Sorry,
Stacy Dash no cookies for you. Well, I'm not going
to get into that one. She crossed the line. But
you know, he says you could use census records, birth records,
death records, DNA even um I think twenty three and me, yeah,
(10:19):
because the record keeping has always been so good for
black folks in America. True, true, but those things will
certainly be a good place to start. I know another
place to start. Yvette Carnell, co founder of ADOS American
Descendants of Slaves, She's been very specific about the who
of reparations. She certainly has, and you know, Killer Mike
suggested that we should talk to her, and I bet
(10:41):
she's got a lot to say. Name me one other
group that has been oppressed from slavery and then has
had the entire government, local and federal mechanized against them, right,
and the citizens three of the United States, like the
citizens and the KKK that citizens mechanized against us. That's
internal torture, that's internal terrorism. No other group can claim that. Now,
(11:05):
some other groups can claim during this period, we got
discriminated against during this period, some of our people got
hung or lynched. But you do not have a history
that stretches from sixteen nineteen. You don't have that. And
so I think people look at that and say, listen,
this is four years and we will pressed this group.
We don't got that kind of money, So we gotta
kind of paint eid Dolls out as some kind of
(11:28):
rag tag, controversial, radical group because we're never gonna try
to pay them. And so I think what you see
is just powerful people who have decided that they have
built their lives and they've built America or an injustice
and it's gonna keep being that way. And a way
to keep being that way is to just smear eight
dolls and say we are controversial as opposed to just
(11:48):
saying listen, okay, you're right, reparations needs to happen, and
it needs to go to a specific group. Let's talk
about how we do that. American culture sits on top
of eight or culture. That's just a fact. It's about
our inventions, it's about our music, it's about everything that
you do. America. You don't really have a culture outside
of us. The people you can't. You brought here and enslaved.
(12:10):
You have no culture outside of that, So that makes
us specific. You know, our culture is not Haitian culture.
Our culture and our contribution is not the name. It's
not South American, it's not Kingan. It doesn't mean I
have anything against them or anybody else. We're just different.
We're just different groups. It doesn't mean better or worse.
(12:31):
That's what people mix up. I'm not saying I'm superior
to you. What I'm saying is that we're different. And
in terms of America, the descendants of Chaddel slavery have
made a different and a heavier contribution to America than
anybody else. And we did it unwillingly, and we got
abused because of it. And we have a specific cost. Now,
when you have a specific cost, that means a specific
(12:51):
payment that comes only to me, comes only to you, Erica,
that's what it means. You have to have that and listen.
Like I tell everybody, if the Haitians get reparations from
the French, I'm gonna be the first one that Papabolis
champagne in the street and celebrate. You deserve it. I'm
not gonna say I deserve it. I don't. My people
don't come from Toussaint's people. It don't. I don't deserve that.
(13:13):
I should celebrate it, and I will celebrate it because
I disagree. I oppose oppression anywhere everywhere. So I will
absolutely salute you, dance in the street with you, everything.
But I don't deserve that because my people didn't fight
for that. But everything that happened in this country, my
people fought for and deserved. And we have a specific
debt that is old to us that shouldn't be controversial.
(13:33):
So to be clear, how outside of everything that others
might define you, how did you find yourself and what
is ados well? We defined ourselves as American descendants of slavery, right,
slavery as an institution Slavery was institution in this country.
It wasn't just something that happened. It was the government
weaponized against us, and that these people are less than
(13:54):
These people are slaves, they're designed to be slaves, and
out of that we created something beautiful. So that's how
I defined myself. I define myself by my ancestors and
what they fought through and what they encountered, and the
fact that I'm still here. That's why the fight still
happens because I think we have to be freedom fighters
in this space. That's what our people were and that's
what we owe to them. There's a certain debt that
(14:16):
is old to the ancestors in terms of, yeah, you
gotta fight because we fall, We fought and died. You
gotta fight too. You gotta keep this fight going. So
that's how I define AIDS in terms of who we
are politically and otherwise. My people have been here four
hundred years, contributing to this country and not getting the
wealth of this country, not getting the milk and honey
of this country. Like Martin Luther King said, you know,
(14:38):
it's one thing to be poor, it's another thing to
be poor in a country of wealth. So we are
in a country that we built. We built all this
wealth for this country. America would not be a country
without AIDS, and we're still a bottom cast in this country.
That's different. I'm not the same as somebody else. I'm
not the same as any other person because of melanin.
(14:58):
Melanin doesn't make us the same. And so I think
that's the point where people say, oh my god, event
at also being divisive. But Meldon is a trait, it's
a biological trait. It doesn't mean we're the same in
terms of our contributions to America, and it doesn't mean
that you should get reparations the same as me can
A question just on sort of like how you think,
you talk about specificity, how you think about the mechanics
(15:19):
of things, because I'm guessing you would also agree that
whether or not you're ads, if you have black skin
in this country, you still suffer from the legacy of slavery,
that even if you're a second generation Caribbean immigrant, that
you still suffer from the structures that were put in
place that are sort of built around white supremacy. Would
you agree on that front, Yes, absolutely right, because America
(15:41):
is too tiered. They don't ask who you are. They
just you know, see you black, but go ahead. So
the question I have is that if there's repreation, do
you believe that black Americans who have suffered under the
legacy of slavery also deserve some sort of compensation or
on some sort of a structure that allows them to
play and even on an even playing field with white Americans.
(16:01):
And should that be part of reparations. Do you imagine
that it's a separate bill or mechanism, or how do
you deal with that other group of Americans who continue
to suffer under the legacy of slavery but are not
necessarily Ito's descendants. Well, let me just point out one
thing first before I deal with what you just said.
The meat of what you just said, American descendants of
(16:22):
slavery came here in slave ships. Every other group came
here either on foot on a plane. You came here voluntary.
Voluntary versus involuntary has consequences in terms of reparations. Now,
you do not get reparations because you came here voluntarily.
You decided to come here because you will have a
better life. That was your choice. You don't get reparations
for that. What I will say is this, we have
(16:44):
a Black agenda, So you don't get reparations, no, but
you do get to access this Black agenda that we have.
The Black agenda is antidiscriminatory, so it is with the
lived experience of what we deal with in terms of
racism and discrimination. There's a lived experience of racism. That's
what a lot of black immigrants deal with, right or
(17:06):
children of black immigrants. What ADOS deals with is not
only the lived experience, but the inherited experience in terms
of the lack of wealth. So you would not have
access to reparations as a Caribbean person who came here voluntarity,
but you would have access to our Black agenda in
terms of our anti racism, anti black policies. Those things
(17:27):
are part of our Black agenda. We have an ADOS agenda,
which is reparations and a Black agenda. What black immigrants
deal with is discrimination, and we have things in our
Black agenda that mitigate that. What we're saying is that listen,
as a black immigrant, you absolutely are able to access
our transformative Black agenda. The only thing that you don't
(17:47):
access is reparations, because reparations is a delineation between who
came here in slaveships and who came here on a
plane or on foot. That's it. So you can access
this because you have a lived experience of this scrimination,
and we want to help you take care of that.
But there's another thing in terms of inheritance, a d
O S should have far more in terms of our wealth.
(18:09):
Our wealth has been stolen, were plundered group from slavery,
Jim Crow and then on. We're taking care of that.
That is what reparations is for. That is specifically for
aid us. That is an inheritance that we have been
robbed of. So the inheritance that we have been robbed
of were taking care of specifically of a d O S. Now,
you have a specific experience, a lived experience of discrimination.
(18:31):
We're gonna try to deal with that, my black immigrant
ally in terms of our black agenda. But there are
two different aspects of what we're doing. How do you
think reparations should be done? Well? Reparations for us is
very different because no other group in the world has
come from slavery and been multigenerationally oppressed. No group can
(18:51):
say that, no group can say that. Listen, we were
slaves and then the country decided to weaponize itself against
US local and federal. So, oh, there is no framework,
There is no blueprint. Now, what I will say is
that I do appreciate Holocaust reparations in the sense that
they understand that there are people who stand in the shoes.
So there are people who stand in the shoes of
(19:13):
Holocaust survivors, just like in America we have people who
stand in the shoes of slaves. So that is us.
So the framework would be to begin a repayment of
the wealth plundering. Right, that's part of what we have
to do. You have to do a repayment. There has
to be a check, but there has to be a
check for several generations. Because one thing I always say
(19:33):
is that it takes much more time to repair a
wound than it takes to inflict a wound. If I
take a knife right now and slash you, it's gonna
take much the more time for you that wound to
heal than it took for me to hurt you. So
that's the same thing in terms of what we have
to deal with. Right, Slavery happened, Jim Crow happened, reconstruction happened,
Mass and conceerration happened, but it's gonna take a lot
(19:55):
more time than four hundred years to fix what you
did to us. In four hundred years of reparations is
just the beginning of the fix. And I think that's
why America doesn't want to do to fix because they
know what they did to us, and they know how
long it's gonna take to fix that, and they don't
want to make that an American program. But that's what's
gotta happen. So when you're talking about the Germans, just
(20:15):
so where we get what you were talking about, what
did they do specifically that you said you feel at
least addressed in a way that you think was direct
in terms of the payments around the world, not just Germany,
in terms of the payments to Holocaust survivors. They've said
that this listen, it's not just Holocaust survivors, it's the heirs.
It's the people who are considered to be standing in
(20:37):
the shoes of those people who still bear the cost.
And I think they captured that perfectly, because there are
people who are still standing in the shoes of Holocaust
survivors who still bear the cost of that. In that
very same way, in America, we have American descendants of
slavery who are still bearing the cost. Because you have
to understand what's happened in America. Let's just really break
(20:59):
it down. The weaponization of America and American citizens against
ads has been very intentional. It's not just because some
people are racist. That's not what happened. We've had race,
the creation of race, which is really a construction. It's
not real. Merlandan doesn't make you a race of people.
What's happened is that America said that this race is
going to be on the bottom and they're going to
(21:21):
eat the failure of American They're gonna be America's garbage disposal.
So we're gonna put We're not only gonna just put
you in jail so you can work for free and
be new slaves. We're also going to put plants in
your neighborhood that puff out chemicals that kill you. We're
also going to have you be the ones that drink
lead water. When the country needs jobs, we're gonna just
build prisons and how people work in prisons, and have
(21:44):
construction companies build industrial prison complexes. So we're going to
use you to feed the rest of the country. You
are going to not only eat the failure, but you're
going to provide prosperity to the rest of the country.
And that has been very intentional from slavery all the
way to now. And there's a cost that comes with that,
but that's a very specific cost to us that nobody
(22:05):
else bears. How do you pay it? Say, everything sort
of lines up the way you want. And frankly, if
you say pump your brake, let's wait, it maybe past
your lifetime, in my lifetime that we will see anything
that's close to what you're talking about. But who and
what type of processes is going to be. It has
to be multifold and multifaceted. And I don't think anybody
(22:25):
has ever talked about that. I've never seen anybody talk
about it. So it has to be a redistribution of
wealth because wealth will stolen, wealth has to be repaid.
That's number one. The second thing is you have to
have protections in place. What happened to us during the
Great Recession was that people were able to come down
in our communities and take away from us to plunder
our group. That's always happened. You have to have some
(22:47):
protections in place for people who have recently received reparation. Now,
this is just the beginning. Like I said before, this
is not the end. But you have to have protections
in place because capitalism can be predatory and one of
the things that we have seen is the only capital
that we've had access to has been predatory capital. You
have to have protected the place saying that you cannot
target this group with subprime anything. You cannot target this
(23:11):
group with scams. We have to be a protected class.
You can protect a spot at our but you can't
protect AIDS. You absolutely can, and that have to be
consequences for that. The other thing that has to happen
to we talk about plugs and outlets. So a lot
of AIDS come out of school and we're the plug
and we don't have an outlet. That's one thing an
Tonio Moore has talked about. We have a plug, we
don't have an outlet. There have to be places that
(23:33):
are set asized for us to build. Well, right, people
can say, now listen, as we know y'all got reparations.
Y'all want to own land, but guess what, we don't
want to sail to you, and so you don't have none.
There has to be something in place that says we
get a preference in terms of how we go about
becoming the ownership class. There have to be plugs, so
they have to be mechanisms and incentives for people to
(23:57):
kind of bring aidos into what we have been locked
out of. We've been locked out of wealth in this country,
and there has to be some kind of incentives to
bring us back into that. There have to be protections,
to say Lessen, I'm a fan of quotas in terms
of ads. You have to sell this much land. You
have to have this media aid our students, you have
to have these media aidos who are in this part
(24:17):
of check. You have to do that. All of that
is a part of what we're doing. It's not just
a check because if you make it just a check,
we become consumers and we try to buy stuff and
everybody says no. And eventually what happens is that people say,
you know what, I've tried to buy everything. I've tried
to become everything. There are no protections. Capitalists are still
(24:37):
weaponizing themselves against me. I'm just gonna take this money
by Lamborghini because I want to do something with the money.
The money has to move, and we have to have
places to plug into. When we have that money, there
have to be protections and places for us to plug
that money into to create our own ownership class. I
want to know again because I got to go back
to this, because this is where sometimes the reberen met
(25:00):
the road. How do you figure out the who? Why me?
Why you? Why not? Nicki Minaj whose people are from
the Caribbean or Drake from Canada? How do you figure
out who? If we get what you want? How do
we figure that out? Do you have one parent who
comes from American childel slavery and I'm gonna tell you
(25:20):
how to best figure that out? If you have a
parent who's a share cropper, like people say, oh my god,
it's really hard to do. We can't figure that out.
It's gonna be really hard. No, it's not. Before the
Immigration Act of nineteen sixty five, the overwhelming majority of
us right, it was mostly black and white. I'm not
saying oh, but disproportionately, that's what it was. So if
you have a grandfather, great grandparent who was a sharecropper
or whatever, you come from slaves, that's just what it is.
(25:42):
It's not hard to figure out we have records, but
if you're a black immigrant or if you come from
black immigrants, no you don't get reparations. This is a
specific justice claim is sacred. And see, the thing is,
we don't have any problem understanding that when we talk
about Native Americans. We understand that when we talk about
Native Americans and what they get, they get a specific satiside.
We don't have any problem talking about that. When we
(26:04):
talk about Holocaust survivors and their children, we don't have
any problem talking about how that's a specific satiside. The
same thing happens here. We're a specific group with a
specific justice claim. Now in terms of the people that
you talk about who come from the Caribbean and black
immigrants and their children, because we have children of black
immigrants who are not Black immigrants, they're Black Americans. What
(26:25):
we have for them are protections and a Black agenda
because they have a lived experience of discrimination. They don't
have the inheritance, the plunder, they don't have ancests who
came and slaveships, but they have an experience in this
country which is racialized. So the Black agenda helps protect
them as well as us against this racialized kind of discrimination.
(26:46):
So that is there for them, the reparations piece, though
it's just for us a lived experience of discrimination, not
the inheritance. Interesting duality. Our lives are all about opposites, Erica.
I mean, look at you and me doing this talk
about a lived experience? Yeah, well what what? What? Quick?
(27:06):
Whitney changed the subject, Erica, did you know? And preparing
to introduce his reparations bill in the Senate, Corey Booker,
for instance, he discovered his family came from Sierra Leone.
Well that spangs of red beans and rice. I don't
even know what that means. But there's also the process
of elimination. Process of elimination. Well, it's this theory that
it might be easier and faster to determine which Black
(27:29):
Americans are not descendants of slaves. Okay, this sounds like
a get pretty divisive. Okay, how do you do that? Then? Well,
you start with this, there are very few quote voluntary
black immigrants, if you know what I'm saying. You know,
with the exception of students in the United States prior
to the Immigration and Nationality Act of Hey, chuck out
(27:52):
the big brain on Whitney. Mind, if I have a
bite of your tasty burger. I'm just getting started on this,
so here we go. So what you do is you
comb through immigration records from then to now. Oh yeah, okay, no,
I I see where this is going. Go in, okay,
and you see who wouldn't be eligible for reparations target
only to American slave descendants, like Kamala Harris, like Barack Obama.
(28:16):
Like I'm not going to be the one to say
but yet like that, like you could remove one set Okay,
now when you just did say, but when I put
a name to it, you're back off, all right. Well,
leaving the people who do get the checks is the point, right,
And that's interesting. Well, we talked to Mary Francis Barry.
She's a historian, she's a lawyer, she's an activist. She's
a former chair of the United States Commission on Civil Rights.
(28:38):
Let's see what she says. If you are going to
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 not directing targeted
(28:59):
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 descendant of
a slave here in the United States ought to get reparations.
(29:23):
Other people can argue for their own. What I'm talking
about is what do we do about the descendants of
slaves here? People should demand reparations from the ones who
profited from their labor. It's so interesting America to see
if there are more sides to this than just whether
you're a descendant of American slaves or not. No, it's true,
(29:45):
and we don't talk a lot about class in America.
But while there are huge disparities and average income and
an average family generational wealth, the fact is that there
are poor black people, middle class black people, and there's
rich ones. I'm not one of them. I'm working on it. Yeah,
But I mean, so are you saying, does Oprah get
(30:06):
a check? Does Kanye? I don't know much, but I
do know this, Kanye has got a check tonight. Oh
Kanye is good, trust and believe. So where do we
say the cutoff is is individual income? Let's say over
eighty thousand a year family income over a hundred and
sixty thousand, Like for the stimulus is that you do
it that way? It just occurred to me that to
(30:26):
get some folks behind reparations, we should call it stimmy
two point Oh okay, agreed, you know, yeah, I like that,
you know, stimmy two point Oh, let's get it there.
I like that. Okay, But back to the money here, Yeah,
well money. What if what if while we're at it,
what if a smart financially nuanced reparations policy could address
(30:47):
disparities of economic justice and capital formation in the black community?
What if the who questions could be addressed in a
smart way by the how? So, how are you going
to do this? Here's what I mean? And let me
see if I can tie some of this together as
we go. We've been talking about, or thinking of reparations
as a system of direct payments to descendants of slaves, right,
(31:09):
prove your ancestry, don't be Kanye, get a check. What
if that's too simple a model. What if we looked
at uh yeah, separate payments for separate classes of damages. Yeah, exactly, So,
like small business loans to support black owned businesses, to
combat traditional bank redlining and black neighborhoods things like that, yeah, right,
(31:30):
or a program of home loans to combat the longtime
patterns of discrimination and segregation in housing. What about targeted
aids to schools in black neighborhoods. Don't forget the schools,
you know, what do you mean? You know America hates
its children. You know nobody ever votes for schools. True,
(31:52):
but let's get back to your larger point. You're saying
that by tailoring the how reparations, you can finesse the
who is that what you're saying? Yes? Yes, And by
doing what I'm proposing, You send a check to the
descendants of slaves on a hundred and sixty one street,
You give a small business loan to her next door neighbor,
the Jamaican dry cleaner, and both of them qualify for
(32:13):
anti gentrification tax abatements to stay in their homes and
keep their neighborhood intact. So I see what you're saying.
You give them housing revitalization grants to keep their homes
up to market value, and then you give both their
kids student loan forgiveness so they can pursue graduate degrees. Right, right,
And support the HBC used. They go to then give
(32:33):
those kids down payment grants so they can purchase first homes.
And in all of these things, the who and the
how interact, all of them could be part of a
targeted reparations package. I'm very impressed, Erica, But I have
one question for you. Is you still have no love
for Kanye? Yeah? I got nothing but love for Kanye.
(32:55):
You hear me, go Kanye? But what if there was
a way to see if you qualify for reparations? Ever
wondered if you qualify for reparations as an American descendant
of slaves. Let's see if these all stars do. Daniel Kaloya, Killer,
Mike Mohammad, Ali, Busta Rhymes, Shirley Chisholm, Lenny Kravitz, Michelle Obama,
(33:20):
Barack Obama, Colin Powell, Will Smith, Sasha and Malia Obama,
Holly Berry, Stacy dash Viola, Davis, Clint Black, Cecily Tyson,
Alfonso Ribiero, Nicki Minaj, Tracy Ellis Ross, Charlie's there on, Drake,
(33:44):
Nia Long, Notorious b I, g Rihanna. Next time on reparations,
The Big Payback in Jade, Christian Banking in the Old Testament,
there was always reparation rations. You never just took from people.
In fact, every fiftieth year there was something called the
(34:07):
season of Jubilee, and in that season of Jubilee, all
slaves were to be free, all debts were to be canceled,
all people were to be restored. And there was a
thinking among the earlier Jewish rabbis and all that if
it ever actually happened, that the Kingdom of God would
come in its fullness. In the New Testament, Jesus clear
(34:28):
they taught that if you stole from somebody, you didn't
just replace what you stole. You had to replace two, three,
fourfold what you stole and then salvation. And so we
have to understand the issue of reparation is a serious theological, moral,
and constitutional issue. This podcast is produced by Erica Alexander
(34:55):
ben arn On Whitney Down. The executive produced Who's Our
Charlemaine the God Dolly as the Bishop. The super Busy
Producer is Nicole Childers, and the lead producer is Devin
Maverick Robbins. The producer writer is serethe Castle, and the
associate producers Kevin fam This episode was written by Tony
(35:17):
per year, with additional research support provided by Nile Blasts.
Original music by d J d t P Reparations. The
Big Payback is a production of color Farm Media, I
Heart Radio, and The Black Effect Podcast Network in association
(35:40):
with Best Case Studios. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
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