Can Reparations Find a Home in America?

If a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, how many miles will it take for reparations for America's enslaved descendants to find a home? Backed by Analog Players Society and Masta Ace's debut hit, Home In America, Erika and Whitney do a deep dive into their first season's journey and uncover shades of gray and pain in their unusual black and white partnership. But first, a Lord Of The Rings, epic-remix, monologue tells the story of the long, harrowing journey begun by reparations pioneers long ago. Then a new playlist is created to entice their favorite reparations warriors, and opponents, to reappear and bear witness to their reparations journey today. While the pair revisit their best hits, the duo is encouraged to make an all-out sprint toward their season's final destination, slavery's home, The Whitney Plantation in southern Louisiana. And, like the haunted place inspired by Toni Morrison's mythological "Sweet Home," this plantation tells the story from the slave's point of view. Finally, the pair retrace their steps, only to find themselves at the beginning of the end, in the mother of all lands, the great continent of Africa. Now in the belly of the beast, at the Cape Coast slave dungeons, they ask the ultimate question, can America go through the door of no return and come out the other side, whole? Or will America's impractical arrangement and immoral history destroy its own home from the inside out? 

“Home in America” is by Analog Players Society and Masta Ace, produced by Ben Rubin. The single will be released on all platforms on June 18 by Ropeadope Records." "'Home in America" features NYC jazz greats: tenor saxophonist Donny McCaslin (David Bowie/Blackstar), pianist Orrin Evans (the Bad Plus), bassist Dezron Douglas (Ravi Coltrane), and drummer Eric McPherson (Fred Hersch Trio).

https://www.analogplayerssociety.com/ 

https://benrubin.com/

https://www.mastaace.com/

https://ropeadope.lnk.to/HomeinAmerica

For more info about this episode, please visit https://reparationsbigpayback.com

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
I'm Erica Alexander, and welcome to Reparations, the Big Payback
production of Color Farm Media, I Heart Radio and the
Black Effect Podcast Network. The world is changed. I feel

(00:27):
it in the water, I feel it in the earth.
I taste it in the pot liquor. Much that once
seemed impossible suddenly is, and much that once seemed immutable unchangeable,
suddenly is not. If you listen, you can hear a
river rolling. If you listen, you can hear a river roaring.

(00:51):
Justice is a river. You may try to damn it,
try to stop its onward course, but it will go
where it will, and woe to those who stand in
its way, shouting go back. This is a story of
that river. It began with a simple promise, a radical one,
first proposed at the close of the Civil War by

(01:14):
a committee of Black ministers to Sherman, Great Conqueror of
the South, to give formerly enslaved black people forty acres
of land in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida forty acres
of land a peace as recompense for generations of forced,
unpaid labor and cruelty, for the separations of families, for
the barbarism of two hundred and fifty years and more

(01:38):
there would be land later. There was even talk of mules.
Sherman kept his promise, and under his Special Filled Order
fifteen and the first concrete act of reparations for slavery
in this country, as many as forty thousand freedmen were
resettled on former slave owner land. The American government under

(02:00):
Lincoln was recognizing the unique suffering of enslaved black people
and watering the soil of a suffering nation within a
nation with justice, with practical physical amends. But it was
not to be. Under Lincoln's Southern sympathizer successor Johnson, the

(02:21):
dark forces pushed back. The land was taken from the
freedmen and given back to the very slavers who had
kept them in bondage. The river was damned, The great
battle for reparations for slavery was thwarted, set aside, postponed
for a generation and more. In the next century, the

(02:42):
call to battle to repay the children and grandchildren of
slavery was taken up by bold women warriors like Calli House,
who sued the U. S Government itself, and by a
lonely warrior queen Queen Mother Moore, They watered the soil
of justice with sweat and tears. Still and its bottomless cruelty,

(03:06):
the power of white supremacy would hear nothing of it,
insisted there had been no real harm, and even if
there had been, it was all buried in the unreachable
mists of time. And what could be done, Nothing could
be done. The river white supremacy said was fine, just
as it was. But like the rain, the call for reparative,

(03:30):
restorative justice, the pain drenched hearts cry from the soul
of America for reparations, was never truly silenced. New fighters
picked up the banner in the rushing rivulets of the streets,
and those mighty fountains of black power, the pulpits, and
the swift moving streams of the local governments, and in
the thunderous cataract of Congress itself, until the sons and

(03:54):
daughters of the Bondsmen could find to hear the unmistakable
sound of justice coming, just just coming home, Justice roaring, roaring,
like a river to the sea. It's not home yet now,
even now, there are those who stand in it's awesome path,
who shout, go back, Will they stop this mighty river? Wow? Erica. Well,

(04:27):
we're finally here. We're almost home. Can you believe it?
This certainly has been quite a journey. Yeah, it has.
It's amazing looking back to think of the places we've gone,
the people we've met, the different voices we've heard. I
think it's changes both, don't you. Absolutely? And in the
time we've been talking America's racial reckoning, reckoning or deflection

(04:49):
of racial reckoning, or failure to have a racial reckoning
right in this past what is it five months that
felt like a year from the insurrection at the cap Battle,
which was about white supremacy, to the trial and verdict
on Derek Chauvin, which was also about white supremacy, or
more to the point, perhaps about the death of the
white majority and the reassertion of supremacy tactics and terrorism. Brother, Yeah, well,

(05:17):
I'm glad we went on this journey in the midst
of these momentous times. You go go ahead, try that Whitney,
say it five times, say it fast, five times. I
can barely see it one time. But listen, I hope
the folks who came along with us got something out
of it as we did. Well, one more thing, Eric,
before it begin listening to your introductory piece. Here, I'm
gonnaed a little more info about pot liquor. What am

(05:39):
I like black google or something besides Whitney have gotten
your family holiday gifts? You know plenty about pot liquor.
I do hello to the Dow family. But in this case,
to get a little taste of my brew, all you
need is a little imagination. Here we go. Ah, there's

(06:13):
that word imagination now, Erica. I know I teased you
initially when you suggest we recreate really Wonka's magical feeling
in a world of reparations. But you know, I got
to admit you stuck to your guns, and in the
end that seat of inspiration gave us this big, colorful
field to play in. So were you trying to say

(06:34):
thank you? Erica? Wow, that was a great idea. You know,
I'm really sorry about laughing at you and not believing
in your mind blowing genius. Next time, I'll just get
out of your way, laid down the red carpet, and well,
you know, I don't like anyone putting words in my mouth, Erica,
but in this case, you're welcome with me. It's just
another day in the life for creative genius like me
who also writes dialogue by the power and can trick

(06:56):
you into saying anything I want anyway. Yeah, we fortunate
to meet some terrific people, warriors who are shining lights
in the battle for reparations. And every journey needs its fellowship.
It's frontline, middle and rearguard. That's right for me. Older
woman Robin Ruth Simmons really stands out, you know, the

(07:18):
idea that a local level and her case in Evans, Illinois,
that she could push hard enough to actually make her
community face the issue of reparations without waiting for it
to be a national policy or something like that. I
think that it's really kind of revolutionary, definitely, but addressing
the need for national policy and carrying on the legacy
of the great Congressman John Conyers. We had the great

(07:40):
Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas to join us to
talk about HR forty, the historic and long overdue resolution
before Congress to form a commission to study reparations. Slavery
is the original sin. Slavery has never received an apology.
The number of Africans who died in the New Passage
over to million. Number of the slaves who died during slavery, first, second,

(08:04):
and third generation, over two point five millions, who has
a history like that. Reparations should be welcomed by all Americans,
for we are not asking one American to give one payment.
What we're saying is, it's the only way that slavery
ended was a governmental action of the Thirteenth Amendment. Governmental

(08:26):
action and reconstruction failed after twelve years because it was
imploded by governmental people, and after reconstruction, a reign of
terror that had never been seen. The hanging fruit, the lynching,
the oppression of voting, the tearing away of land, and
the amazing concept of the continuing de jure and de

(08:48):
facto impact of slavery today. Mega businessman Bob Johnson and
economist Julianne Melvo and William Darrity broke down for us
just how much reparations will cost hit It will be
a whole lot. The debt that's associated with a reparations
claim for Black American descendants of US slavery is in

(09:09):
the vicinity of ten to twelve trillion dollars. And that's
an estimate by examining the magnitude of the difference in
wealth that is held by Black Americans who find their
origins in the community of individuals who were subjected to enslavement.
We set as the target for a reparations plan elimination

(09:31):
of that gap and bringing the black share of wealth
into consistency with the black share of the nation's population. Wow,
how are we going to pay for all our bombers
and cyber warfare? Uh? With a bake sale? I guess
I better get started on those cupcakes. I didn't know
you can bake Whitney. Okay, you do that. In the meantime,

(09:54):
I'll get a vegan recipe from a friend we know. Well,
I talked to who can really cook, slcense and servant
Hot Rev and Al Sharpton. He explained why white supremacy
is in the battle to control the narrative around reparations. Yeah.
I wasn't really aware we were gonna be hearing from
the Rev. Until after you kind of slipped him in
their Eraica. You know that was kind of pretty sneaky. Well,

(10:15):
I learned it from the best whitey, I mean, Whitney.
They take ownership and some of the the sureminal, but
it's there that they are more qualified to tell us
our story and others our story than we are ourselves.
I was reading this book on Frederick Douglas and how
when Frederick Douglas was the runaway slave workers way from

(10:39):
New York to New England, and there was buzz around
the abolitionists world about this well built slave that could
read and that we could use him to go out
there and push our cars. And the white New Englanders
who were lead the abolitionist movement brought him in and

(11:00):
they started bringing them around to the various gatherings, and
then he started speaking, and they were like, no, no, no, no,
we don't need you to talk. We just need you
to be there, be the slave. We'll do the talking.
It's like we are really not saying you're equal. We
sympathize with y'all, but let us do the talking. Let
us write out the screenplay, let us tell them the

(11:21):
black experience, rather than allowing us as equals to say,
wait a minute, this is our journey, and we know
our journey better than anybody. And that is a form
of white supremacy. I run into it even in my
civil rights political work, where progressives feel that they can
tell blacks how we deal without suffering body, we get ourselves.

(11:45):
And I'm not saying we shouldn't have allies. I'm not
saying we can't work with people, but you can't take
ownership of me and you. We can no longer allow
ourselves to be interpreted by those that do not understand us.
And that's why I think that we've got to start
with our authenticity. If I've got to be somebody else

(12:09):
for you to accept me, then I'm bowing the white supremacy.
God made me. You don't have to remake me. I
would find where he made me. Just get out of
my way, get your need on my name. We also
got a solid definition of reparations from your pal the Rizza,
or should I say your son Bobby Diggs. You know
you guys are a whole American saga unto yourselves. Oh lord,

(12:31):
Wu tang Okay, that was a shameless plug fear series.
Wu tang in American saga. Is there gonna be a
second season? By the way America? Yes, Whitney, thank you
for the subtle product placement. Yo. I was thrilled the
Rizzard could join us. Reparations what is it? It is
the making of amends for a wrong that one has
done by paying money to or otherwise helping those who

(12:55):
have been wronged. It comes from two words repair an action,
and so thus it is the action of repairing the
damage that one has caused. It is a noun, and
we need it now. He laid it down. Yeah, and
we got a quick education and white privilege from joy
read That was a fun game. And Evett Carnell, a

(13:17):
truly gifted advocate for a very specific definition of reparations.
She broke it down and showed us how we'd have
to discuss who gets it. Name me one other group
that has been oppressed from slavery and then has had
the entire government, local and federal mechanized against them. No
other group can claim that. Now. Some other groups can

(13:38):
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. Melanine doesn't make us the same
in terms of our contributions to America, and it doesn't
mean that you should get reparations the same as me.
American descentis of slavery came here in slave ships. Every

(14:00):
other group came here either on foot on a plane,
you came here. Voluntary. Voluntary versus involuntary has consequences in
terms of reparations. Now, do you have one parent who
comes from American child slavery and I'm gonna tell you
how to best figure that out. If you have a
great grandparent who was a share proper or whatever, you
come from slaves, that's just what it is. It's not
hard to figure out. We have records. But if you're

(14:23):
a black immigrant or if you come from black immigrants, no,
you don't get reparations. This is a specific justice claim
is sacred now in terms of the people that 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 we have for them are protections
and a Black agenda because they have a lived experience

(14:45):
of discrimination. They don't have the inheritance the plunder, they
don't have ancests who came in 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. So that is there for them.
The reparations piece though, is just for us that really

(15:06):
set off the hotline we set up for people to
call if they wanted to find out if they qualified.
You know, it's still going Lebron, James, Elizabeth Warren, j
Edgar Hoover, Carol Channing, The Jackson Five, Steven Tyler, Vin Diesel,
Mitch Land, Drew, Rachel doll Is All, Michael Jackson, Off

(15:30):
the Wall, Michael Jackson, The Thriller, Michael Jackson Invincible, Darth Vader,
Live Tyler, Stacy Dash Come On girl again, Carol Channing.
Steven Tyler from Aerosmith is part black, I guess partially

(15:50):
so dude doesn't just look like a lady. He looked
like a black lady. No, Steven Tyler. We also got
a fascinating less and in the slavery based origins of
tipping from Sorrow Garaman. As we say in New Orn,
there is now mountains of evidence that tipping is not
correlated with the quality of the service. Tipping is a

(16:12):
reflection of all of America's biases from the inception of America,
and what is correlated with is the race and gender
of the server, her eye color, her skin color, her
hair color, her hair texture, her breast size, whether she's
willing to touch the customer or be touched, And so
that segregation of workers of color into back of house

(16:36):
versus front of house, which is eerily reminiscent of the
way in which slaves on plantations or even in reconstruction
people of color were treated and differentiated. And then on
top of that, the differential in the way people are tipped.
All of that results in a five dollar per hour

(16:57):
wage gap between black women and white men in our industry.
That differential creates generational poverty. The sub minimum wage exacerbates
the inequality, and it forces all of these folks to
live off of tips. The fact that people of color
earn less in tips even when they have the same positions,

(17:19):
it is a reflection of still deep seated racism in
the United States. Even when workers of color make it
to higher paid positions, they cannot earn the same in
tips because of this racism. Erica, we really had an
amazing opportunity to speak and learn from some really, really
heavy hitters. You know, I'm thinking now of your friend

(17:41):
Reverend William Barber. He is my dear friend. We lucky me.
I love me some Bishop Barber and Yeah, he really
is the pre eminent clergy voice of this century. Bishop
is carrying the mantle of Dr King's Poor People's campaign.
He calls the period we're living through now the third Reconstruction.
He came with that moral authority of his, you know that,

(18:03):
And he gave us fair warning about the price America
will pay if it ignores the bill. That's due justice,
just justice, just justice, established justice. That's all it is.
And we are to let it roll down like waters,
and we are to let it come down like a

(18:24):
mighty stream. And until such time we better remember what
Dr King said the same thing Amo said six centuries earlier,
woe to those who are at ease in Zion, woe
to those who are at ease in America. And then
Dr King said like this twenty four hours before he
was killed. He said, we gotta give ourselves to this movement.

(18:46):
It might cost us, but we gotta give ourselves to
this movement because we either go up together or we
go down together. And nothing would be more tragic than
for us to stop at this point. Another heavy hitter
who bought his a game, astonishing genius, passion and serious
commitment for the fight was Killer Mike. Even if his

(19:09):
message was not a pretty one. Yea, his message was disturbing.
It was disturbing because it was true. I think we
called it the ugly truth, you know, a concept that
racism is a big business, and that business may be
too big to fail. The ugly truth is racism has
been extremely profitable for America. We have a problem in

(19:30):
this country and that we like to use cheap labor
to create wealth. On the other side, and the community
that has been used for cheap labor the most are
black people. I believe that as a country, we can
be the country we aspire to be, where there's liberty
and justice for all. But we can no longer do
this if we are married to the classic capitalistic system

(19:53):
in which we use and abuse the people that were
brought here for free or cheap labor, just like we
do migrant workers now, just like we've done Africans in
the past, just like they did the Chinese during the
making of railroads, just like they've done even the Irish
and the Latino population that came into New York through
Ellis Islands in the twenties, thirties and nine. This country

(20:16):
knows that a different way is possible. The question is
are we too lazy and apathetic to try a different way.
It is easy to target black, and not only black
with the poor. Racism is an advent of classism. Classism
is an advent of the bourgeoisie and the elite, meant
to oppress the peasant class. If we don't start to
fight racism right now in this country, then we will

(20:38):
forever remain an empire that uses the free labor of
black people to exploit and capitalize off of. We have
an opportunity in this moment to give people what we
truly promise as freedom and justice for all. That means
we must fight, fight, fight, every step of the way
against racism. And it's not enough to be non racist,
you must be vehemently anti racist. Killer Mike is the

(21:00):
man that brother. I would vote for him. I would
roll with him if he allowed me to roll with him.
But you know, I'm really excited because we got to
speak to so many different types of people and it's
not every day that you get to speak to a
billionaire former presidential candidate. Uh, but that's exactly who we
got with Tom Steyer. Yeah, he rolled the moneyball to

(21:21):
expose the financial barriers that continue to limit the economic
growth of Black Americans. Cat Taylor and I started a
bank fifteen years ago partially to redress the systemic racism
in the financial system and the banking system in the
United States that specifically addressed economic justice, environmental sustainability, and

(21:42):
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 americanighborhoods and you can't
lend in there, which shut black people out of home ownership,

(22:04):
which is the basic wealth creation historically for American citizens.
And so we started a bank from scratch. 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,

(22:25):
in terms of sequestrian carbon And if you can't do that,
then that's not alone for us. 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 you know, not trying to be fair, but to
be specifically pointing out the people who have been discriminated

(22:45):
against and trying to give them the opportunities that have
been systemically taken away from them. The Miyror Flint, Michigan.
Karen Weaver joined us to tell us about the dark
water story of our city. When you look at what
really happened, it was about a group of people making
money and get rich because off of the water supply
and having taken our pipe from us, because we sold

(23:06):
water to all of the surrounding cities in our county,
and they changed our water source and they put us
on the Flint River. Of all things, I mean growing up,
you know, we all knew you don't want water from
the Flint River. You find cars, you find bodies, you
find all kinds of things in there. And uh, as
they made that switch, they didn't test our water. How

(23:27):
do you switch a water source for a city and
not tested. And when people complained about it and said
something was wrong, we were told the water was fine.
But think about this, It corroded the parts for the
GM cars, and GM got off of our water, but
corrosion control was never added to the water. So we're

(23:48):
drinking this water that we're told is okay. For eighteen months,
we complained, We held up bags of hair, skin rashes,
those kinds of things, and um our water source had
been switched. And you know, it had to be a
cover up, because how do you keep that quiet for
eighteen months from the rest of the world when we're

(24:09):
here in Flint, you know, yelling and streaming and crying.
And I got my water tested while I was campaigning,
and I got the call from Virginia, texaing on a
Sunday night, and they said, your water is tested high
for lead, and they told us not to even use
it to brush our teeth. But they had never planned
on telling us and sharing this information because one of

(24:29):
the things we found out was the state new and
they were having bottled water sent to their state buildings
here while the people continued to drink this poisoned water.
And at that point it was more than lead because
we had bacteria in there. There was equal light and
there there was all kind of mess in our water.
Yet nobody thought to say, let's test it, let's put

(24:51):
corrosion control in and get the people of the city
of Flint off of this water. And that's what led
to the Flint water crisis, was know cutting off our
access to clean water. And when you talk about reparations
and what people are old as a result of a
wrong that has been done to them, Flint has definitely

(25:13):
not gotten what we deserve. Mayor Karen Weaver is still
on the job, but as at this moment, Flint still
does not have the water justice and racial justice she's
been fighting for. Now, I want to switch gears here
and talk about something that I really enjoyed that Jurassic
Park sketch I did with Cree Summer. Hello Whitney, or

(25:40):
should I say professor, Hello reparations mosquito and please call
me Whitney. So today we're going to be learning about
the history of reparations. Indeed, difficult yet worthy conversation told
within the rich, painful tapestry of a mayor becas failure

(26:01):
to acknowledge the sin of slavery and the debt owed
to its formerly enslaved people and their descendants. Here wait,
that was exhausting. I quit, Oh no, you don't reparations, Mosquito,
no backing out now. Talking about race in America can
be exhausting, but trying to get reparations, that's like shake

(26:24):
up a snow globe in Boston expecting it to rain
in Cleveland. Sadly, I'm sure they had made perfect sense
to you, Whitney. Whitney, you sounded like Four's Gump. You
didn't good job though, man Erica. You know, I recall
that minstrel song you sang. You didn't exactly sound like

(26:44):
a wreatha. You know, let's hear little of that race's
institutions down all vote if you don't pay all No, no, no,
come on now. I don't think we need to hear
that again. Brought and I brought the house down, but

(27:06):
I don't think we need to hear that again. I
was impressed we were able to explore the powerful story
of the late Queen Mother Moore through your Back to
the Future interview with her me too. And one thing
I've learned and been impressed with on this whole journey
was how many times it was women black women from
Sheila Jackson, Lee and Robert Ruth Simmons. Going back to

(27:26):
CALLI House and to Queen Mother Moore, who have been
at the forefront of this struggle. Absolutely, Mr Pop, welcome,
Queen Mother. I'm glad that you're here. Thank you so much,
and thank you for blessing us with your story. Yes, no,
thank you, ma'am. So you've been organizing around the black

(27:49):
community for a while, but how did you get to
the liberation movement like your work with the great Marcus Garvey. Well,
I was sa gro in turned Marcus Corvey. Move went
by the fact that he I understood that he was
to come and speak to us in Louisiana. And we
went to the meeting and Lord behold, he didn't come,

(28:11):
and we who had the mayor refused to allow him
to come. So we were very incensed about it and
got a delegation to go see why. Then it was
guaranteed that Marcus God It would come. The next night
the hall was packed with people and everybody went with ammunition,

(28:33):
had guns. Everybody had guns, Black people with guns. Blue
Steve Smith and Western's German lugers. Really and uh, I
had two guns with me. Y'all showed up and showed out,
that's what's up. Amazing and ammunition everybody had what you

(28:55):
call a suitcase today because we was afraid the police
would stop him from coming again and we wanted to
protect him. Wow, in the night that he did come,
what happened. Thirty five people was in that hall. So
when Goviy came, re applauded very much and he said,

(29:15):
my friends, I wanted to apologize for not speaking to
you last night. But the reason I didn't speak to
you is because the mayor permitted himself to be used
as a stooge by the police department to prevent me
from speaking to you. And when he said that, the
police jumped up and said, I'll run you in. And
when the police did that, everybody jumped up on the

(29:38):
benches we had benches then and took out their guns
straight up. The guns were straight up in the air. Speak,
GOVI sleet and go said and as I was saying,
and he went and repeated itself, and the police filed
out of there like little puppy does. Every policemen filed

(29:58):
out of the hall. Can't forget that speak Garvey speak. Oh,
I wish I was there. That was amazing, you know, Erica.
And I'm proud that there were white people who showed
up people like historians Adam Rothman and Ed Baptist, and
then of course Katrina Brown, a descendant of the largest
slaveholding family in America, who bore witness and gave us

(30:22):
a much trure story about slavery and its aftermath than
we ever learned in school. The Dwolves, statistically they brought
more Africans on their ships than any other family north
or south. They purchased human beings who had been kidnapped
by force and were in a complete and utter state
of terror, and it was the most horrific type of

(30:45):
circumstance one could possibly imagine. And my ancestors did it
over and over and over again. And as my cousin
Tom said, they must have known it was evil. How
could you not when you were hearing people screaming in
the holds below, And yet they somehow told themselves stories
to justify that this was okay, and their blood runs
in me. A huge fortune was amassed from all of

(31:09):
this that was pretty much squandered by a couple of
generations later. We wouldn't be able to say we inherited
money directly from the slave trade, but it's really obvious
to me that we have been in the elite ever since,
and it fits the pattern where once you're in the elite,
you marry other elite families. So I'm like super aware

(31:31):
of the class privilege that has remained even if we're
not at like the uber rich level. And I'm super
aware of how much social capital I have. So they've
gone to a lot of Ivy League schools, private schools,
you know, so I've had just the best education, and
that's a pattern in the family. So just extremely aware

(31:54):
of how much we were set up to succeed. We
wouldn't be able to say we heard in money directly
from the slave trade, but it's really obvious to me
that we have been in the elite ever since. One
heavy hitter we spoke to more than once on this
journey was not only a powerful woman, but with someone

(32:16):
we keep getting more and more requests for your mother,
Miss Sammy Alexander, my mom. She's not only lived a
lot and seeing a lot, she's not shy about telling
you about it. What you get us started and singing
about it and singing about it. Heaven help us such
dark but we oh. We also heard from people speaking

(32:51):
in opposition to the idea of preparations, Oh, the dark side.
And when I say dark, you mean black. Now I
sort of get it. With some white people, they worry
about a perceived loss of some kind of status or privilege. Right.

(33:14):
And as to Black preparations opponents, I don't really feel
comfortable criticizing them. I don't really know if it's that's
like my place. I don't know fair is fair and
right or wrong? You're still I think you're thinking of
Larry Elder. I know he specializes in being kind of
a black contrarian. Yeah, like the photo negative of what
most black people think. That's Larry. It's been mentioned a

(33:37):
couple of times that America has yet to atone for slavery. Well,
remember that Lyndon Johnson launched the so called war on
poverty in nine He specifically talked about the need to
redress path to grievances for blacks. Since then, we've spent
over twenty two trillion dollars in payments to fight the
so called war on poverty. That's about personal responsibility. They
are think tanks on the left, like the Brookings Institution,

(33:59):
the think tanked on the right, like the American Enterprise Institude.
And they agree that the way to escape parvetings to
do a handful of things. Number one, finish high school.
Number two, don't have a kid until you get married.
Number three. Get a job, keep a job, and don't
put that job to get another job in Number four,
avoid the criminal justice system. And they don't say that
this formula only applies to you if you're white, just
say there's a formal applies to anybody. Equal rights and

(34:22):
equal results are two very different things, and that's what
I think we're getting confused about here. Everybody's entitled to
equal rights, but nobody's entitled to equal results. So as
we talk about who pays who, this is gonna be
one of the greatest generational transfers of wealth back and
forth because virtually every people on the face of the
earth was involved in slavery. So figuring out who owes
what is gonna be a hell of an achievement. Okay,

(34:44):
Larry whatever, but you know he's not alone. What about
the former NFL and Heisman Trophy winner herschel Walker. I've
been a fan, you know, But come on, reparation, wherever
the money come from, who is blowing what we're sent
it's you're blight. Must you be to receive reparation if
reparation is a fee or a correction for a terrible

(35:06):
sin of slave owners, government and others. But we punished
the non guilty party. Is it not creating division, a
separation with different races reparation? I feel it continues to
let us know we're still African American rather than just America.
That's the American way, Scribd everybody, that's America's defining legacy.

(35:45):
It's hard out. I know that's cold step that Beyonce, Yeah, okay,
but hey, you know we're talking about Larry and Herschel,

(36:07):
two black men and their issues. But in the course
of this journey over and over, I've been struck by
white people and their reluctance to engage in this discussion wholeheartedly. Now,
I was the one who said it that I know
that they have their reasons for white fragility, but I
saw some reluctance from you to Whitney, and I think
it kept you at arms a distance and relegated you

(36:27):
to being a voyeur like watching and commenting, but not
sacrificing or offering yourself And by that I mean personal testimony.
That's how I saw it. But it took some time
for me to realize that although you work and create
powerful projects in this arena, and I'm talking about race,

(36:50):
you may have some white fragility and fear too, because
sometimes in our discussions, however, unconsciously, I thought you were
trying to protect yourself and I was frustrated. So, though
you may be way further down the line than most
other white people, I think your white persons work in
progress side should always be posted. Well, I think we're

(37:12):
all work in progress, and these are hard conversations to have.
I'm not surprised you felt that way, No, I and
I get it with me. I do, but as a
black woman, I cannot deflect or avoid this conversation. My people,
my family is all in. I'm all in. I'm more
exposed and more vulnerable. So that said, so we can
be clear. I believe the moral states should must be

(37:35):
higher for you. So your investment must be more significant,
you know, because y'all got a ways to go, and
that's the only way you can catch up, and we
need you all to catch up. But hey, you know
we're on the road together, brother, Okay, so let us
keep moving. Some of the places we visited along the

(37:58):
way made me mad dir matter than usual. Okay, yeah,
I remember you with the old slave market New York City,
right there on Wall Street and the slave burial grounds.
There you think of slavery. You don't typically think of
New York, but there it was, the slave market right
across from the stock Exchange. In other places where a
mixture of excitement and frustration like in d C. Oh boy,

(38:22):
it makes me stop and think about the full name Washington,
d C. I mean to bring it home. Its name
is a capital city is unique in all the world.
Our capital, the capital of the Land of the Free,
is named after a big time slave owner, a slave
owner who is relentless in his pursuit of one of
his former captives on a judge. So when you played
in the movie Arica George Washington, the Forging of the Nation,

(38:44):
m m m and yeah I did play. Only they
had Washington put in the paper asking for it to
be captured and brought it back to him. Said she
was delicately formed, delicately formed. Wow. Now this was the
son of Freedom who signed into law the Fugitive Slave Act.
You know, we were all too in Washington for the
debate of HR forty and it's just a resolution to

(39:08):
study reparations. But the pushback against it, you'd think it
was to put Florida in the water or something. Floor right.
That's good, I mean, but that was a trip, and
in a lot of epic journeys, we find ourselves coming
full circle and that means coming home. Going to visit
your father's grave was kind of a homegoing it was,

(39:28):
but kind of a lonely one. That's sad. Remote little
piece of ground was a sort of karmic reminder of
his failure to live up to greater expectations. For my dad,
it was to God, and yet he's not bound to
a piece of dirt. He let's hope we all are
saved by amazing grace. But it's hard to say if

(39:51):
there was any there there. So maybe home is inside
of us. My father's barely marked grave seems like a
small thing in the world, but his Black American dreams
for what America could be. They have their home and me,
you know, we saw another version of home, kind of
a starting place that you find yourself returning to our

(40:12):
visit to the Whitney plantation in Louisiana, and it's just
a coincidence that it's your name right, Yes, Erica, it's
just a coincidence. But the Whitney Plantation is unique as
a historical place and that unlike other slave plantations you
can visit in the Old South, this one tells its
story from the point of view of the enslaved Africans
who lived and worked and died there. That was new.

(40:33):
That was the gift that keeps giving. And we've had
a beautiful mix of people of all colors, even the
Native American couple from the Dakota tribe. And what they
all had in common was that they were looking for
a greater understanding of slavery to heal and fortify their
own lives. Like you and me, Whitney, Patna Camp. I

(40:53):
am from Curry Island, Minnesota. It's an Accuota community in Minnesota.
Maybe at us you know, our language, our culture. You know,
we're still fighting that today, bringing our language back. And
my husband's half Native and half Black, so his struggle
trying to learn and he'll tell you he's not Black
enough for black people, he's not Indian enough for Indian people.

(41:15):
So he's always you know, and for our kids, because
some of our kids look one way. Some of our
kids like it's half and half. So their struggles are different.
So you know, sometimes I'm just black, I'm just Indian.
They don't like it's hard for them to identify with
either or because it's you know, we're so colonized you
can't be both. But you know, we talked about that flag,

(41:39):
and I said, it doesn't mean anything to me. You know,
I respect veterans like that flag, and we don't stand.
We sit, and we have to fight when people when
we go to games and we have to fight with
people have arguments and like tell them our point of view, Like, no,
I don't respect us flag. I just and I teach
my kids that too. I mean Sammuel Wells from Prairie Island, Minnesota.

(42:03):
My father is from Camden, Alabama, and he told me
stories when he was a kid of how they was
treated back then. This is in the fifties. His daddy
was a slave. My grandfather was a slave. His name
was Frank and my grandfather couldn't read all right, but
he was a great builder and he built houses and

(42:27):
churches and stuff like that. So for me to come
here and see this, it's just um, it gives me
a great appreciation for my father and what he's been
through because he's he's heard while he was back there
at home in Campden, he he could hear in the
distance of things happening. He told me a story where

(42:51):
he remembered a man was accused of something that he
didn't do, and so he ran and my dad, I
could hear the hounds chasing him and the man's chasing him.
This man ran up a tree and the hounds found him,
and he refused to come down. So what they did

(43:12):
was they set the tree on fire. So he was doomed.
He's either gonna burn up a tree or jumped down
to these dogs. And uh, my dad told me that
he could hear the man running and screaming. He could
hear the commotion of him screaming in a tree while
I was on fire, you know. And for me to

(43:34):
think about that, no, excuse me. You know, the things
my dad went through, the things he's seen, and he
survived us. We are not that far from this tragedy.
And to come here and to feel these people's soul,

(44:00):
because I wonder who soul is still trapped out here,
the kids to the grandparents. How do we free their soul.
So the way this is laid out, they put a

(44:21):
map and they want us to experience a certain way,
and it says Whitney Plantation. And there's a map key,
and there's a wall of honor, the big house, the
plantation store, the kitchen, the overseaers house, the blacksmith's shop, jail,
the slave quarters, sugar kettles, German Coast, Uprising memorial artwork,
field of Angels, Ali's Gwendoline mid Low Hall in Antiach

(44:45):
Baptist Church. That's how it goes. So we heard some
music playing and some drumming, and we're gonna go inside
the church. Oh oh, whoa chick here? Man me right? Well,

(45:34):
we were singing a song called Oh Angel, or Slow
Down Your Chariot. We were singing that song because it
just reminded us of home. So we just wanted to
pay tribute to our ancestors here and we wanted to
say something that we knew that would give them joy.

(45:55):
This time means everything. This is another turning point in
our history, in our lives, and thank god we're here
to see it. It's and we're still fighting for freedom,
we're still fighting for equal rights. And we come here
to this plantation to see where there wasn't any and
we're looking for Reverend. This is why we asked for reparations,

(46:17):
because it's all of this free labor that made these
beautiful grounds. So this means everything to us, this turning point,
and we have to keep fighting. Thank you for blessing
us today. Appreciate your time. Ready to go? Yeah, okay,

(46:38):
all right, so we are back on the trail. You know,
it's a pleasant day to day, so it almost looks
like something that's out of a Sundance catalog. She does,
doesn't it like it looks quaint? But there's no doubt
that if you had to spend your life every week
and hour slaving for white people all day, having kids,

(47:02):
being sold all and then getting paid nothing for it,
and then maybe having a piece of corn bread and
some greens for hundreds of years, I really believe that
America has held a pay Oh don't you think it's

(47:22):
already paying? No, but how was it paying? In your opinion?
This is what you know. I've said this so many
times that you know, you get you get annoyed with me.
But I feel like white people are like myself, are
trying to imagine a future and can't really imagine what
that future looks like where we actually embrace this past

(47:45):
and understand it. So it's it's really confusing. I'm trying
to be like, imagine a positive future, and that's that's
what I'm saying. So then why don't you imagine the
future that you both say? What's the future? That's builting?
Actually want to know what I really think there. I
don't think that there's actually going to be a reconciliation.
I don't think that there's actually going to be reparations.
And I don't think that that there's actually going to

(48:07):
be some sort of unity. I don't I don't think
that America has really built to grapple with like the
really hard problems like that, So I don't know what
that means. So I think there's gonna be bloodshed, I
don't know. I feel like if there hasn't been already,
but not you're talking about it on a scale. Yes,
there's gonna be some, there's always going to be some.
There's lots of bloodshed in America, But is there going

(48:27):
to be you're talking about like on a massive scale. Well,
now people massively have guns. One thing that your people
have done. Is they farmed everybody. Yeah, but there's been
I mean things is that I think that the thing
you have to be like cognizant of is that's actually
if you've read the Turner Diaries or any white supremacists. Look,
that's what they're counting on. They're counting white supremacists. Their

(48:49):
belief system is that they're praying for race war because
they believe they can win a race war. So when
you talk about black people rising up, that's what white
supremacists greatest dream is that black people rise up because
they believe that they have the weapons and they have
the government on the side, that that will actually put
a final end to the race war by destroying black

(49:10):
people personally. I don't think there is going to be
a race war. When you say you say you think
there's going you think there's going to be something, I
think that there already is something we're seeing black people.
You think it's going to go along more of the same.
You've never seen any country and history, including the Greeks
or Romans, go along. They all destroy themselves in the

(49:30):
long run, like all empires, us will fall in the
short run. I don't think there's gonna be some massive
I know. But you keep talking about short time and
I'm not now I go there, You go that there's
no nation ever that has held themselves if they do
not put the people together. And that's what you do.

(49:50):
Know what happens in nations that don't come together, They fall.
They have always fallen. And it doesn't have to be
the outside to eat you. Doesn't be Russia to communists.
It's the disease in the cancer that we carry, you know.
I had to journey even further to see a version
of home. I visited Ghana in two thousand nineteen along

(50:12):
with my mother, the famous Sammy Alexander, and I saw
it close, the slave dungeons where captive people waited to
be shipped across the sea, in the stinking holds of
the slave ships. That must have been incredible. It was,
and I was moved. I was moved in ways I
expected and didn't expect. And I learned so much Whitney,
including some of the subtleties of the slavery story. Was

(50:35):
the existing institution of slavery in Africa, like the chattel
slavery instituted in America by the Atlantic slave trade or not.
Africa first and foremost all of you are welcome to

(50:59):
the Cape Castle Dungeon. I have the privilege and the
pleasure to be your main guide here through this experience. Today.
When I say the Cape Coast Castle Dungeon, I say
that on purpose because, as all of your information has
informed you, this is the Cape Coast Castle. But many
of us have also been a part of a movement
to try to say is the Cape Coast Castle Dungeon,

(51:20):
because when we just used the term castle, it kind
of suggests some fairytale images of once upon a time
and they lived happily ever after. But we know that
these monuments were named historical monuments by UNESCO because of
the role they played in the infamous North Atlantic slave trade.
But today we have not come here to feel sorry
for ourselves. Today we have come here to celebrate African

(51:44):
resilience because when we realize what our ancestors went through
and where they were brought to almost into the bottom
of hell, and yet they saw within their spirit, they
garnered enough strength with in their spirit to dare to
define death and to choose to live, so that we

(52:05):
can be designed about who he was, even small for
the pad to the hundreds and thousands that were being occupied,
and he's done it at the same time. So even
if our numbers are two hundreds, imagine that the male
dungeon that we're going into house hundreds animals. Imagine that
we're two hundreds, and the female dungeons that were visited

(52:28):
were housed a minimum of three hundred at a time.
So even though our numbers will be proud and then
were und the sweating, we remember again the challenges that
our ancestors went through when we arrived there and we
weren't incocerated again. This is the door of no return.
This is the door that we thought that we never

(52:48):
see Africa again. Those are our ancestors were pressing there.
They didn't know their destination. Nobody gave them an itinerary,
Nobody told them the time it would take to reach
where they were going, or where they were going, or
the condition. Like the dungeons that they left going through

(53:09):
this door was still darkness. There was no tall God,
there was no travel God. Um. Rabbi Khema Tanya how Levi.
I'm the executive secretary of the kind of Fest Foundation.
We do a bi annual festival here in Ghana every
two years, bringing artisans and scholars from all over the
African world um to come to put forward in that

(53:30):
for the United the African family, Erica, Alexander and the
producer in the States, and thank you for one thing.
You're magnificent, Thank you and spiritual guy. Thank you. Do
you mind if I ask you a few questions? And
certainly thank you. We think about reparations, and I think

(53:52):
reparations is something that is long overdue. It seems to
only be a strange word when it's applied to the
African experience. Whenever other any other people have gone to war,
have been devastated at any conflict, the first thing that
the international body comes together to talk about is how
are we going to restore this nation who has been
ravaged by war, by invasion or whatever. Reparations is only

(54:13):
a debate when it comes to the African experience, and
reparations is often a debate because people always quantify it
and money first. But reparations at the root of his
world means to repair a serious interruption in the African
experience and the continuity of the African experience took place.
It took place over centuries by multiple players, by multiple
multiple perpetrators, and Africans were victimized, and Africans are more

(54:35):
than worthy of having their condition addressed and having the
world come together to talk about how is Africa going
to be repaired with Africans at the center of that process. Now,
when you say the Africans will be at the center
of the process, we are here in Ghana. And then
we have to have a discussion with so many people
brought up that the African country itself and different countries
put different tribes and their own people on those boats.

(54:59):
Should they have an part in reparations? And what do
you feel about that? I do feel that everyone has
a part in that. I think the onus is on
those who would have been a factors. Africa is truly
the victim and those who cooperate and collaborated within the
minority of the African populations. And because we had a
few people that were part of the collaboration, you cannot
indicte and blame a whole people, you know, who were victimized.

(55:20):
There's not a single experience of any African family on
the face of this earth that have ever been conquered,
ever been infiltrated without the collaboration of some of their
own indigenous people. But Africans are the only one blamed
for their own horrific experience. So Africans should not be
continue to travel down the false line that Africans just
sold Africans with a blanket statement. So we must understand
who would the perpetrators, who would have victims, who would

(55:43):
have been a factors, and who were those who took
the loss. So reparations of the broad subject and people
should be bold enough to discuss it without boundaries. This
is not just a Black experience on African experience on
African American experience. This is a human experience. The whole
world benefited off of Africa being ravage. The whole memorial
must participate in the healing process. Nobody can be outside

(56:05):
of the circle of that healing process. We need as
many forums as possible, but all segments of society to
participate in the debate. We must find ways to organize
our forums, our sessions, and our conferences so that it's
all inclusive, so people come to an understanding of how
to understand each other outside of conflict, but to understand
each other in dialogue. As run H Sing song rule,

(57:05):
of the ring, that the dark past, that's tad sing song. President,
that's powerful. And your visit there to learn about slavery
does give a whole new meaning to the word home.

(57:26):
Isn't that funny? We keep saying home home is so
important in this discussion, And I keep thinking of Setha
and Paul d and the other formerly enslaved men and women,
and Tony Morrison's beloved who had worked and lived on
a plantation called Sweet Home, which he says was neither
sweet nor home. I think that idea of home is

(57:47):
tied up with the idea of justice. If you can't
get justice there, it's not home, is it? Exactly? Can
reparations find a home here in America? Slavery and race
was and is our national wound. By providing a kind
of closure, will reparations, will this kind of restorative justice

(58:07):
truly make this country a home for all the world.
The slave made was not her own, Its wealth piled
up the reckoning delay. Her children live here, but they
are not home and will not be until accounts are paid.

(58:31):
Accounts will be paid at the River Shining River, Muddy River.
Accounts will be paid at the River Weeping River, Hosannah River.
The River of Justice runs home to the sea. We
its tributaries feel and urge it on, damned sometimes sometimes

(58:53):
fast and free for generations yet unborne and generations gone,
and Whitney for real. Thank you for joining me on
this journey. You make a good team, and I couldn't

(59:14):
imagine a better companion. I feel the same way, Erica,
I couldn't imagine a better person to go looking for
home with. You're welcome a friend of ours. The Analog
Society and Master Ace wrote a song that perfectly sums
up our journey. It's a song to take us home,
Take us home. Let's getting late, man, I want to

(59:48):
go home, and no time for debate, Man, I want
to go home. My mind's in the statement I want
to go home. I'm feeling closed in and I want
to go wrong through the cotton field Menser back of plants,
got a fire burning in me like a jack O.
Land term and look over the shoulders and something. My

(01:00:09):
group was looking at you like you owe the money. Reparations, conversations.
Damn forty acres takes a lot of patience. Land of
the Free, Home of the brave, Blood of the child soul,
love the slave strange fruit hanging from a popular screamed

(01:00:30):
so loud it's like he's singing in the opera. He
wasn't guilty of the crime when they locked him up.
Damn shame. It could have been a doctor, bro You
should have could have water. But the fact remains, you'll
always be a threat when you're black with brains. They're
rather see it on the pavement, The spent and Enslaveman.

(01:00:53):
This podcast was produced by Eric Alexander, Ben Arnon and
Whitney Down. The executive producers are Sharp lamand the God
and Dolly s. Bishop. The supervising producer is Nicole Childers
and the lead producer is Devin Mavock Robbins. The Associate
producer is Kevin fam with additional research support provided by
Nile Blast. This episode was written by Tony Perrier. Original

(01:01:16):
music by d J D t P. The song You
Just Heard is Home in America by Analog Player Society
and Master Ace, produced by Ben Ruben. The single will
be released on all platforms on June eighteenth by Ropodote
Records Reparations. The Big Payback is a production of Color

(01:01:38):
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.