DAY 17: Reparations

The National Black Food and Justice Alliance, along with growing numbers of regional and local groups, including white accomplices, is calling for reparations of land and resources to Black and Indigenous people to account for decades of extracted wealth. For more on the history of, and some of the numbers associated with, the economic damage in the African American community, see this infographic.

The US Government has settled a few lawsuits brought by American Indian tribes for mismanaging natural resources and other tribal assets. This has been a very slow process and many recognize that this has not accounted fully for the economic damage done in those communities. Clearly, there is much more work to be done. 

There is also a growing chorus of voices across race and ethnicity saying that reparations must not simply be transactional; they must be transformative in process, relationship, and outcome. See this proposal to repair Racial Wealth Disparity.

• What comes up for you as you read these resources and solutions related to reparations?

• How are you already, or how might you be, engaged in reparations through your bookselling work, studies, or community activity? Are reparations possible or enough? If not, what more or what else?

• Bring the guide from “Coming to the Table” and/or the “10 Point Reparations Plan” from the National African American Reparations Commission to your organization, business, school, community or place of worship. Decide on ways that you can collectively align with any of the points in that plan.

• Consult this list of Indigenous Principles of Just Transition and/or this toolkit –  Land Reparations and Indigenous Solidarity Action Guide (see the case studies, examples, and actions near the bottom of the page). Bring these ideas to your organization, business, school, community, or place of worship. Consider taking some of these steps together.

More Resources

• Ta-Nehisi Coates on the case for reparations (video) and article
• What would reparations look like? (New York Times)
• The case for interpersonal reparations
• Decolonizing Wealth
• Coming to the Table: Models for Reparations

Yesterday: Structural Racism / Wealth Gap
Tomorrow: Sovereignty

Author Photo Credit: Marion Trikosko/Library of Congress | Quote from Television interview, March 1964

SIBA thanks its generous sponsors, who have made the 21-Day Racial Equity Challenge possible:

Many of the quotes used in the Challenge are excerpted from Words of Change: Anti-Racism by permission of Sasquatch Books. Copyright 2020 By Kenyra Rankin. All rights reserved.

Although SIBA has modified when appropriate for a bookseller audience, the majority of prompts and resources come directly from the 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge created by Food Solutions New England (FSNE). We are so grateful for their extraordinary work creating this program and making it available to other organizations.