As historians and activists, we are constantly reminded that the past is ever-present. Often we look to the past for inspiration, lessons, and cultural anchors to sustain us. But equally important are the lingering legacies of oppression, theft, and exploitation. While chattel slavery ended for the overwhelming majority of Black people living in the United States in 1865, the residuals of that brutally extractive institution are still with us in so many ways. The past is still present, and renewed forms of white supremacy and racism have emerged in the present. The disproportionate number of Black and Brown bodies that are confined to cages we call prisons and detention centers, deprived of basic rights as citizens and human beings, is one legacy of slavery. The 13th amendment abolished slavery with one exception: prisoners. The other legacy of slavery is the stolen labor of millions of enslaved peoples, which, along with land stolen from indigenous peoples, were the building blocks of Western capitalism.
So, when activists chant, “no justice, no peace,” this also applies to history. There has to be a repair and a reckoning, even as we concede this will be inescapably incomplete. This is the challenge of reparations. How do we confront the past and its lasting legacies? It is not by chance that Black people in the United States are disproportionately poor, unemployed, landless, and without the kind of resources and assets held by their white counterparts. The predacious exploitation of Black communities continues into this very moment even as its roots are in the historic racial oppression that differentiated Black life from all others. This is not to make the simplistic and reductionist assertion that all white people are rich or even middle class, but when all other variables are constant, Black people are worse off by all indicators that measure the quality of life in our society. The legacy of slavery continues to haunt our current situation as a people. Over 200 years of unpaid labor; 100 years of being formally excluded from political power; denied jobs, loans, and other kinds of capital; and violently intimidated when rights were asserted—the cumulative effect is that Black people, on the whole, have been ruthlessly robbed by the stewards of U.S. capitalism for generations. As scholars and advocates like William Darity and Randall Robinson suggest, it’s time to settle up.
As socialists, however, we do not really feel that a true “settling up” can fully occur within the confines of the existing economic system. The rules of capitalism ensure that workers and the unemployed poor will never be fairly compensated for their labor. But the demands for reparations call attention to the particular injustice of slavery, Jim Crow, and its continued residues that have resulted in persisting inequality and premature death in Black communities.
Because of the ever-present crucible of slavery, reparations have always been some part of Black political discourse and movements, even when there has not been an active campaign. Groups like the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America have kept the demand alive over the years. In recent years new and creative approaches to reparations have surfaced. In particular, the reparations ordinance in Chicago that movement activists placed before the City Council and won. That ordinance called for reparations for victims of police torture and the reparations included not only a fund for specific victims, but mandatory inclusion of a segment on police torture in the Chicago Public Schools curriculum, a community healing center, and free college tuition for the extended families of torture survivors. This was limited, but in tone and tenor it was a move in the right direction.
This issue takes up Black politics and reparations writ large. We hope that the same vision and creative strategizing that fueled the Chicago campaign can inform the discussion about this special issue.
At a time when so many of the gains of the past are being taken away, we need anti-racist and anti-capitalist organizers to have a proactive strategy as well as a defensive one. Reparations demands are one flank of that offensive/proactive strategy.
Editor-in-Chief, Souls
Distinguished Professor or African American Studies
Gender and Women’s Studies and History
University of Illinois at Chicago
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Assistant Professor
Princeton University