Speaker 1: One of the first Americans to lead a movement for
Speaker 1: slave reparations was a woman named Callie House. She was
Speaker 1: born into slavery, freed after the Civil War, married at two,
Speaker 1: and widowed in her thirties. By the late eighteen nineties,
Speaker 1: she was raising five children and working as a seamstress.
Speaker 1: She was also helping to start an association for former
Speaker 1: slaves that did things like pay for medical care her burials. Importantly,
Speaker 1: it also demanded pensions from the federal government as compensation
Speaker 1: for slavery. Callie traveled all over the South recruiting for
Speaker 1: the association. Eventually she signed up some three thousand dues
Speaker 1: paying members, and she sent petitions to Washington asking for reparations.
Speaker 1: She also encouraged her members to do the same. They
Speaker 1: proposed a system modeled on money that had been award
Speaker 1: it to disabled Civil War soldiers. All ex slaves would
Speaker 1: get a monthly pension starting at about four dollars a month.
Speaker 1: That's around a hundred twenty five dollars in today's money.
Speaker 1: Had it Washington respond the Post Office issued a fraud
Speaker 1: order against Callie and members of the association. They said
Speaker 1: she was using the mail to encourage people to ask
Speaker 1: her something they'd never get. When Kelly got the letter
Speaker 1: forbidding her from using the postal service for her campaign,
Speaker 1: she was shocked. Then she got mad. The historian Mary
Speaker 1: Francis Barry tells the story in a book called My
Speaker 1: Face Is Black Is True Callie House and a Struggle
Speaker 1: for ex slave reparations. Here she reads Callie's scathing reply
Speaker 1: to the Post Office, and she said the Association acted
Speaker 1: on behalf of quote four and a half million slaves
Speaker 1: who would turn loose, ignorant, barefooted and naked, without a
Speaker 1: dollar in their pockets, without a shelter to go under
Speaker 1: out of the falling rain, but was forced to look
Speaker 1: the man in the face was something to eat. Who
Speaker 1: once had the power to whip them to death, but
Speaker 1: now I have the power to stop them the death.
Speaker 1: We the actually feel that if the government had a
Speaker 1: right to free us, she had a right to make
Speaker 1: some provision for us. As she did not make it
Speaker 1: soon after our emancipation, she ought to make it now unquote.
Speaker 1: For the next fifteen years, calling the Association continued to
Speaker 1: petition the government. For its part, the Post Office kept
Speaker 1: marking their mail fraudulent. He either returned it to senders
Speaker 1: or destroyed it. In nineteen sixteen, Kelly was arrested and
Speaker 1: then indicted on charges of mail fraud and all White
Speaker 1: jury found her guilty and she went to prison for
Speaker 1: one year. And when got out of prison, she kept
Speaker 1: the movement up and then she got sick and she
Speaker 1: eventually passed away without adequate medical treatment. At that time,
Speaker 1: the idea of reparations was so preposterous and threatening to
Speaker 1: the power structure in Washington, it labeled the entire effort fraudulent.
Speaker 1: But the idea of reparations never went away. A hundred
Speaker 1: years later, we're still debating what, when, and how to
Speaker 1: talk about it. On the campaign trail, when asked about reparations,
Speaker 1: Joe Biden said he was willing to consider what the U.
Speaker 1: S Might owe African Americans. Reparations means making up for
Speaker 1: things that happened in the past. Number One, there is
Speaker 1: a study being suggested by a former presidential candidate and
Speaker 1: the guy as a friend of mine from New Jersey
Speaker 1: saying we should study reparations and make a judgment whether
Speaker 1: or not what they should be, what they should do.
Speaker 1: There's certain things we already know. I support that study.
Speaker 1: Let's see ritatious. It was an unusually blunt statement for
Speaker 1: an American presidential candidate to make about reparations. But in
Speaker 1: some parts of the US politicians and policymakers are moving
Speaker 1: from words to action. There there are a couple of things,
Speaker 1: in a couple of ways to look at the whole
Speaker 1: question of reparations. How exactly are you going to repay
Speaker 1: the debt of slavery? And who is going to repay? Slavery?
Speaker 1: Is the original sin? Slavery has never received an apology.
Speaker 1: Primes have been committed, sins have been committed. There is
Speaker 1: a blood debt. I don't think reparations for something that
Speaker 1: happened a hundred fifty years ago, for whom none of
Speaker 1: us currently of them are responsible. There's a good idea
Speaker 1: or think brillion dollars in reparation is an appropriate statement.
Speaker 1: It's not real reparations unless you give the descendence of
Speaker 1: slavery actual money and let them choose how they want
Speaker 1: to spend it as if they were adults. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to the paycheck. I'm Jackie Simmons and I'm Rebecca Greenfield.
Speaker 1: We've gone through the stats about the racial wealth gap,
Speaker 1: and as we start to talk about reparations. What's important
Speaker 1: to remember is that life in America has improved for
Speaker 1: black people, but no wonder how much better it gets.
Speaker 1: The gap has never closed. Not only that, but roundabout
Speaker 1: efforts to close it, like creating more equal opportunities for
Speaker 1: black families to build health and pass it on to
Speaker 1: their children, haven't done enough. Either. Reparations suggest a bigger,
Speaker 1: more direct kind of action, an admission of wrongdoing, for one,
Speaker 1: that the US harmed its black citizens, and then money
Speaker 1: redress in one form or another at a scale that's
Speaker 1: commensurate with the harm done. Historically, as a country, we've
Speaker 1: been reluctant to consider any of this. Thirty years ago,
Speaker 1: John Conyers Jr. A Congressman from Michigan, introduced Legislation HR
Speaker 1: forty to establish a commission to study and develop reparations proposals.
Speaker 1: It didn't ask for reparations, It asked for commission to
Speaker 1: study the issue. That went nowhere in Conyers introduced it
Speaker 1: in the next Congress, and the next, and in every
Speaker 1: session for more than two decades. After he resigned, Sheila
Speaker 1: Jackson Lee, a black congresswoman from Texas, took up the chart.
Speaker 1: Tanahasy Coats published a sixteen thousand word article in The
Speaker 1: Atlantic magazine called the Case for Reparations. The cover of
Speaker 1: the issue was black with white text that read two
Speaker 1: fifty years of slavery, ninety years of Jim Crow, sixty
Speaker 1: years of separate but equal thirty five years of state
Speaker 1: sanction d readlining. Until we reckon with the compounding moral
Speaker 1: debts of our ancestors, America will never be whole coats.
Speaker 1: This article became the argument for reparations. Ron Daniels is
Speaker 1: a leader of the National African American Reparations Commission, an
Speaker 1: independent group that's fighting for reparations. He says, the piece
Speaker 1: restarted the public dialogue, and now the idea is getting
Speaker 1: more attention than it ever has, so you really have
Speaker 1: had a almost seismic shift and support of reparations. This
Speaker 1: is a monum mental moment in the history of these
Speaker 1: United States of America. As we were finishing this episode,
Speaker 1: House Committee was debating HR forty, and for the first time,
Speaker 1: legislators were considering bringing the discussion to the full House.
Speaker 1: Maybe this time it will pass, and that commission will
Speaker 1: study how reparations could work and most importantly, how much
Speaker 1: they would cost. Maybe after some time, we'll have some answers.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, academics have been coming up with answers
Speaker 1: of their own, trying to calculate just how much is owed.
Speaker 1: Susan Burfield, a reporter at Bloomberg, is going to help
Speaker 1: us break down the map. So First, advocates argue that
Speaker 1: reparations must ultimately be paid by the federal government. It's
Speaker 1: the government that's responsible for the laws that kept African
Speaker 1: Americans enslaved. It's the government that allowed and perpetuated discrimination
Speaker 1: that benefited white Americans. Afterward, it's the government that can
Speaker 1: afford to pay the debt in full when it comes
Speaker 1: to the amount that's due. Most believed that reparations should
Speaker 1: at least close the racial wealth gap. That's the minimum,
Speaker 1: and there's different ways to get there. Sandy Darity and
Speaker 1: Kirsten Mullen, who co wrote a book about reparations, begin
Speaker 1: with the loss of land promised after emancipation, that forty
Speaker 1: acres and the mule. They end up with about twelve
Speaker 1: trillion dollars. One of their colleagues, Thomas Kramer, starts with
Speaker 1: another loss, the unpaid wages African Americans could have earned
Speaker 1: for their forced labor from American independence to the start
Speaker 1: of the Civil War. Kramer's German. His family was close
Speaker 1: to a Holocaust survivor who received reparations from the government
Speaker 1: for Nazi atrocities. He says the money is important, of course,
Speaker 1: but it's much more than that. It's the moral reckoning.
Speaker 1: Mount paid is basically a symbolic gesture that the apology
Speaker 1: is meant seriously, and that that the perpetrating side makes
Speaker 1: a promise never to repeat what was done. Now he's
Speaker 1: an associate professor at the University of Connecticut looking at
Speaker 1: reparations in America and what they would mean. He's done
Speaker 1: some calculations the number of enslaved people times all the
Speaker 1: hours they could have worked each year, times the wages
Speaker 1: they should have been paid. Then he took those lump
Speaker 1: sums and applied to three interest rate to figure out
Speaker 1: how much those earnings would have grown from seventeen seventy
Speaker 1: six to today. He estimates that the descendants of the
Speaker 1: enslaved are owed about twenty trillion dollars. It's an astounding amount.
Speaker 1: It's nearly as much as the United States gross domestic
Speaker 1: product last year. Kramer also says it's on the low
Speaker 1: end because I'm ignoring colonial slavery, and in this calculation,
Speaker 1: I'm also ignoring racial discrimination after slavery, and both of
Speaker 1: those injustices, of course, had impact on the ability to
Speaker 1: accumulate wealth among black families. So this is a very
Speaker 1: conservative calculation. He says he wanted to figure the least
Speaker 1: amount of money that could be considered fair. Assuming that
Speaker 1: they're about forty two million descendants of slavery in the
Speaker 1: US today and accounting for taxes already paid, Kramer says
Speaker 1: each is due four hundred and twenty six thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Derrity and mullan slightly lower number. That twelve trillion would
Speaker 1: work out to about three hundred thousand dollars per person,
Speaker 1: give or take whatever the amount. The money could be
Speaker 1: repaid through a national trust, community development programs, free college,
Speaker 1: no interest loans, baby bonds, a guaranteed income, or cash.
Speaker 1: No one is handing out checks anytime soon, but it's
Speaker 1: an intriguing idea for most people. Three dollars isn't never
Speaker 1: work again money, but it would be life changing. We
Speaker 1: asked you to tell us what that kind of money
Speaker 1: might change. What would I do if I were given
Speaker 1: three hundred thousand dollars UM a lot. I think securing
Speaker 1: a house, being able to pay the mortgage for a
Speaker 1: while receiving reparations would give me the peace of mind
Speaker 1: to do things like starting a family and making a
Speaker 1: career change. The first thing I would probably do is
Speaker 1: to pay off any outstanding debt UM. I would pay
Speaker 1: off the house I bought a year ago, things that
Speaker 1: my peers who have the safety net of generational wealth
Speaker 1: behind them can do right now. After paying off my
Speaker 1: student moment it, I would be able to actually afford
Speaker 1: a home for my family. It would be actually very helpful,
Speaker 1: as my other African American co founders of a startuple
Speaker 1: working on have been in fund rate mode for quite
Speaker 1: a while. I would allocate a hundred thousands of that
Speaker 1: towards return any and all that I may have invest
Speaker 1: in UM retirement fund and low costs UM index funds
Speaker 1: actually get into the stock market low fee uh Crypto
Speaker 1: used remaining one hundred thousand to allocate towards any business
Speaker 1: or entrepreneur aspirations for one on all of my three children,
Speaker 1: so as to continue the generational support and the a
Speaker 1: forward movement of moneys through African Americans generations and through
Speaker 1: our family. If I could find a multifamily home, maybe
Speaker 1: a triplex or a duplex, with three hundred thousand, that
Speaker 1: would be the thing that would provide me with some
Speaker 1: some legacy for my children. So what would you do
Speaker 1: with three hundred thousand dollars? Precisely the things that build wealth,
Speaker 1: that fulfilled promise, and in just the way is long
Speaker 1: denied to African Americans. That brings us back to the
Speaker 1: other question, where would the US get that kind of money?
Speaker 1: Kramer says that when the Haitian and British governments paid
Speaker 1: reparations to slave owners, they borrowed the money, lots of
Speaker 1: it over many decades. Ron Daniels points to a moment
Speaker 1: where the US government had no trouble conjuring up a
Speaker 1: couple of trillion dollars in a matter of months. The
Speaker 1: COVID pandemic has also shown us something else. They're quite frankly,
Speaker 1: there is no limit to the amount of money that
Speaker 1: the federal government can spend. Woof is trillionaire to trillionaire.
Speaker 1: So money is not the object. The thing is. For
Speaker 1: a lot of people, money is exactly the problem. It's
Speaker 1: one reason full reparations are probably a long ways off,
Speaker 1: but for now, cities across the US and the state
Speaker 1: of California are beginning to study whether there's a case
Speaker 1: for local reparations and what that might look like. One
Speaker 1: city has been working on this for the past few years.
Speaker 1: It's asked the hard questions and answered them. Soon it
Speaker 1: will begin paying what it's calling reparations to some of
Speaker 1: its black residents. Evanston, Illinois, just north of Chicago, with
Speaker 1: some seventy five thousand people living in eight square miles,
Speaker 1: calls itself progressive. About six of the city's residents are black.
Speaker 1: Some of their families have lived there for more than
Speaker 1: a hundred years. There's also a legacy of housing discrimination. Evanston,
Speaker 1: like almost every American city, made it difficult for black
Speaker 1: people to buy their own homes and to keep the
Speaker 1: homes they could buy. It deprived them of potential wealth,
Speaker 1: of generational wealth. And it's that injustice, not slavery, that
Speaker 1: Evanston is first attempting to repair. We were lifting up
Speaker 1: the name of the black community and making affirmations and
Speaker 1: commitments and ceremonial resolutions and proclamations. We were doing that
Speaker 1: very very well. Um in Evanston, and yet we still
Speaker 1: maintained a ratio divide. Robin Ruce Simmons was born and
Speaker 1: raised in Evanston, fourth generation. She's been a real estate
Speaker 1: broker and a bookstore owner. She started a construction firm.
Speaker 1: She owns and manages affordable housing and commercial property in Evanston.
Speaker 1: She was also representing the city's fifth ward on the council,
Speaker 1: one of nine aldermen as they're called, and she's the
Speaker 1: one who first proposed that Evanston consider reparations. She says
Speaker 1: that there's an average household income difference of forty six
Speaker 1: thousand dollars between black and white Evanston, a thirteen year
Speaker 1: difference in life expectancy, education gaps and opportunity gaps, and
Speaker 1: information divides. In February twenty nineteen, Robin was about midway
Speaker 1: through her first term on the city Council when she
Speaker 1: wrote an email to Evanston's Equity and Empowerment Commission. The
Speaker 1: subject line read Black Equality Policy. You opened it and
Speaker 1: it said because reparations makes people uncomfortable. She thanked them
Speaker 1: again for their efforts, but said it was time to
Speaker 1: do more. I realized that not one policy or one
Speaker 1: proclamation can repair the damage done to black families. But
Speaker 1: in this four hundredth year of African American resilience, I'd
Speaker 1: like to pursue policy and actions as radical as a
Speaker 1: racial policies and actions that got us to this point. Later,
Speaker 1: she would be more explicit that she believed reparations were
Speaker 1: the only way to address the harm in the black
Speaker 1: community in Evanston and beyond. Yes, it is reparations. Let's
Speaker 1: not call it anything else to make you feel better
Speaker 1: about your role in it or our inability to address
Speaker 1: it before. Now, let's call it what it is. Segregation
Speaker 1: began in Evanston in the years before World War One,
Speaker 1: as black Southerners migrated north. By nine eighteen, a local
Speaker 1: paper reported on a plan to quote unquote freeze out
Speaker 1: black residents from all parts of Evanston except for the
Speaker 1: fifth ward. The city began by targeting black residents in
Speaker 1: other parts of town. The housing codes could change to say,
Speaker 1: require indoor plumbing or electricity or other home improvements. A
Speaker 1: black family might not have the cash for that, and
Speaker 1: then wouldn't be able to get a loan to pay
Speaker 1: for it either. Then they'd be forced to sell, sometimes
Speaker 1: for less than what their home was worth. Afterward, real
Speaker 1: estate agents would steer them to the fifth ward. Banks
Speaker 1: if they gave mortgages, would do so only for homes
Speaker 1: in the fifth ward. Redlining officially began in the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: so did a long period of under investment by the city,
Speaker 1: predatory loans and contract buying. That's when black residents who
Speaker 1: couldn't get a mortgage had to put down a lot
Speaker 1: of money for a house, then pay monthly installments at
Speaker 1: high interest rates. But they didn't get the title until
Speaker 1: the house was completely paid for. They never got equity,
Speaker 1: and they could be evicted any time they missed a payment.
Speaker 1: Morris Robinson Jr. Is the founder of Evanston's Shorefront Legacy Center.
Speaker 1: His hundreds of documents showing how all this unfolded, including
Speaker 1: a report written in nineteen forty by the Homeowners Loan Corporation,
Speaker 1: a government agency. That agency was created to insure loans,
Speaker 1: which allowed more people to purchase homes and eventually would
Speaker 1: help develop the suburbs. It was a great deal if
Speaker 1: you were white. It was in fact explicitly intended to
Speaker 1: maintain segregated neighborhoods. He read to me. The agency's evaluation
Speaker 1: of Black Evanson. Here lives the servants for many of
Speaker 1: the families. All along the north Shore. There's not a
Speaker 1: vacant house in a territory, and occupancy moreover is about
Speaker 1: one for most houses have more than one family living
Speaker 1: in them. This concentration on Negroes and Evanson is quite
Speaker 1: a serious problem for the town, as they seem to
Speaker 1: be growing steadily and encroaching into adjoining neighborhoods. When Robin
Speaker 1: brought up the idea of reparations in twenty nine, one
Speaker 1: of the first things the Equity Commission agreed to was
Speaker 1: to host community meetings to ask what residents wanted from
Speaker 1: a reparations program. Out of dozens and dozens and sences
Speaker 1: of recommendations, housing continue to be an area of concern
Speaker 1: and a recommendation of repair. That focus was key for
Speaker 1: Robin and her colleagues. They knew more or less what
Speaker 1: they were paying reparations for, at least initially. Now they
Speaker 1: needed the money to pay for it. This is where
Speaker 1: the broad conversation about reparations comes up hard against reality.
Speaker 1: Where is the money going to come from? In this respect,
Speaker 1: Evanston got a little lucky. It was exactly at the
Speaker 1: time where we started doing a doal cannabis. Anne Rainey
Speaker 1: was representing the eighth ward, the one closest to Chicago.
Speaker 1: She pointed out the years of prohibition had a disproportionate
Speaker 1: impact on black people. That is why the adult cannabis
Speaker 1: legislation was passed to begin with, to make reparations in
Speaker 1: that area. So that's where we're going to take the
Speaker 1: money to support this program. It was a tax, first
Speaker 1: of all, we had never realized before, so we weren't
Speaker 1: going to be taking it from anything. The city council
Speaker 1: estimated that the three percent sales tax on legal would
Speaker 1: bring in about a million dollars a year. They'd set
Speaker 1: aside the first ten million, so ten million dollars for
Speaker 1: reparations over ten years, not all for housing. How should
Speaker 1: the city use all that money? What other harm did
Speaker 1: the community suffer? What other depths did Evanston Oh, that
Speaker 1: first resolution didn't say they'd work out the details later.
Speaker 1: The loose terms bothered one alderman, Thomas suffered in and
Speaker 1: in November he was the only person to vote no.
Speaker 1: Alright Resolution nineteen establishing a City of Evanson funding source
Speaker 1: about electoral local reparations passes on a eight to one vote. Congratulations,
Speaker 1: all right for all the hard work to get there.
Speaker 1: There'd be lots more to come, maybe more than anyone
Speaker 1: on the council realized. But right then I remember just
Speaker 1: wanting to jump and scream and celebrate, and it was
Speaker 1: business as usual. We went on with the agenda and
Speaker 1: I sitting looking like, okay, we're just We're just gonna
Speaker 1: keep one. About two weeks later, actor and activist Danny
Speaker 1: Glover came to Evanston and spoke in front of a
Speaker 1: very big, very excited crowd. Here's Glover, and then you'll
Speaker 1: hear Michael Neighbors, a pastor and president of the local
Speaker 1: and double a CP. It's the beginning of a process.
Speaker 1: This is the most a tense conversation I believe that
Speaker 1: we're going to have in the century right reparation. It
Speaker 1: was one of the most electrifying moments that I can
Speaker 1: ever remember having. And I've had a few of them.
Speaker 1: I've been around, you know, I've had I've had a
Speaker 1: few electrifying moments, but this one was electrifying in the
Speaker 1: local sense. It was electrifying for the city of Evanston,
Speaker 1: and it was particularly electrifying for the black community, and
Speaker 1: then was back to work on all those details. When
Speaker 1: Evanson's only dispensary began selling recreational pot on January, there
Speaker 1: was a line down the street during the pandemic. The
Speaker 1: state deemed the dispensary's essential businesses, but the city wasn't
Speaker 1: allowed to collect taxes until July. The council decided to
Speaker 1: start its reparations program with four hundred thousand dollars. This
Speaker 1: is where the policy's ambitions collided with its particulars. Probably inevitably,
Speaker 1: people might agree that damage has been done. They might
Speaker 1: agree that restitution should be made, But to whom and
Speaker 1: for how much? And who first? Even in a relatively
Speaker 1: small progressive town like Evanston, the answers to those questions
Speaker 1: were neither clear nor simple. First, who's eligible? The city
Speaker 1: council had a mandate to initially focus on housing, so
Speaker 1: it settled on grants to help qualified black resident buy homes,
Speaker 1: fix up their homes, or stay in their homes all
Speaker 1: black residents. Well. The priority is any black resident of
Speaker 1: Evanston from nineteen nineteen to nineteen sixty nine, then any
Speaker 1: of their direct descendants, and then anyone who moved to
Speaker 1: the city after that and can show that they've faced discrimination.
Speaker 1: And the big question how much the council decided on
Speaker 1: grants of twenty five thousand dollars not a lot of
Speaker 1: money in Evanston, where the average home sells for twelve
Speaker 1: times that, and no matter what, most black residents won't
Speaker 1: get anything in this first round. That four hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars covers awards for sixteen people to start with. That's
Speaker 1: a tough number. Another reality check, there's other restrictions. The
Speaker 1: residents won't get the cash directly that might require them
Speaker 1: to pay taxes on it. Instead, the money will go
Speaker 1: to the financial institution, closing agent, or contractor the resident
Speaker 1: is working with. Robin says she and her colleagues want
Speaker 1: residents to be able to work with local black owned
Speaker 1: businesses and banks that have a history of fair lending.
Speaker 1: The fifth word, she points out, doesn't have a bank,
Speaker 1: has never had a bank, and Black people have every
Speaker 1: reason to be skeptical of a financial system that's taken
Speaker 1: every advantage of them for centuries. If we do not
Speaker 1: give them an introduction to a bank that has fair
Speaker 1: banking products and other sort of consumer products, then we
Speaker 1: have not accomplished anything. And and furthermore, if we introduce
Speaker 1: them to a bank that has high fees and rates
Speaker 1: and it is expensive to bank with them, then we
Speaker 1: have not accomplished anything. In late March, the council took
Speaker 1: a second crucial vote, this time on whether or not
Speaker 1: to begin distributing the first allotment that four hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Just a few weeks before, a group emerged on Facebook.
Speaker 1: It's called Evanston rejects Racist Reparations. Up until then, there
Speaker 1: have been some questions, some concerns about the program, but
Speaker 1: no organized opposition. The founders of the group are black
Speaker 1: residents of Evanston. They wanted the council to delay the
Speaker 1: start of the program. They say it's too small, that
Speaker 1: it shouldn't focus only in housing, It shouldn't require recipients
Speaker 1: to work with banks and other financial institutions that have
Speaker 1: discriminated against the black community. It shouldn't even be called reparations.
Speaker 1: There are some admirable efforts made by municipalities to its
Speaker 1: tones of the damage is caused by their own race
Speaker 1: based policies. However, it is unfortunate when those acts of
Speaker 1: atonement are confused with reparations. A limitation of the proposal
Speaker 1: that's brought forward is that the funds are constrained to
Speaker 1: home ownership. Home Ownership is only part of the deficit
Speaker 1: and assets held by Black Americans. And I want you
Speaker 1: to think about this. If any of your family members
Speaker 1: there how was burned down, they were killed, car was crashed,
Speaker 1: and then someone walks up and says, here's twenty cent
Speaker 1: as a good start, and I promised to do better
Speaker 1: later to give you back what you lost. That's what
Speaker 1: that looks like, it feels like to us. That was
Speaker 1: the author's Kirsten Mullen and Sandy Drty and Malika Gardner,
Speaker 1: the founder of Evanston Live TV. Speaking at that city
Speaker 1: council meeting, lots of others said they were proud of
Speaker 1: their city, that the program was a good start and
Speaker 1: one that was a long time coming. Cecily Fleming, one
Speaker 1: of the council's three black members, had already announced her decision.
Speaker 1: She'd opposed moving forward with what's now called the Evanston
Speaker 1: Local Reparations Restorative Housing Program. I think reparations is, you know,
Speaker 1: somewhat of a sacred term and a thing that people
Speaker 1: have waited for four hundreds of years, and too you know,
Speaker 1: even in the local level kind of water it down
Speaker 1: to a housing plan, even at the first effort. I
Speaker 1: know this is the first plan. We take these cribs
Speaker 1: and hope that we're going to get more crumbs later
Speaker 1: instead of just saying, you know what, we deserve a
Speaker 1: whole piece of game. The measure passed, with Fleming the
Speaker 1: only no vote. I think it is a good housing plan.
Speaker 1: I think people will use it and need it um.
Speaker 1: But I want them to reach hire right. I want
Speaker 1: black votes to want freedom afterwards. The reparations experts, Kirsten
Speaker 1: Mullen and Sandy Daity continue to argue that Evanston's program
Speaker 1: wasn't actually reparations. In an OpEd in the Washington Post,
Speaker 1: they wrote, true reparations only can come from a full
Speaker 1: scale program of acknowledgement, redress, and closure for a grievous injustice.
Speaker 1: This is an argument over more than just semantics. It's
Speaker 1: an argument over what's possible and what's necessary and how
Speaker 1: far America will go. Should reparations the word the idea
Speaker 1: be reserved for that big debt owed by the federal government,
Speaker 1: the three hundred thousand dollars or more that would close
Speaker 1: the racial wealth gap, or can it also be smaller
Speaker 1: efforts to redress local injustice. Evanston's answered that for itself,
Speaker 1: Robin and our colleagues say that what they're doing has
Speaker 1: to be just a first step. Robin decided not to
Speaker 1: run for reelection, so she'll give up her seat in May,
Speaker 1: but she'll be a community member of Evanston's new reparations Committee,
Speaker 1: an adviser on other local initiatives, and an advocate for
Speaker 1: HR forty. So we are moving forward knowing that this
Speaker 1: is not going to bring us full repair. We understand
Speaker 1: that more reparation programming is necessary. We understand that black
Speaker 1: residents need access to cash and deserve it, But we
Speaker 1: also understand that this is a process and waiting any
Speaker 1: longer is irresponsibility. The reactions in Evanston shouldn't be surprising.
Speaker 1: Restitution is complex and emotional, and at the local level
Speaker 1: won't ever be enough. The city council expects that by
Speaker 1: the fall it will have selected the first group of
Speaker 1: black residents to receive the housing grants. Policymakers and citizens,
Speaker 1: advocates and critics will be watching, evaluating, maybe hoping the
Speaker 1: US were to go down the path of federal reparations,
Speaker 1: it could look to other countries that have paid money
Speaker 1: to populations that have been harmed. Next week on The Paycheck,
Speaker 1: we had to the UK, where the government is in
Speaker 1: the midst of what it's calling a compensation scheme for
Speaker 1: its black residents. It's less of a model that a
Speaker 1: cautionary tale. There are a number of problems with the
Speaker 1: compensation scheme, and if the obvious one is that the
Speaker 1: scheme itself lacks independence. The Hostile Environment policy was a
Speaker 1: policy discriminated against immigrants to this country, and it was
Speaker 1: a policy that was implemented by the UK government. So
Speaker 1: there is a bit of a case of the government
Speaker 1: marking its own homework. Thanks for listening to The Paycheck.
Speaker 1: If you like the show, please rate, review, and subscribe
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was hosted by
Speaker 1: me Rebecca Greenfield and me Jackie Simmons. Today's episode was
Speaker 1: edited by Janet Paskin and reported by Susan Berfield with
Speaker 1: the help of Jordan Holman. We also want to thank
Speaker 1: all of our listeners who took the time to call
Speaker 1: or send in voice memos about reparations. This episode was
Speaker 1: produced by Magnus Hendrickson. We also had production help from
Speaker 1: Lindsay Craddowell, an editing help from francesco Leabe Rocksheeta Soluja,
Speaker 1: Jackie Simmons, David Sheer and me. Original music is by
Speaker 1: Leo Sidrien. Francesca Levie is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. We'll
Speaker 1: see you next time, m