‘Performative Advocacy Doesn’t Work’: Black Justice Leaders Talk Accountability and the Fight for Reparations
President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863, ordering that “all individuals held as slaves” should “be free.” But some enslavers across the Deep South refused to comply, and lots of Black people remained in slavery—completely unaware of their latest freedom. Finally, on June 19, 1865, Union soldiers in Galveston, Texas, delivered an order, announcing that Black Texans were free, a moment that may come to symbolize the top to chattel slavery.
As of last yr, that day, often known as Juneteenth, has been designated a federal holiday. Juneteenth must be a formally recognized holiday; as a nation, we want to inform the reality about American history. However the day also deserves our solemn respect, because Juneteenth commemorates some of the harrowing examples of what Black Americans have endured on this country—and the way much we’re owed. The primary Juneteenth celebrations included voter registration rallies and collectively purchasing property. But since then, corporations have begun to profit off of what was previously a sacred, intra-community day. Within the face of diluted messages and sacrilegious marketing, we want to reclaim Juneteenth from capitalism. How can we return to the unconventional tradition of constructing political power for Black communities? By centering the voices of Black women dedicating their lives to reckoning with our past and investing in repair.
This Juneteenth, ELLE.com brought together Dr. Keisha N. Blain, Jillian Hishaw, Kavon Ward, and Alicia Garza to make clear reparations as a call to motion. Dr. Blain is a best-selling writer, incoming professor of Africana studies and history at Brown University, and an award-winning historian; Hishaw is an agricultural attorney who advocates for small farmers; Ward is the founding father of Justice for Bruce’s Beach and the CEO and founding father of Where Is My Land, a company tracing stolen Black land and campaigning for its reclamation; and Garza is the principal at Black Futures Lab and a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement.
For too long, justice has been denied to Black Americans. Below, these 4 women discuss the necessity to look back at this nation’s foundation with a view to move forward.
Dr. Blain, you’re a historian by trade, and also you write books that challenge what we predict we find out about American history. What do people most get incorrect when talking about reparations?
Chioke I’Anson
Keisha N. Blain: I wish more people knew that the struggle for reparations in the USA has a really long history. It’s also essential to notice that Black women were often on the forefront of this fight—one other indisputable fact that tends to be neglected in mainstream narratives about reparations in the USA. Here, I’m fascinated by courageous women like Belinda Sutton, a formerly enslaved Black woman in Massachusetts who petitioned the Massachusetts General Court in 1783 in an effort to receive a pension from the estate of her deceased former owner. At its core, the petition was a requirement for reparations; Sutton explicitly referenced her years of labor. This longer history of reparations helps to counter the argument that present-day white Americans bear no responsibility for developments prior to now. Black people have been demanding reparations for hundreds of years—and the campaign has continued because they’ve been denied for hundreds of years.
Jillian, your book Systematic Land Theft answers the query of why 97 percent of U.S. land is owned by white Americans. What have you ever learned throughout your legal profession in regards to the relationship between Black people and land?
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Jillian Hishaw: As an attorney, I even have learned that English common law serves as the inspiration for our legal system to today, and is used to push Black people off of our land. This is sensible when you concentrate on that English common law was adopted during European settlement, and its foundation was structured to discriminate. I witnessed that not only as a legal expert, but additionally in my very own genealogical history. My family [members] were enslaved, and unfortunately, the 40-acre farm that they received in reparations was stolen by a dishonest lawyer. That is considered one of the various explanation why I became a lawyer: to supply honest legal services and forestall further land loss.
Kavon, you co-founded Where Is My Land to reclaim stolen land. Is there a campaign you’re working on that exemplifies why you do what you do?
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Kavon Ward: The Burgess Brothers immediately come to mind. The state of California took about 80-plus acres of land from Jon and Matt’s ancestor Rufus Burgess in 1949; many parcels of Rufus’s land were condemned and seized through eminent domain. Their land is now a component of Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park in Coloma. Despite having deeds to their family land dating back to 1872, they’ve needed to fight with the California State Parks Department to make sure an accurate history of the land is told. We see this rewriting of history in real time to erase us.
Alicia, are you able to tell us more about Black Futures Lab’s work to right historic wrongs, and what you’ve noticed about people’s lack of political imagination, specifically in the case of reparations for Black Americans?
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Alicia Garza: On the Black Futures Lab, we work to make Black communities powerful in politics in order that we may be powerful in all areas of our lives. We train our communities tips on how to write latest rules and get them passed, with a view to replace those which can be rigged. We tell latest stories about who we’re and who we may be together. Reparations aren’t nearly getting a check—they’re about changing the principles to right historic wrongs and to maintain those wrongs from happening again. How will we repair the shortage of representation of our communities in positions of power? How will we reimagine how governance works in order that Black folks aren’t on the listing end of where resources go and don’t go? How will we reimagine the economy?
What is going to it take to really repair the trauma and theft initiated during chattel slavery, which continued throughout every step of this nation’s development?
Hishaw: I even have been doing this work for over 20 years, and the history of oppression we have now experienced as a community will outlive all of us.
Ward: Future harms will occur if we don’t admit and teach the reality about all American history, including harms inflicted upon Black people by white people comparable to enslavement, a failed Reconstruction era, Jim Crow, and present harms like mass incarceration and the murder of Black people by police and emboldened vigilantes. It is going to take so-called white allies stepping up, stepping aside, and relinquishing their power. Performative advocacy doesn’t work. It’s time to stop talking about it and begin being about it.
What are the strategies toward repair that you simply all need to see on the earth?
Blain: I’m not certain that the trauma of chattel slavery may be repaired. I don’t know if most of us are truly equipped—psychologically—to conceptualize and even process the trauma attributable to treating people as commodities. So, I’ll leave the query about tips on how to repair trauma to psychologists, but I feel we are able to directly address the matter of theft. How do you repair theft? Well, one approach is to return what has been taken or, on the very least, one can offer redress for the worth of what was taken.
Garza: There are at the very least three essential strategies that would, and in some ways are, being deployed toward repair that I would really like to see. The primary is to construct a deeper cultural understanding of why repair is vital and, greater than that, why it’s essential for everybody, not only for Black people. Enslavement will not be only a deep moral stain on this country’s history—it’s embedded in our present, from the economy to our democracy. More people need to know the tangible impacts of that. The second is to pass laws and allocate resources toward repair. Currently, we have now plenty of task forces which can be largely without decision-making ability; we want committees with teeth, and more bills navigating their way through legislative committees. And eventually, for that to occur successfully, we want to arrange more people to advocate for these laws. Unlikely coalitions could help construct the sort of power we want to maneuver laws that changes the principles and allocates more resources towards this project.
What can individuals do to fight for reparations of their personal lives?
Hishaw: Reparations start with collective efforts. For instance, I’m currently working on a project where white landowners are giving land to future Black farmers in order that they can construct farming communities. Everyone may donate to organizations like F.A.R.M.S., where we have now a successful track record of saving Black-owned farmland. I also need to speak specifically to Black people: In writing Systematic Land Theft, I learned we’re natural cultivators of the land but, at the identical time, have a contentious relationship with agriculture. Many Black people still affiliate farming and land ownership with slavery and need to be far faraway from it. Many treat the soil like dirt and consider the land as a tax burden. We must value land and natural resources.
What can members of the media do in a different way in framing and commenting on these conversations?
Garza: They will unearth more places where enslavement has created the wealth and conditions we experience today with a view to help construct a public consciousness around the necessity for reparations.
What role do firms and for-profit entities play within the advancement of reparations? What about elected officials and folks in government?
Blain: Corporations have to be held accountable for his or her past actions, in addition to contemporary discriminatory practices. Consider Wells Fargo. In accordance with a recent report, the bank only approved 47 percent of Black homeowners who applied to refinance their mortgage in 2020 in comparison with the 72 percent approval rate for white homeowners. Black customers have responded and are actually suing the corporate. And there are lots of firms that directly profited from slavery, for instance, Latest York Life Insurance. These firms can do greater than release public statements and apologies. They will start by devising concrete strategies to redress harm, including fair and equitable policies, in addition to programs that specifically administer funds into Black communities.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee
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Straight away, the most important push for reparations [at the federal level] is H.R. 40: Commission to Study and Develop Reparations Proposals for African Americans Act. Since 1989, Black lawmakers—first John Conyers and now Sheila Jackson Lee—have introduced a version of this bill within the House of Representatives. In April 2021, for the primary time in 30 years, the bill was voted out of committee. Nonetheless, it has not been introduced to the ground of the House. I actually hope we are going to see some momentum around this bill in the long run, but this can be a small step. I’m all for studying the problem, but we have already got ample research available to provide you with daring and inventive solutions.
These interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.
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