Reparations: Addressing Historical and Contemporary Wrongs

Part of Mosaic Lifespan Curriculum

Open

Excerpted from “The Call of Our Faith” by Dr. Takiyah Nur Amin

“In every moment, life is giving us an invitation to do the things that are the most loving and life-affirming and that doing the loving and life affirming thing is always the answer when you don't know what to do, or if you're feeling unsure.

To me, if we're talking about racial justice, love is about acknowledging that there has been wrong—that there has been harm perpetrated—and that whether you personally feel like you participated in it or not, you are likely benefiting from the inequitable results of that harm.

Even if you are a person who wants to say, “Well, I didn't participate in making things this way,” if you are benefiting from the ill-gotten gains, then you have some responsibility to make things right… You are not let off the hook, no matter what.

When we have broader conversations about reparations or what it looks like to repair—particularly the harms that have been done to indigenous communities, black communities, other communities of color—I believe that love means thinking about the resources that enable life. All of us should have a hand in those conversations, and all of us have some responsibility to bring about justice in those contexts.”

After reading the Opening Words, take a moment in quiet and ask each person to ground themselves in the concept of “doing the things that are the most loving and life-affirming,” even “when you don’t know what to do or if you’re feeling unsure.” Take turns sharing a word or phrase about the spiritual skill that helps you to do that. Examples might be “courage,” “patience,” “hope,” “righteousness” or “grace”. Remind participants to center those spiritual skills as you engage the experience together today.

Read

“What are Reparations?” from M4BL (PDF)

Take turns reading the first four pages of the document. (The rest of the pages can be Take Home material.)

Watch

Why Reparations for Slavery is Realistic Today (YouTube, 7:54), from The Emancipator

Do

Engage in a discussion about reparations, both historical and current. Tie it into the historical and/or current need for reparations where you live.

Say something like, “We have focused our listening and reading so far on the movement for reparations for the racial enslavement and ongoing oppression of Black people in the United States. But there are many other groups who have called for reparations-- ranging from cash payments to land settlements to state apologies -- from a variety of historical and current moments and places. This includes but is not limited to reparations for the Holocaust, “comfort women” in Imperial Japan, forced sterilization in North Carolina, the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment, imperialism

in Hawai’i, nuclear testing on the Marshall Islands, boarding schools for Indigenous children, apartheid in South Africa, and the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII.

What did or does racism and racial injustice look like where you/we live? What institutions are culpable? What specific policies might address the complex and specific harm(s) in the form of reparations? If you’re not sure, what is the next step to finding out more?”

Close

Fitted for This Day, by Rev. Kimberly Quinn Johnson

Before you read the Closing Words, take a moment to ask each participant “What question or commitment are you carrying with you as we end this session today?”

Take Home