Getting To Reparations (adult nonfiction)

     I believe it's about time for reparations to Blacks in America for all that has been done to them and taken from them by both law and brute force for centuries. I'm told that most of my fellow whites disagree with me for all kinds of reasons. I don't have slaves. My ancestors never had slaves. It's all ancient history. It will make white children feel guilty and shamed. It can't be done...

     I feel that it can and must be done. A bit of self disclosure--my ancestors on my mother's side enslaved people. In fact I have reason to believe that at least one raped enslaved women. So of course I consider reparations to be a most important imperative. 

     I was so glad when I discovered Dorothy A. Brown's Getting To Reparations: How Building a Different America Requires a Reckoning With Our Past. Brown, a law professor at Georgetown University Law Center, constructs an eloquent and convincing case for reparations. Her analysis is broken down into three parts.

     Part One: we've done it before--paid restitution to groups harmed by our actions. Brown discusses four instances. At the turn of the Nineteenth Century Italian families were compensated for the lynching deaths of immigrant family members. Tribal nations have been compensated for land theft. Decades after their forced relocation to horrendous camps during World War II Japanese Americans and their descendants were compensated for their losses. White slave owners were compensated for loss of their "property".

      Isn't it about time to compensate a group that has suffered all those losses and so many more?

     Part Two is absolutely heartbreaking. It's where Brown proves decisively that the evils being done to Blacks didn't end in 1865, but continued into the Twenty-first Century. There was the way chattel slavery shape shifted into share cropping and convict leasing. There was the brutal practice of lynching. Sometimes it was done in front of crowds including families as entertainment. Sometimes pieces of the deceased were sold as souvenirs. Often the "crime" the victim was guilty of was causing white resentment by, against all odds, acquiring land and property. It was "a tool to instill fear, seize property, and reinstate white superiority".

There was economic violence perpetrated by the government as in FHA loans and the GI Bill. There was redlining, gentrification, Urban Renewal...

     In Part Three Brown explains how reparations can be achieved. Her vision is both inspiring and down to earth. And you don't have to be a policy wonk to comprehend it.

     Getting To Reparations is a must read for anyone who wants with liberty and justice for all to be more than empty words we pay lip service to. 

On a purrrsonal note, I'm really enjoying the long weekend. Saturday Eugene and I had our traditional breakfast at Governors. We went to a lunch time cookout at the in-laws. On the way over Eugene bought me a fabulous bomber jacket that will glean me many compliments when the weather gets cool enough for me to wear it. In the evening Eugene and I went to see the Bangor fireworks 🎆 🙃 😀. It was beautifully cool and breezy beside the river. A band entertained us before the main event. The fireworks 🎆 were amazing--beautiful and dramatic, especially the grand finale. Today Eugene and I  are going to camp to spend the night. Maybe we'll find some yard sales on the way there. You never know where they'll spring up. 

I hope you're having a good weekend. I got up early to do my biking and post this review where I could.

A great big shout out goes out to Eugene who didn't really want to go to the fireworks but did it for me. 

Jules Hathaway 

Sent from my Galaxy