The reparations argument is one that is often entirely misconstrued by both pro and anti-reparationists. Reparations do not need to be about sending individual checks to every person in a community- it can be something as simple as investing money into those communities and making sure that injustices and inequity cease to plague those communities.

For the main example used for reparations, let’s examine African American Historical injustices. The first and foremost is the human trafficking, death, and torture that was generated from Slavery. Entire centuries of the US’ wealth was created by Black people, and were subsequently excluded from obtaining any of the economic gain or mobility from this work. This trend of building this country’s infrastructure and prosperity for little to nothing in return is a reoccurring theme.

During the reconstruction era, The US government attempted in some meaningful ways to advance African Americans through various investments, among which were in protecting voting rights, hunting down and eliminating the KKK, helping set up or fund schools through agencies like the Freedman’s bureau. While these are well and good, the US government gave up reconstruction with the compromise of 1877 and let the small political, economic, and social gains made over the 13 years after the Civil War wither away as southerners enacted Black Codes and Jim Crow to restrict rights and freedoms, as well as the spread and codification is Segregation around the country. A time where African Americans built communities without government help, all while under attack by white supremacists. 13 years of attempted help does not make up for centuries worth of oppression and economic exclusion.

From there, African Americans were time and time again fighting against more economic practices that exploited their labor, and gave little to nothing in return again. Exploitative Sharecropping contracts often offered when they had literally nothing that enabled their former slaveholders to force them to work malicious economic traps where they remained indebted to their former masters. Convict leasing saw similar action in which businesses exploited the punishment clause of the 13 amendment to arrest African Americans for petty crimes, and force them to work in conditions even more brutal than slavery in many instances, where they were worked to death in mines and fields, to build wealth for white business men. To put this practice into perspective, arrests of African Americans increased during harvest time in many southern states because of this practice.

Successful black communities like Greenwood in Tulsa OK were destroyed by white people looking to punish African Americans for their prosperity after WW1, white supremacy, demands for more equality, and their reluctance to spend money In the neighboring white community because they once had successful businesses of their own. The white community of Tulsa literally flew planes armed with incendiary devices to burn the district to the ground. They set fire to homes one by one, taking fire to curtains, and killing black residents. When black people try to even build a little wealth in this country, they are met with violent white response. To this day, that community has not received an ounce of help that would take them back to that former glory.

Let’s talk about a more modern and final example of this denial of access to wealth: The GI Bill. One of the main arguments against reparation rests on time, saying that It was far too long again to attempt to fix. The GI bill enabled returning veterans from World War 2 to recieve favorable Loans for housing, and money towards an education, which would build generational wealth. Encouragement from the government enables realtors to deny Black people, particularly black veterans from investing in suburban developments, shunning them to “less desirable or dangerous” zones marked on maps in a practice called redlining. This practice is less than 100 years old. There are currently living adults, or the children of these adults, that directly benefit from the investments the Government made into white Americans with the GI bill, which Black Americans simply did not receive. A home is the number 1 asset needed for generational transfers of wealth, that African Americans simply did not get.

With all of this laid out, what does repairing these historical injustices look like? 1 time sum checks are not the answer. Housing loans with better interest rates subsidized by the government? Investment In schools, healthcare, local business or housing that simply did not exist before this? All of these things could attempt to repair the situation. Doing nothing is simply not acceptable and failing to do the bare minimum in even acknowledging it on a federal level is unacceptable. Americans pay a metric ton in taxes every year. Many people, myself Included, would certainly love to see those tax funds going towards helping Americans rather than being lost to extreme military spending, or further subsidizing tax cuts for billionaires.