Truth, Justice, and Reparations

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There is forward momentum in this season for a quantum leap in addressing our oppressive history in the area of race. As a Christian I urge others of faith and good will to face the reality of our nation's failure, get in the flow of positive movement, and resist the selfish urge to be defensive. Yes, reparation is required; it should not even be a debate. In what form? In a multitude of forms. First, we must understand our history. If you are tempted to stop reading now, ask yourself: Have you ever come to terms with the fact that the ideals of the Declaration of Independence originally applied only to white male property owners, and these ideals have only been extended to others through a very gradual and tortuous journey and with much blood, sweat and tears? And this freedom and opportunity is still withheld from many.

... I urge people of faith and good will to face the reality of our nation's failure, get in the flow of positive movement, and resist the selfish urge to be defensive.

I offer the following six concrete historical realities that have maintained an imbalance of resources in the ares of wealth (Note 1), political power, education and criminal justice: 1. Abandonment of reconstruction; 2. Jim Crow laws and practices; 3. Violence of white supremacy in killing and rioting; 4. Federal investment in white home ownership and education; 5. Public school inequities; and 6. Race disparities in criminal justice. (Note 2)

1. The dramatic failure of reconstruction. At the close of the Civil War, with the elimination of legal slavery and reunification of South and North, political and financial mechanisms were put into place to grant citizenship and civil rights to former slaves, and to provide land for for freedmen as in the often quoted plan of Union General Sherman to give former slaves "40 acres and a mule" to begin a new homestead (though not actually to redistribute the wealth of plantation and estate owners). This notion was short lived and not widely implemented, and some of the few that received land had it taken back in later years. Those who remained dependent on farm employment often remained under the thumb and indebted to land holders through sharecropping agreements. Failure in these financial obligations could result in jail, as well as other criminal violations that targeted black citizens, and forced labor remained legal for prisoners. The plan for black land ownership suffered the same fate as the reconstruction ideal in general. Simply stated, Reconstruction was immediately hampered by a lack of support from the Andrew Jackson, the first post war president, and the political power of the southern states eventually won the day. "Black codes," local and state laws designed to maintain segregation and restrict the participation of former slaves in social and political life immediately ensued under strong southern states rights. There was an ebb and flow of some progress, but the persistence of white supremacy and the dynamics of the brokering of political power at national, state and local levels turned back every substantive initiative of reconstruction that could have provided political and economic resources to the population of 4 million former slaves. As has been the case generation after generation, the "check" of reconstruction bounced, it was "returned for insufficient funds." (3)
The "check" of reconstruction bounced... it was "returned for insufficient funds."

50th Anniversary, Selma to Montgomery
Voting Rights March
2. A half century of Jim Crow and the KKK. Whereas the dismantling and under-resourcing of  Reconstruction left the millions of black citizens without resources and opportunity, the emergence of Jim Crow laws and the reemergence of the Klan in the first three decades of the 20th century entrenched the segregation of U.S. society until the Civil Rights Movement half a century later. These laws enacted throughout the south as well as in many northern cities strictly prevented any meaningful race integration of society, restricted the vote and eliminated political power for blacks, and legitimized ongoing arbitrary race violence, decade upon decade. For all practical purposes, and with rare exceptions, black citizens could not vote or hold office, participate in government, or develop business interests outside of their own communities. Denial of voting rights did not change until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and in the present day we find that voter suppression continues, as evidenced by recent Georgia election strategies, for example. (4) Among the various strands of systematic racism in the 20th century, the negative impact of Jim Crow laws has been more widely recognized and understood, probably due to the visible and obvious expression of publicly enforced racial segregation that was the rule until only 50 years ago.

National Memorial for Peace and Justice
Montgomery
3. White supremacy: violence, lynching, and race riots. In recent years the practice of white terrorism through lynching has been more widely documented, and over 4,000 cases have come to light, as memorialized in the National Memorial for Peace and Justice recently created in Montgomery, Alabama. Along with the continuous execution of men, women and children outside of the formal criminal justice system, for which perpetrators were virtually never held to account, there were numerous cases of mass violence of the form of destroying black homes, businesses, neighborhoods, and entire cities. A recent article by BET details such riots in Colfax, Louisiana (1873- approx. 60 to 150 killed), Wilmington, North Carolina (1898 - approx. 60 to 300 killed), Atlanta, Georgia (1906 - dozens killed), Elaine, Arkansas (1919 - at least 200 killed), Rosewood, Florida (1923 - entire town burned to the ground), and, perhaps most notable of all, Tulsa, Oklahoma (1921), in which approximately 300 people were murdered and a sizable and nationally significant business district known as "Black Wall Street" was destroyed and burned. (5) These cases of violence were generally instigated by allegations of an incident of black on white crime, usually unsubstantiated or at the very least not taken into a formal criminal justice context, and rarely were white perpetrators of rioting, violence, or lynching ever held to legal account. (Over 75% of the victims of lynching were black; whites were also executed by this practice.)
The lasting damage of white violence to the efforts of black citizens to participate in the privileges of citizenship cannot be measured.


4. Federal investment in white citizens - housing and education. After WWII, the federal government entered into a time of investment in home ownership and post secondary education. This part of the story touches many more people alive today than we are inclined to recognize, in that a significant proportion of white adults alive today either grew up in homes supported by federally supported home mortgage programs or under the careers of parents who attended college under the GI bill or other federal subsidies or school loan programs, or otherwise simply attended a white state college or university. These federal resources, serving as the foundation of upward mobility for an entire generation, were systematically denied to Black citizens by discriminatory practices not only of a covert nature but to a large extent written into the methodology of application and approval. For example, the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) was created by President Roosevelt in 1934, and the rate of home ownership in the U.S. went up dramatically over the next 30 years. But data indicates that up to 98% of the federally guaranteed home loans were issued to white families, through mechanisms of segregation and discrimination that were built into the program.  For at least the first three decades of the FHA, the default benefit for white families supported home ownership - almost 5 million home mortgages and over 20 million home improvement loans in the first 25 years - and at the same time, housing assistance for African American families came not in the form of insured mortgages but rental assistance in approximately 800,000 FHA insured housing project units. (6) For the sake of discussion, assuming 95% white family beneficiaries and 5% black family beneficiaries of these programs through the first 25 years (until 1958), there is a resulting $42 billion differential, or in 2020 dollars, a $362 billion differential in the mortgage and home improvement loans supported (not direct assistance, but insured loans). Translating this amount to guaranteed loans in the present day would amount to support of a $30,000 federally insured loan for twelve million families.
This tremendous disparity in supporting white home ownership spans across one of the most significant periods of opportunity for establishing wealth, from the end of the great depression until two decades beyond WW2.
This disparity cannot be overstated, and cannot be easily overcome. The same disparity existed in the implementation of the GI bill for mortgage support and college education. The G.I. Bill did create significant gains for African-American post secondary education, but the reality was that blacks were excluded from even attending most existing colleges and universities, and the collection of emerging HBCUs were stretched beyond their resources by the increased demand for black post secondary education. So for many, the funding opportunities were thwarted by discriminatory bank lending practices or by the closed doors of white universities.
Before any white adult living today claims to have been outside of the purview of any significant federal benefit affected by race, they must first ask, what kind of home mortgage did my parents and/or grandparents use to build or improve the family home? Did my parents or grandparents attend a public university or obtain any grants or loans in support of that education?
For decades, these resources were labeled "white only" just as effectively as if they had been obtained under Jim Crow a generation before.

Our public middle school was converted from the
previously segregated Harper High School,
Jackson, Alabama, integrated in 1970.
5. Persistent inequities in public education funding. Before getting into the issue of public education funding inequity, which is actually a poverty issue equally as it is a race issue (7), consider the fact that the integration of public schools is relatively recent compared to the 400 year history of this story. Most that are the age of the baby boomer generation or older attended public schools that were either segregated or only recently integrated, (this taking place in the 60s and early 70s). Add to that the creation of white flight schools throughout the south and utilized in the north as well whereby a substantial portion of community resources were taken right off the top to create and run private or parochial schools that preserved school segregation for participating children through the end of the 20th century (For the sake of clarity, note that these schools were privately funded, not funded through the tax base).
For those that remained in public schools, state legislatures and state courts have persistently maintained the prerogative of wealthy communities to lavishly fund their own public schools while allowing children in areas more prone to poverty to experience substandard and under-resourced education.
This shameful phenomena persists right up to the present day as the brokers of power, at the state government level where education funding resources could be made more equitable, continue to protect the wealthy and expose children in poor communities to substandard educational opportunities. We have an innate tendency to justify self-serving institutions. (8)

6. Racially tilted criminal justice system. The fact that the United States - by far - leads the world in incarceration is the first fact of this discussion. By 2008, 2.4 million individuals were incarcerated, one out of every 99 adults. In this category we exceed every other nation in the world for which statistics are known. Thankfully, criminal justice reform along with diminished crime rates have led to a year-by-year drop in the number of individuals incarcerated for about a decade now, and that number is closer to 2.2 million, almost 10% lower than 2008. (9) Within that reality, the negative impact of incarceration disproportionately affects individuals other-than-white. The prison  incarceration rate for black men is about five times that of white men. (10) This is a complex phenomenon, requiring complex solutions. But in this moment of reform, our forgotten history is coming to light in that many of our earlier institutions of law enforcement were used to stabilize and control the labor resources, both in the form of using convict labor for public or private good, or the threat of jail or prison as a form of labor control for poor laborers (whether white or black) who did not own property or have control over the resources of production. Similarly, law enforcement has an negative history of oppressing organized labor, union breaking, or other forms of muscle for the owners of production and keeping the labor supply cheap and in line. Add to this the well documented history of race biased police enforcement, which persists even though efforts in training and professional law enforcement standards have been enacted to counteract this tendency in recent decades. The tragic and troubling reality remains, as has been all too often demonstrated as of late, that black citizens' encounters with law enforcement are disproportionately arbitrary, unjust, and in the worst case scenarios, deadly.
Law enforcement has come a long way in professionalism, working to escape these negative origins and biased practices, but other complex factors such as the criminalization of poverty, mental illness, homelessness and addiction have created a culture of incarceration that will require all of our collective resources of creativity and reform to overcome.
As a member of the law enforcement and corrections profession, from the inside I can recognize the significant progress has been made in reforming police and reducing prison and jail populations, yet much work remains to be done. It is clear that some individuals and agencies have never gotten the message, and more aggressive implementation change is required. At this moment we have a unique opportunity for a different kind of change, a quantum leap forward.

****
If you do not think that systematic racial discrimination against African-Americans and people of color is an issue, then I challenge you to examine the data and also open you eyes to the ways in which power is wielded and wealth is controlled in our economic and legal systems. If you are aware of the racial disparities and you think that they are somehow justified by the differences between people of different race and ethnicity, then you hold a view that is textbook racist. Race is not biological but is a social-cultural construct.
Those in power - in both intentional and unconscious ways - use race, ethnicity, and national identity to justify their privileged status and maintain control.
In the U.S. we have not done the right kind of work for a long enough period of time to somehow think that we have overcome the fundamentally racist origins and legal structures of our nation which governed with an iron fist for 300 years, not only oppressing African-Americans but those of other ethnic and national origin, typically, anyone who does not have a Caucasian appearance.
Simply stated, it is wrong within a faith perspective or humanitarian ethical perspective to ignore or deny this truth and avoid the work that must be done in love. At this moment, the national sentiment has created an opportunity for dramatic change rather than incremental and gradual progress. As fellow citizens of this nation - a nation which has never in our history realized its ideals or extended its freedoms to all of its citizens - by all means let us not oppose one another but rather work together for positive change that is long overdue.

Notes

(1) Real median family income for white non-Hispanic families is almost twice that of black families.
https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizations/2018/demo/p60-263/figure1.pdf

https://www.statista.com/statistics/233324/median-household-income-in-the-united-states-by-race-or-ethnic-group/

(2) These thoughts are presented in summary fashion with only a minimum citation of data. Each of these topics has been covered in detail in quality journalistic outlets, and each deserves a much closer look, which I hope to do in the coming weeks.

(3) "Emancipation and Reconstruction," History.com.
https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/reconstruction

"How the Election of 1877 Effectively Ended Reconstruction."
https://www.history.com/news/reconstruction-1876-election-rutherford-hayes

(4) Niesse, Mark, et. al., "Many Eligible Voters Were Canceled in Nation's Largest Purge," Atlanta Journal Constitution, March 12, 2020.
https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/many-eligible-georgia-voters-were-canceled-nation-largest-purge/jRlixHpVs0I9wVQYdDjxvM/?fbclid=IwAR0Il6jVKLy08Sl25IzYRN_xwd-vX1Z79RZ55b5277lI-Asqx0XkzMyoIBw

Willis, Jay, "Brian Kemp's Sham Democracy in Georgia," The Appeal, May 13, 2020.
https://theappeal.org/politicalreport/brian-kemp-georgia-supreme-court-district-attorney-elections/?fbclid=IwAR1griEIUOe1osCRPAiXBwihTo7TYT2KDbihrUn3lchkISVfJeaeL8n3Tis

(5) Cane, Clay, "Not Just Tulsa: Five Other Race Massacres that Devastated Black America," BET.
https://www.bet.com/news/national/2019/12/17/not-just-tulsa--five-other-race-massacres-that-devastated-black.html

"The 1873 Colfax Massacre Crippled the Reconstruction Era." Smithsonian Magazine.

"Wilmington 1898: When White Supremacists Overthrew an American Government." BBC News. 

"The Massacre of Black Sharecroppers (Arkansas)." Smithsonian Magazine.  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/death-hundreds-elaine-massacre-led-supreme-court-take-major-step-toward-equal-justice-african-americans-180969863/

"Rosewood Massacre." History.com.

"1921 Tulsa Race Massacre." Tulsa Historical Society and Museum. 

(6) "25th Annual Report of the Federal Housing Administration, 1958"
https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/25TH-ANNUAL-REPORT-FEDERAL-HOUSING-ADMINISTRATION.pdf
(No claim here is made about the racial breakdown of federally supported rental projects. The racial disparity of the home mortgage program is well documented, however - see next citation). Note: In 1960, the U.S. population was approximately 153 million white, 19 million black, and about 8 million of other race or ethnicity including Hispanic.

On the History of U.S.Government support of home ownership, see Rice, Lisa, "Long Before Redlining: Racial Disparities in Home Ownership Need Intentional Policies," Shelterforce: The Voice of Community Development, February 15, 2019.
https://shelterforce.org/2019/02/15/long-before-redlining-racial-disparities-in-homeownership-need-intentional-policies/

Federal Housing Administration
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Housing_Administration

(7) Flowers, Katricia D., "A Deeper Look at the Educational Funding Gaps in Alabama," ArcGIS Storymaps, August 7, 2019. Wealthy school districts are shown to spend as much as three to four times the per pupil funding compared to poor school districts.
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/56fce5bc8dd84031844d3b2c4eb6f936

(8) Gabrielson, Ryan. "How Jeff Sessions Helped Kill Equitable School Funding in Alabama," ProPublica, January 29, 2017.
https://www.propublica.org/article/how-jeff-sessions-helped-kill-equitable-school-funding-in-alabama

(9) "One in 100: Behind Bars in America, 2008." Pew Charitable Trusts.
https://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/reports/sentencing_and_corrections/onein100pdf.pdf

(10) "Prisoners in 2018." U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics, April, 2020.
https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p18_sum.pdf

Additional Reading:

H.R. 40: Congress to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/40

Reparations Require a Reconing of White Supremacy. Leon Galis, Flagpole, May 1, 2019
https://flagpole.com/news/comment/2019/05/01/reparations-require-a-reckoning-of-white-supremacy/

75 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice: 2017
https://medium.com/equality-includes-you/what-white-people-can-do-for-racial-justice-f2d18b0e0234

Hahamovitch, Cindy, "Athens' Lintown: Urban Renewal and White Supremacy" - Flagpole, February 12, 2020.
https://flagpole.com/news/comment/2020/02/12/yes-uga-linnentown-and-urban-renewal-were-about-white-supremacy/

Chick-fil-A's Dan Cathy Asks White Christians to Repent, fight for black Americans in the wake of police killings.
https://www.christianpost.com/news/chick-fil-as-dan-cathy-asks-white-christians-to-repent-fight-for-black-americans-in-wake-of-police-killings.html?fbclid=IwAR2eyQ5w5OmmGLwULL5ah6NSyUyqiU0bD7pLOadd-9jTadBxMYhSeoWri9s

A "Forgotten History" of How the U.S. Government Segregated America
https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of-how-the-u-s-government-segregated-america?fbclid=IwAR2f6GVFPZ7n6SlwK07BxJEj7mAKGDQ_RTyv7p_r3lydKyfTcBDmxBSuNXg

MLK Eloquently Explains the Roots of White Privilege
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?ref=saved&v=1122801851193496

FDR Proposes Second Bill of Rights: 1944
http://www.openculture.com/2017/08/f-d-r-proposes-a-second-bill-of-rights.html?fbclid=IwAR1_5LZE7IxefFpo7YA_n7cm1KEnjzy2pLbTAedrZAwUUI3Ok7AlZqu__Aw

Oklahoma Schools to Begin Teaching about 1921 Tulsa Massacre
https://atlantablackstar.com/2020/02/22/oklahoma-to-finally-teach-history-of-1921-tulsa-race-massacre-as-part-of-school-curriculum/?fbclid=IwAR3t_jl9MQhn2LFN2BOvwZttkE3AGi12sa4Ai9tz3REC5h27ZhwS4UkoBIc

Trump Administration Quietly Cuts Funding to the Nation's Poorest Schools
https://news.yahoo.com/trump-administration-quietly-cuts-funding-090641332.html

A Letter to Local Churches (Greensboro, NC): 2020
https://www.greensboro.com/opinion/columns/julie-peeples-a-letter-to-our-local-church-community/article_c7ec375e-3176-504c-860a-3c3fe0ae3230.html?fbclid=IwAR2-KAt01ZdM-T3UbPLEjLElqJpT0QHLxUOsEWmoO3bTUEN9YpvfiKGwGxY

6 Films to Watch for Black History Month
https://time.com/5774140/black-history-month-movies/?fbclid=IwAR0HRBL8Jt1r8W27FnvuXoIZkgSf6PQ46pyU0P5p2LdNwK5a8dL9uyct4Cs

Systematic Racism Explained
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrHIQIO_bdQ&fbclid=IwAR0dt1QPIxjGq-cx_nRl-ogsyWBbBprEtiUYB9A0it7Mi_TesM0wYQItdEE

Children Living in High Poverty, Low Opportunity Neighborhoods
https://www.aecf.org/resources/children-living-in-high-poverty-low-opportunity-neighborhoods/?fbclid=IwAR3tN9mv_YWiR934hUOwD-RIEm0E3Wznbmx7RpVjw4QV84siPYl1iRAnG1c

Facing the Church's Complicity in Racism
https://www.redletterchristians.org/facing-the-churchs-complicity-in-racism/?fbclid=IwAR2TdkMBLxD5m1d6S3Py1LH1oNsAx3UBznsnbX0ls2cCZoidVooD0DZNdNo

Rising U.S. Inequality: How We Got Here, Where We're Going
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/rising-us-inequality-how-we-got-here-where-were-going?fbclid=IwAR1CXsXjWSWUQrlYZCUy4XgO6vQH5a5UuXncsMeflVicZwWfXLXkZh60aeY

Black Poverty is Rooted in Real Estate Exploitation
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-17/how-housing-finance-enriched-whites-at-expense-of-black-borrowers?fbclid=IwAR0fTIwjV-JwkjjmbtzSbw0zlatBlmmPMcBUoud2t3AfWPzPo5c4F9voIzA

The Article Removed from Forbes, "Why White Evangelicalism is So Cruel"
https://www.politicalorphans.com/the-article-removed-from-forbes-why-white-evangelicalism-is-so-cruel/?fbclid=IwAR3tN9mv_YWiR934hUOwD-RIEm0E3Wznbmx7RpVjw4QV84siPYl1iRAnG1c

How the Gutting of the Voting Rights Act Led to Hundreds of Closed Polls
https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/kz58qx/how-the-gutting-of-the-voting-rights-act-led-to-closed-polls?fbclid=IwAR23NSynYI6NJqV05IRTn0DGTkZMEbhLZSIBY8zxasjFLpU7fpBbrGe7-Pg

An Entire Manhattan Village Owned by Black People Was Destroyed to Build Central Park
http://www.kolumnmagazine.com/2018/05/31/an-entire-manhattan-village-owned-by-black-people-was-destroyed-to-build-central-park-timeline/