What are Reparations? An Analogy

A number of political candidates have been talking openly about the issue of reparations to the African-American community for slavery, Jim Crow laws, redlining and other discriminatory practices. A controversial issue, no doubt.

Many folks do not understand what reparations are and what they are for. Let me offer this analogy to demonstrate why slavery still matters to this day:

A Wrongful Conviction: An Analogy

A person in slavery is like a person wrongfully convicted and sent to prison with a life sentence. 

The Civil War was the trial that finally got him released from jail after 30 years incarcerated. Hallelujah! 

But no one did any subsequent legal work to finish the job. The man is "free" but still lacks voting rights. The prison record still prevents him from getting loans or meaningful work. His record was never completely exonerated or expunged. He is in a messy in-between state--out of jail but still a second-class citizen with no resources to pursue legal action to get his record fully cleaned.

Getting out of jail was only the first step--a huge one, yes, but only the first step toward making the situation right. How about all the therapy it will take to recover from those years of psychological trauma and forced separation from his loved ones? Perhaps his children grew up without a father, so this trauma is multi-generational. 

How about some kind of integration program to get into schools and jobs and to at least attempt to make up for lost time? That's 30 years of lost wages, lost promotions, lost raises, lost work experience and lost money saved for retirement. Instead, this person rotted in jail for 30 years and is now starting off in entry level work, with a stigma and a spotty record he shouldn't have, all doing this with years of trauma to somehow process without adequate community support.

This quote from author Marianne Williamson sums it up nicely:  "If you kick somebody to the ground, you owe it to them to do more than stop kicking," she told New York radio station Hot 97 earlier this month. "You owe it to them to say, 'Here: Let me help you get back up.'

Reparations for slavery and other discriminatory practices are like the work that happens after getting released from jail.

An Analysis

It's outrageous that we have stalled on this so long. We as a nation have clearly wronged a people severely and deliberately. When the Civil War ended, all debts were not paid by a long shot. Dismantling slavery should have been followed by rebuilding, but we all know how flawed "Reconstruction" was. 

We should have gathered as a people, pooled all our resources and did everything possible to redistribute the wealth that African-Americans had generated and help them get a leg up and get the skills to integrate in society--skills they were long denied. Instead, we denied them access to education, access to loans and access to the voting booth. To top it off, white society blamed African-Americans for "personal moral failure" for high rates of poverty. Unbelievable. 

The wealth of the plantation came through the stolen labor of slaves. That wealth should have been divided up. Instead, what they got was second-class citizen status through Jim Crow laws and unofficial second-class citizens status through racism and white privilege which continues to this day. That is NOT how you treat a group of people who we admit we have wronged. Then they get blame on top of that.

Just trying to heal from 250 years of continual forced family separation is an almost unbelievable trauma. Then add on to that denial of voting rights, prohibition from the educational system, from jobs, from getting loans, from getting the GI BIll, the list goes on and on. Instead, what I hear from white folks on my own page is "they should get over it and grow up." Wow. Try unpacking that sentence. Talking down to folks like they are children.

Imagine if I stole your money, invested it and made more from it, and then I tell you to "get over it." Give me my money back--AND the interest you've built off it--and THEN we'll talk about "getting over it" right? Obviously, reparations are much more than giving a check but you get the idea.

The morality is simple:  When you sin, you first confess it. Then you beg forgiveness both of God and of those you have wronged. Then you worked to correct the wrongs that have been done, to the extent that is possible. And then you work to make sure it never happens again.  And then as a final penance, you "pay it forward" sowing seeds of justice and charity to others going forward. This is basic, common sense. It's what adults should be doing.

Imagine a thief breaks into your home. He steals a thousand dollars. When you find him, he tells you: "Just get over it! Why can't you learn to forgive? Why are you playing the victim? Quit discriminating, leave me alone and I'll leave you alone!"  Well... give me my money back and then we can talk about "getting over it"!

Some folks say that any race-based classification is a perpetuation of racism itself. So giving advantages to African-Americans today would be to further racism, in their opinion. They say "you can't use discrimination to combat discrimination." The problem with this logic is that is favors those who already have all the power and wealth leveraged in their favor. These two quotes below dismantle that rationale quite nicely:

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

― Desmond Tutu

“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe.”

― Elie Wiesel, The Night Trilogy: Night, Dawn, the Accident

Ecumenism: The Narrow Path that Avoids Cheap Grace

The narrow path (stock photo):
On one side, a steep drop off.
On the other, a difficult climb.

In working toward better relationships--and ultimately unity--among followers of Christ, I often find people who hold two extremes views. Both of them can be guilty of fostering a kind of cheap grace.

The first are those who are satisfied with division. In the name of doctrinal or moral purity, they are quick to draw hard lines between their group and others. They sometimes even celebrate divisions along these lines, including denominational splits and reformations. These tend to be conservatives.

The other group sees unity everywhere. They simply see unity as self-evident and can't be bothered to dig any deeper. They aren't invested in the work of building unity by addressing the points of division head on, which can often seem too tedious to them. They often act as if unity is already present and they don't have time to sweat over the details. These tend to be liberals.

Both sides are guilty of giving up too easily.

To the first group, yes, there may be times when some formal split may be necessary. But it's not so simple. Scripture calls us in many places to promote the reconciliation of all back to Christ. And even if some demarcation may be regrettably necessary, we should always, well, regret it--we should never celebrate it. On top of that, no group is all good or all bad. God has clearly showered gifts to all people, even to those outside your chosen group. We can maintain hard lines, but those hard lines do not seem to match God's actions nor God's call to us.

And to the other side, if the rules don't matter, then why have them? It is one thing to have a vision for unity. Perhaps from the standpoint of Christ himself, all Christians are already united in him in some mystical way that we cannot fathom. Still, that does not spare us from the hard work of making that unity visible in our lives right now. We can simply say that 'all Christians are one', but our Christian denominations have rules and doctrines on the books which directly contradict that. There have been mutual condemnations and other exclusionary practices. We worship separately, we do charity separately and we often marry separately. Those divisions between denominations have left a long history of real human suffering in their wake, and many of those wounds still need a healing touch. If unity were so self-evident, we should work with our churches to make sure the rules, rubrics, doctrines and practices match what we believe in our hearts.

This is why I always respect those who work hard to thread the ecumenical needles. If Christ calls us together, we should find a way to say that out loud in a way that is consistent with what our respective denominations say. Our rules and practices should reflect that. The work can be incredibly tedious when it comes to hairsplitting differences over doctrines, but again, if those doctrines don't matter, why do we have them?

I appreciate that some folks don't have the patience for this. They may simply say they need to live their lives today and not wait for the churches to come around. People marry across denominational lines and take part in worship celebrations across the board whether they are members or not. There is some merit in this. In some ways, these are the pioneers who help us envision a more unified future. But if we acknowledge this, we have to--by the same logic--respect the folks who want to stay within their divisions for the same reasons.

This is why I want to hold up the ecumenical workers who try to untangle this mess--so that those who feel there is a need for division can be satisfied that that need no longer exists, and that those who believe unity is the ultimate reality can be satisfied that we are able to say that out loud and be consistent in all our statements and practices.

In a time when both sides have difficulty getting excited about the work of Christian unity, I hold that this is work worth doing. But it is a narrow path that takes great trepidation to walk. But it is also a path of love--love for the churches as they are and love for the vision of the unified Kingdom that Christ calls us to. With two outstretched arms, ecumenical workers try to hold both together and become the bridge between them. This is good work.