Atonement and Reparations with Denise Hamilton, Sam Lewis, and Zaheer Ali

Denizen

In this episode we explore and parse apart three distinct elements of atonement: telling the truth, acknowledging and apologizing for harms, and taking direct action to repair. As this conversation underscores, atonement represents just one element of a more complex set of reforms necessary to address systemic oppression. Absent a broader effort, the very harms reparations seeks to address would perpetuate.

Denise, Sam, and Zaheer's personal reflections make this conversation especially powerful. Denise expresses the labor involved in bringing this topic to light, Sam shares his experience atoning and paying restitution for the crime that had him spend 24 years in prison, and Zaheer highlights the ways in which our mindsets of individuality inhibit our ability to take responsibility for each other.

Discussion summary:

• Framing the topic and this moment for social justice [1:00]
• The story of Bruce's Beach in Los Angeles; "what is an apology without an action behind it?" [4:36]
• Missing elements from South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and recent activity in the U.S. Congress [7:47]
• Reparations as part of the broader racial problems and history of the U.S. [9:22]
• "Do we believe ourselves to be one body?" Addressing and repairing a wound in the body that we all share [11:48]
• Accounting for atrocities that happened generations ago [17:26]
• Moving beyond the narrative of the self-made person [22:32]
• "all men are created equal" and truthtelling [23:27]
• Cycles of poverty [24:41]
• Myth of the meritocracy [29:15]
• Justice and restitution in museum culture [30:33]
• Assessing the current moment [43:08]
• What is enough and what is sufficient? [46:39]

Resources

• Why We Need Reparations for Black Americans Brookings, April 2020

Current events

• California Panel Sizes Up Reparations for Black Citizens New York Times, December 1, 2022
• H.Con.Res.19 - Urging the establishment of a United States Commission on Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation proposed in February 2021; referred to subcommittee in April 2021
• H.R.40 - Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act introduced January 2021

Historic references

• The Radical Republicans movement (1850s)
• Forty Acres and a Mule & General Sherman's Special Field Orders No. 15 from the Civil War.
• Bruce's Beach, a black-owned resort that was taken by eminent domain in 1924
• The Rosewood massacre (1923) and the pursuit of reparations in Florida
• Germany's restitution to Holocaust victims (1945-2018)
• Civil Liberties Act of 1988 reparations to Japanese Americans for internment during WWII
• Truth and Reconciliation Commission 1996-2003 in South Africa

Books cited

• Caste: the Origins of our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
• When Affirmative Action Was White by Ira Katznelson
• Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing by Joy DeGruy
• From Here to Equality, Second Edition: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century by William A. Darity and A. Kirsten Mullen

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