Welcome back to the Accountability is Love series! In this edition, we are reminded about the debt owed to those who have contributed to the wealth and prosperity of this nation without receiving the benefits.
In a workshop on environmental regulations, I asked participants, “are you a policy maker?” They often respond with no. Then I ask, “do you have rules in your house?” They always respond YES! Policy are the rules of engagement, decision making, and resource allocation. In a household, this may look like determining the meals for the week while at the local government level it may look like approving an agricultural lease to grow food.
At the state government level, it may look like supporting a diverse portfolio of farmers and ranchers in the state, while at the national level, it may look like providing subsidies for ranchers/farmers to support the national public school lunch program. Internationally, it may look like co-creating international food quality standards at the United Nations.
When I ask, “are you a policy maker?” What I am really asking is who makes decisions about your life? Who has power over you day to day, month to month, decade to decade? Do you know these people by name? Are they on your call list if you need help or get into trouble? Have these people ever been to your home for a cup of tea or to borrow sugar?
Painting of Virginia Thanksgiving Myth
I first learned public policy in school. First elementary school in Virginia where I learned that Thanksgiving was a beautiful meal between pilgrims and Native Americans where they exchanged gifts and appreciation for each other. As the only African American student in the entire elementary school, I knew early on that I wasn’t getting the full story. It wasn’t until high school that more of the truth of our country’s founding was revealed but never from a position of reconciliation, reparations, or repair. Always from a position of ‘oh well’ and what was ‘necessary’ to have the ‘freedoms’ that we ‘all’ enjoy. (see Reflections on In(ter)depdence Day bonus blog for more on freedoms.)
It was in college that I really studied public policy with a focus on American Politics. This is where we dove deeply into the founding documents of this nation. But it was not until I pursued my masters in International Education that I studied international relations and foreign policy.
After navigating surgical miseducation and erasure necessary for oppressive systems to thrive, I can now clearly see the interconnectedness at the city, county, regional, state, national, and international levels from a variety of disciplines – education, environment, health, workforce, and the arts. Though connected at the root, on the surface of a capitalist system, the connections have not reached our hearts and minds nor our collective will.
Who Makes the Rules
Assuming you have the right to vote, you should also have the right to run for office. As a descendant of enslaved Africans, my family did not get to vote or be represented in this US government as a decision maker until 1870 – well, African American men. The United States was founded in 1776 as we were just reminded with In(ter)dependance Day. However, it was not until 1870 – 94 years later that African American men were allowed to vote. Not to mention African American women who had to wait until 1965 – that’s 189 years of US government decision making without ONE of my African American maternal line who have contributed to this country since its founding. How could this have come about, you ask?
‘Critical Race Theory’ by Jonathan Harris
Well, turns out, it matters who makes the rules. It was not until the The Reconstruction Acts of 1867, known as the First Reconstruction, these acts divided the South into five military districts, and provided for the establishment of new governments, based on manhood suffrage. This Radical or Congressional Reconstruction, which lasted until 1877. For slightly less than 7 years, African American men had the right to run for office and to vote in elections. Why only 7 years? What were the factors that led to the failure of an interracial decision making and ultimately democracy?
Liberty and Justice for Some
From founding to the present day, who gets to vote in the United States has always been a fight. Though the Founding Fathers stated, “liberty, and justice for all,” the ‘all’ was White male landowners. From the very beginning, there were explicit boundaries on who got to decide in this limited democracy. With our current administration, our nation again is reminded of the battle of who gets to decide.
Now, the Trump administration wants to restrict naturalization – restrict who gets to be a citizen, who gets the right to vote, even the identification one needs to vote. Typically, a drivers license would suffice, now the Congress is considering allowing only a birth certificate or passport. This reminds many of the poll tax and other intergenerational efforts to suppress the vote. The exclusionary practices are by design to keep a ruling minority in charge of the masses – the opposite of democracy.
Compromises, Terror, and Debt oh My
Tyranny is not new in the US by our elected officials. Take Andrew Jackson who also refused to comply with a Supreme Court ruling when he carried out the Trail of Tears. Approximately 6,000 people died during the illegal land theft.
Compromise of 1877
Truce Not Compromise
I often wonder what life would be like under a representative democracy. The more I learn about the United States of America, the more I realize that a true democracy has not only never been achieved but has been actively destroyed in ways large and small. In the contested election of 1876, Rutherford B. Hayes was awarded the presidency in exchange for withdrawing the last of the federal troops from the South.
Terror and the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan Harper’s Weekly Illustration
People often forget that the KKK was founded the same year as the Emancipation Proclamation. Every southern state had a KKK chapter or affiliation by 1870. When I mentioned resistance to interracial democracy, this is what I meant. The KKK – who referred to themselves as redeemers – served as a vehicle for white southern resistance to the Republican Party’s Reconstruction-era policies. The redeemers were against establishing political and economic equality for Black Americans. The KKK used intimidation and violence directed at white people seeking equality AND Black Republican leaders alike. Though Congress passed legislation designed to curb Klan terrorism, the organization saw its primary goal—the reestablishment of white supremacy—fulfilled through Democratic victories in state legislatures across the South in the 1870s.
Debt as Oppressor
In Debt: the First 5,000 Years, Daniel Graber introduces the term, ‘military-coinage-slavery complex.’ This complex breeds consolidated power and inequality through violence and transaction that predates the invention of coinage in 800 BCE. This framework continues to shape social constructs of the oppressor throughout time and space. Following the genocide, displacement, and dispossession of Indigenous people on Turtle Island, European settlers evolved the concept of debt to reinforce constraints on former Enslaved Africans via a crop-lien system. In the early last 1800s, White southern farmers and bankers used this loan system – in which store owners extended credit to farmers for the purchase of goods in exchange for a portion of their future crops – resulted in Black farmers accumulating debt which forced the formerly enslaved to remain on the White farm working under less and less favorable conditions.
So the White land owner – land stolen from Tribes – now has access to cheaper intergenerational labor which allows more disposable income. Revenue they could invest in more weapons to get more resources or other related industries (e.g. slavery and railway systems). Farming is an imprecise system where overextraction results in lower yields requiring more power. These uncertainties create unending debt spirals. Couple that with government assistance programs funded by the many but allocated to the few and it is no surprise that the oppressive system never quite died. It just hibernated.
Gimme the Loot
After who gets to vote and who gets to set policy, the question becomes, how do these policy makers allocate resources. Determine revenue (e.g. taxes and fees) and expenditures (e.g. water, energy) for the electorate. It would be remiss if I did not lift up the broken unceded treaties between the United States government and Tribal governments who are Indigenous to Turtle Island (aka the Americas). Just as the US government owes a debt to descendants of enslaved Africans, so too do we owe a debt to all those who are Indigenous to Turtle Islands also known as the Americas.
As an elected official and equity expert who works to deepen cultural understanding and competence (see “Grieving the Culture Series”), I am capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time. As an African American, I can still advocate for 40 acres and a mule on stolen land. I can honor the pain of another without it taking away from my own and that of my ancestors.
I use the words responsibilities and obligations to refer to what others call privileges. I have responsibilities and obligations to the Tribes and Indigenous people whose stolen land I live on and who continue to be chronically underrepresented in the decisions being made about our nation’s present and future.
The Road to Repair
“Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.” Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Reflect
How does one even begin to atone after so many generations of compounding moral debt? Resist the urge to say, “that happened before I was born, how am I responsible?” The question is not one of responsibility, it is one of benefit. How do you benefit from systems where there is a hierarchy of rights and opportunities? To build readiness for corrective action, reflection is necessary. Reflect on:
- thoughts, words, and deeds that led to a hierarchy of rights and benefit from it. Rights administered by the ruling minority over the majority.
- your personal lived and learned experiences.
- the actions and outcomes of the partners, groups, and organizations that you affiliated.
- impact you have had on other living beings. Identifying specific examples of how you used your skills, talents, and treasures for corrective action from my day to day to long term planning, from the personal to the professional.
Atone & Repair
Atonements invites values- aligned relationships bringing us to the present moment where we co- create a world where you and I get our needs met. Repair can come in many forms. In “What Is to Be Repaired?” Jamila Mascat reminds us that repair acknowledges the connection between the injustices of the past and the current equalities that have resulted. Repair moves past blame into corrective action. Reflection: What does repair look like to the individual, interpersonal, and institution.
Reparation Rituals
Many think of reparations as a one time exchange. However, the atrocities that occurred across generations – thus the call in for reparation rituals. Rituals are to be done consistently. To remind, align, and activate corrective action as a disciple, a way of life. Why rituals? What is the opposite you ask? Well, the opposite of ritual is performance – one and done. Show and tell without lasting change that is community led and driven. Coupling ritual with reparation aligns the corrective actions with the chronically traumatic stress, displacement, dispossession, discrimination, and disease.
Much has been written and said about reparations. One of my favorites written pieces is “The Case for Reparations” by Ta-Nehisi Coates. In the Atlantic articles, Coates reminds the reader of the loss of freedoms and destruction of individual, familial, and community life through laws and customs designed to discriminate, dispossess, and destroy – enslavement, separate but equal, and the many policies in housing, workforce, education, transportation, healthcare, etc. that provided significantly less quality to Black Americans if the ‘freedom’ or ‘opportunity’ was offered at all.
CALL TO ACTION
We Good on This
The best apology is changed behavior. The formerly oppressed have read enough apologies, participated in enough memorials, and commemorations that acknowledged the past injustices without any changed behavior. We asked for monetary reparations, we got a holiday that everyone gets off. This is symbolic reparations..
Keep These Coming
- Individual reparations: There are several ways to implement individual reparations. Big ways could be through giving property, repaying student loans, paying rent like the Little Caesars founder paid Rosa Parks. Other considerations include childcare, participating in mutual aid communities/neighborhoods.
- Collective reparations: The individual strategies apply to groups, communities, or regions that have been affected by human rights violations. Systemically, collective reparations can be implemented through governmental and nongovernmental programs. The key is to ensure these efforts are led by the affected group who has the power to make every critical decision. This is not charity, this is a debt owed. Debt should be paid first.
- Local opportunities: Black Families United Foundation. empower their children, and to promote equity, diversity, and inclusion through confidence building, community development, and community engagement.
- International Opportunities: Grassroots Al-Quds. Established in 2011 out of the belief in Jerusalem’s historical and current importance and the need for a platform for Palestinian networking in the city. This organization supports Palestinian sumoud (steadfastness and resilience) in Al-Quds. They also research and create knowledge that supports community mobilization. Al-Quds leaders build networks between the different Palestinian communities in Jerusalem, so that they can overcome their fragmentation by the Israeli occupation authorities, and make long-term plans and strategies for the city as a whole.
- Inter-Systemic reparations: This honors and reflects the interconnectedness of systems, disciplines, sectors, etc. through policy and practice. Applicable to every individual member of the entity, small groups, departments, units, and divisions. Forms of reparation include financial payments or the provision of goods and services. Again, this is not charity. According to the Historic Loss Assessment created by the People of the Sacred land, Colorado alone owes Tribes a debt of at least $1.17 TRILLION for just the land mass and $500 million in minerals. They cannot even calculate water and agriculture. Cannot even calculate it.
So the next time you tell me about the latest programs that offer tribes less than millions is disrespect and dishonor. Land acknowledgement without changed behavior allows violence to continue. Consider making a meaningful contribution to Womxn of the Mountain. This organization uplifts the spiritual, physical, emotional & educational needs of historically exploited communities—centering women, femmes & children. They serve those excluded from systems of power through a commitment to equity, decolonization & collective care.
