By K. Sabeel Rahman, Demos — The escalating COVID-19 pandemic impacts all of us, but for Black and brown people in particular, the combined health and economic devastation is truly…
By K. Sabeel Rahman, Demos — The escalating COVID-19 pandemic impacts all of us, but for Black and brown people in particular, the combined health and economic devastation is truly…
Reparations And The Elusive Definition of Black Identity By Gene Bemby, NPR — Black folks have officially been categorized by the government as a bunch of different things, depending on the political moment. During the very first U.S. census back in 1790, it was simply “slaves.” In 1840, it was “free colored males and females” and, of course, slaves. What was “black,” “mulatto,” “quadroon” and “octoroon” in 1890…
A major statement by the National African American Reparations Commission with an addendum on the Coronavirus Pandemic. The National African American Reparations Commission (NAARC) is convened by the Institute of the Black World 21st Century and serves as a vehicle, among others, to intensify, broaden and deepen the Reparations Movement in the U.S. The Commission is comprised of leading African American activists, scholars, professionals and experts in the fields of…
By Antonia Williams-Gary, South Florida Times — I have a remedy to help flatten that curve. Reading this may make you some of you uncomfortable, but the more I learn…
By Bashir Muhammad Akinyele, Patch — Hotep Peace!!! Take notes!!!!!!!!! At an US Congressional hearing on reparations in Washington D.C this past summer, internationally famous Black author Ta-Nehisi Coats told…
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has called for coronavirus reparations for minorities, claiming higher numbers of COVID-19 fatalities in low-income communities stems from underlying inequality. By Ebony Bowden, New York Post —…
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson — Moments before the House took a final vote on the COVID stimulus package, a handful of progressive House Democrats railed that the bill gave the…
Sanders’ former national Black outreach director says the Vermont senator hasn’t yet learned from his past mistakes. By Marcus Ferrell, TheGrio — I know, I was there before. I feel like I’m in Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day in 2020. I was working as Bernie Sanders‘ 2016 national Black outreach director. One morning while doing early outreach in South Carolina my Facebook page blew up. I was pinged in messages that said, “Bernie Sanders does…
But in 1862, the federal government doled out the 2020 equivalent of $23 million – NOT to the formerly enslaved but to their white enslavers. By Kali Holloway, The Nation — In 1870 a black woman named Henrietta Wood sued the white deputy sheriff who, nearly two decades earlier, kidnapped her from the free state of Ohio, illegally transported her to slaveholding Kentucky, and sold her into a life of enslavement that…
SACRAMENTO (CBM) – Assemblymember Shirley Weber (D-San Diego), chair of the California Legislative Black Caucus, has introduced, a new bill, AB 3121. It calls for setting up a task force to study and develop reparation proposals for African Americans. “Existing law,” the language of the legislation reads, “requests the Regents of the University of California to assemble a colloquium of scholars to draft a research proposal to analyze the economic…
Economic justice was always central to Martin Luther King Jr.’s agenda. But society has moved backward on that issue since his death. By Michael K. Honey, Time — When Memphis sanitation workers went on strike in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. knew they had a lesson to teach America. “You are reminding the nation,” he told attendees at a March 1968 rally there, “that it is a crime for people to live…
In fact, Black activists and civil rights leaders have been advocating for compensation for the trauma and cost of slavery for centuries. By Mohammed Elnaiem, JSTOR Daily — In July…