Renewed reparations debate inspires activism
Mark Stevenson didn’t realize the extent of the wealth gap between white and black Americans until the U.S. Navy relocated him to New Jersey.
Traveling between former manufacturing centers Trenton and Camden, the Georgia native was shocked by the blight and homelessness in black communities.
Then he moved to Columbus two years ago and had deja vu.
“There’s two Columbuses,” said the 41-year-old Navy recruiter who lives in Pickerington. “You have the Columbus that everybody that comes downtown sees — that the city wants you to see — and then you have (places like) Linden,” a predominantly black neighborhood where 45% of residents live below the poverty line.
Stevenson has since become politically engaged, starting the Columbus chapter of a growing lineage-based movement, American Descendants of Slavery. The controversial group highlights the unique experience of black people who are descendants of slaves in the United States, which they say differentiates them from African immigrants.
The national movement — whose rhetoric has been called xenophobic or anti-immigrant by some — was founded in 2018.
“We feel that we have a unique blackness that sometimes gets overshadowed by the (African) diaspora,” said Stevenson, who also helped organize ADOS’ Ohio chapter, which includes more than 400 participants. He traces his own lineage to slaves in Georgia and Alabama.
ADOS is best known for its advocacy for reparations for the enslavement of African Americans, which has gained renewed interest in the past year from politicians and the public. Central Ohioans have joined in the debate, which has even played a role in primary election campaigns.
U.S. Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Jefferson Twp., is one of more than 120 co-sponsors of a House bill recommending a commission to study and develop proposals for reparations.
“I believe it will identify real-world, workable solutions to address hundreds of years of enslavement and systematic discrimination,” said Beatty, who is running for re-election in Ohio’s 3rd Congressional District against fellow Democrat Morgan Harper.
The proponents of House Resolution 40, introduced in each Congress since 1989, have argued that reparations would help solve problems such as the racial wealth gap. According to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, the median wealth of white households was 10 times greater than that of black households in 2016. And national studies have ranked Columbus among the most economically segregated cities in the country, with low-income households that are disproportionately black.
Scholars attribute this disparity to the lingering effect of slavery, Jim Crow laws, redlining and other forms of institutionalized racism.
“Wealth is intergenerationally transmitted, and, right now, an African American with a college education has less wealth on average than a white (person) who did not finish high school,” said Trevon Logan, professor of economics and associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Ohio State University.
Logan is working with others on the reparations issue and how they might work: anything from cash payments — adding up to $2.6 trillion by some estimates — to free college tuition to tax cuts.
Nationally, only 29% of Americans — 15% of white Americans compared to 74% of black Americans — favor cash reparations, according to a poll released last year.
Opponents say reparations would be an unfair burden on people who weren’t present during slavery, perpetuate a victim mentality among African Americans and cause division.
“Lots of Americans can point to ancestors who were treated badly one way or the other,” said Roger Clegg, president of The Center for Equal Opportunity, a conservative think tank based in Virginia. “If somebody is in poverty now and they need help going forward, (programs) should be available to all Americans, regardless of the reason that they were born into poverty.”
Clegg testified against H.R. 40 at a congressional hearing in 2007.
Harper said that if she is elected to the 3rd Congressional District, she will continue the advocacy for reparations and push even beyond H.R. 40.
“One of the main reasons why I launched this campaign is really trying to end economic segregation that we see in central Ohio and across the country, that just based on what ZIP code, school district and neighborhood your parents are (in) can really determine the level of resources available to you and your outcomes in life,” she said.
Congressional Republicans from central Ohio, Troy Balderson and Steve Stivers, did not respond to requests for comment on the issue.
What Ohio politicians think about reparations is becoming increasingly important to voters such as Stevenson and other ADOS Ohio members. They’ve hosted town halls and meetings in Columbus, inviting local candidates to discuss their platforms. (Harper, whom they endorse, attended a gathering in December.)
On the national level, ADOS has faced criticism for its insistence that any possible reparations be given only to black people who are descendants of U.S. slaves — and not African immigrants.
That makes sense if such redress is just for slavery, said Dania Francis, who teaches economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Any restitution for the effects of post-slavery discriminatory practices, however, should include descendants of immigrants who were in the U.S. at the time as well, she said.
Joseph Danso, 28, of the East Side, who immigrated from Ghana when he was 15, said his experience is so different from the descendants of slaves that he wouldn’t expect any part of potential reparations.
“People who’ve lived here, who have families that went through all those horrible things that happened that we’ve all read about — my mom didn’t go through that,” he said.
Danso pointed to a legacy of discrimination against African
Americans that affects their chances at success, something Logan, the Ohio State professor, said is supported by research.
“There are differences in wealth (between) those who are from immigrants versus those who are ADOS,” Logan said. “Someone who is an African immigrant from Nigeria coming to the United States typically has high levels of education and would be able to access and have higher income and build wealth at a much faster rate than someone who was a descendant of enslaved people.”
However, Logan stressed, it’s a nuanced discussion that can quickly become unproductive and divisive if not framed carefully.
A local group working to bridge the gap between these communities is the Columbus African Council. The organization has held forums on topics such as black mental health, poverty, education and, most recently, the impact of slavery.
However, the group’s founder, Dontavius Jarrells, a Democrat running for state representative for District 25, said they have yet to delve into who in the black community should receive reparations.
“I don’t want to create a space where we are labeling one group over the other,” he said. “Because at the end of the day, the issues that impact African Americans are similar issues that impact our (African) brothers and sisters as well.”