How the long fight for slavery reparations is slowly being won
Les « réparations » peuvent-elles mettre fin au racisme systémique ?
Depuis l'abolition de l'esclavage aux États-Unis, l'important écart de richesse entre la communauté noire américaine et la communauté blanche pousse de nombreux activistes à demander des « réparations », soit des fonds versés directement aux Afro-Américains par le gouvernement. Depuis les années 50, cette idée a pris de l'ampleur. Aujourd'hui, pour la première fois, une ville tente l'expérience. Retour sur l'histoire des réparations et leur pertinence de nos jours...
It began with an email. On an especially cold day in Evanston, Illinois, in February 2019, Robin Rue Simmons, 43 years old and two years into her first term as alderman for the city’s historically Black 5th ward, sent an email [to her local Equity Commission] whose effects would eventually make US history:
Hello Equity Commission, I realize that no 1 policy or proclamation can repair the damage done to Black families in this 400th year of African American resilience. I’d like to pursue policy and actions as radical as the radical policies that got us to this point.
2. Simmons went on to invite the equity commission to join her in exploring “best actions” and pursuing “the light at the end of the tunnel”. By November 2019, Robin Rue Simmons had successfully inaugurated the US’s – and the world’s – first ever government-funded slavery reparations programme.
3. Evanston is a majority-white university town about 13 miles north of Chicago on the shores of Lake Michigan. From the turn of the 20th century, Black families began arriv
in Evanston in large numbers. Around 1915, the process grew into the great migration, one of the greatest internal population movements in modern American history. Over a period of decades, some 6 million Black people left the post-plantation south to fill the growing labour vacuum across the industrial north, and to escape intensifying white supremacist campaigns for retribution and racial rule. These campaigns and policies, collectively called “Jim Crow”, included voter suppression, police brutality and mass incarceration, segregation and the terror of lynching.
4. In 1919, with a Black population of 2,500 in a city of 37,000, the Evanston city council created a new triangular zone bounding the Black residential enclave located in the city’s inner core. The zone was tagged for disinvestment: there would be no development of schools, parks, playgrounds, libraries or grocery stores.
5. Housing segregation grew more intense during the 30s, when the federal government introduced “redlining maps” for US cities. And by the 60s, according to estimates by sociologists, Evanston was one of the most segregated cities in the US. Recent data shows an ongoing story of disinvestries ment. In 2019, banks offered 1,487 mortgages to homebuyers in Evanston. Only 95 of those went to Black customers.
6. Nationwide, Black families owned fewer homes in 2018 than they did 30 years ago. The wealth gap separating Black families from their white peers has grown exponentially during this same 30-year period.
7. Today, the average income of Black families in Evanston is $46,000 less than that of white families; Black people’s life expectancy is 13 years shorter than for white people. And more than 60% of all people arrested in Evanston are Black, even though they represent just 16% of the population. Robin Rue Simmons, like all reparationists before her, believes that “something just as radical” as the harm itself is needed as remedy.
8. In June 2019, Simmons and the equity commission launched a “solutions only” reparations plan focused on addressing the economic damage done to Black residents by Evanston’s history of redlining, racial zoning and discrimination by banks and real estate firms. Simmons began a seing of community consultations with hundreds of Black Evanstonians. The meetings led her to propose $25,000 grants to eligible Black homebuyers in Evanston, along with additional funds to assist Black homeowners in paying property taxes and completing home renovations. The community also asked for the creation of the first-ever public school in ward five.
A HISTORY OF REPARATIONS
9. On 25 November 2019, the Evanston city council passed the US’s first – indeed the world’s first – legislated and funded reparations programme to acknowledge and address the intergenerational disparities of racial slavery. Simmons sees the current dispensation as the beginning of something much greater and longer-lasting. “We are focused on breaking the racial wealth divide,” Simmons told me. “My hope is that the fund grows tenfold as other institutions and donors follow our lead.”
10. It can sometimes seem as though discussions of reparations are idealistic or theoretical debates, or even a relatively new discussion in the aftermath of the world wars. In fact, if we look at the story of actual reparationists we see people have been making these demands for centuries.
11. From the moment slavery was abolished, emancipated Black people demanded redress. Like traits passed down through a large, scattered family, the reparationist movements of the 19th and 20th centuries exhibited variations on certain themes. If, for decades, reparationists worked in small local groups, largely unknown to each other, that began to change by the turn of the 20th century. Popular reparationist movements came into their own, using new technologies of communication and travel to reach mass audiences.
12. The scale of reparationist organisation took another leap in the 1950s through the work of Audley Moore, known as the Queen Mother of reparations movements. She subbeing mitted a petition with more than 1 million signatures to President Kennedy in 1963, the centennial year of the Emancipation Proclamation. The petition demanded that the US government pay no less than $500tr over the course of four generations, as a partial payment of what was owed to African Americans. The money was to be controlled by the Black community, not by a small elite, and was to “benefit the whole people” through the construction of infrastructure, industry, educational institutions and health services. Moore’s epic reparations demand made it as far as President Kennedy’s secretary, and then stopped. Silence is power.
WHAT IS HR40?
13. On 11 December 2019, Robin Rue Simmons spoke about the path to the US’s first government-funded slavery reparations programme at a packed celebration at the First Church of God in Evanston. A video of the event shows Simmons’ calm audacity: “We needed to move our efforts beyond apology and ceremony,” she told her audience of more than 600 people that night. “A reparative policy was the next option, and really the only option.”
14. Simmons’ strategy of insisting on a “solutions-only” bill reflects important changes taking place in the way reparations is now pursued in the US Congress. Introduced in 1989 by the late congressman John Conyers, house resolution 40 asked for a federal committee to study the legitimacy of African American claims for reparations.
15. Now sponsored by congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, HR40, like Simmons’ Evanston resolution, is a “solutions only” bill, and it now has more support than ever before. In 2000, it had only 16 co-sponsors; today, it has more than 150 in Congress.
16. But, as lifelong reparationist Ron Daniels notes: “When HR40 passes, that’s the beginning of the struggle, not the end of it.” For reparationists, history, in the long wake of slavery’s devastations, is always an experience of beginning, again.
1. especially particulièrement / into ici, après le début de / term ici, mandat / alderman conseiller municipal de haut rang / ward ici, circonscription / eventually ici, par la suite /
policy politique / damage (inv.) dommages, préjudice, souffrance / to pursue poursuivre, mener / to get, got, got ici, amener / point situation, moment. 2. to go, went, gone on to poursuivre en / to join rejoindre, s'associer à / to explore étudier, rechercher / ever ici, de tout temps / to fund financer. 3. about ici, à environ / mile = 1,609 km / shore rivage, rive / turn tournant / century siècle /
large grand / around ici, aux alentours de / process ici, arrivée (de population), migration / to grow, grew, grown into se transformer en, devenir / over a period of decades en l'espace de quelques décennies / to fill ici, combler / labour ici, main-d’oeuvre / vacuum vide; ici, manque, absence / across ici, dans tout / to escape échapper à, fuir / retribution châtiment / rule règne, domination, suprématie / voter électeur.
4. city council conseil municipal / to bound délimiter / to be located être situé, se trouver / inner core coeur, centre / to tag marquer / disinvestment désengagement (financier) / development ici, création, construction, ouverture / playground cour de récréation; ici, aire de jeux / library bibliothèque / grocery store épicerie.
5. housing (en matière de) logement / redlining délimitation en vue d'une discrimination (bancaire) / according to d'après / estimate estimation (aussi, devis) / data données, chiffres / ongoing qui dure, persistant / to offer ici, octroyer / mortgage prêt hypothécaire, crédit immobilier / customer client.
6. nationwide à l'échelle nationale / to own posséder, être propriétaire de / wealth gap écart de richesse, fossé entre les riches et les pauvres, inégalité des richesses / peers pairs, semblables; ici, familles.
7. average moyen / income revenu / life expectancy espérance de vie / even though même si, bien que / just as tout aussi / harm dommages, préjudice / remedy remède, solution; ici, réparation.
8. to launch lancer, inaugurer, initier / to be focused on être axé sur / to address ici, réparer / real estate firm agence immobilière / grant ici, aide financière, subvention / along with ainsi que / property tax impôt foncier / to complete achever, terminer. 9. to pass ici, voter / indeed ici, à vrai dire / to legislate légiférer, voter / to acknowledge reconnaître (officiellement) / current actuel / dispensation distribution; ici, aide financière, subventions / long-lasting durable, qui dure dans le temps / to break, broke, broken briser, mettre un terme à / divide fossé, écart, différence / to grow, grew, grown tenfold décupler, être multiplié par dix / to follow sb's lead suivre l'exemple de qn.
10. to seem sembler / in the aftermath of à la suite de, après / actual réel; ici, qui ont (vraiment) existé.
11. redress réparation, dédommagement, compensation / trait trait (de caractère), caractéristique / to pass down transmettre / through ici, d'une génération à l'autre de / scattered éparpillé, dispersé / to exhibit présenter (fig.) / largely essentiellement, en grande partie / to come, came, come into one's own s'établir, se faire connaître / to reach atteindre, toucher (fig.) / audience public, population.
12. scale ampleur, importance (aussi, échelle) / to take, took, taken another leap faire un (nouveau) bond en avant, prendre de l'ampleur / through ici, grâce à /
centennial (du) centenaire / to owe devoir (argent) / to be to devoir (car prévu) / to benefit profiter/venir en aide à / whole tout (entier) / people population, communauté / health (de) santé, médical / to make, made, made it parvenir à / as far as ici, (jusqu')à.
13. path chemin, direction / packed bondé / to move beyond aller au-delà de / apology excuses.
14. bill ici, projet/proposition de loi / way façon, manière / late ici, défunt / house ici, réf. à la Chambre des représentants / claim demande.
15. support soutien, appui.
16. lifelong de(puis) toujours / struggle combat / in the wake of dans le sillage/à la suite de, après.