The imagination and dreams we must cultivate and act on are not only about how to bring Black folks into economic equity—closing the wealth gap—on which many academics seem to focus. This not to say that actual dollars are not owed. But how might reparations truly be compensation for the moral and material debt that White America and the U.S. government owes to Black folk.
To be sure, reparations is a moral and material debt, not only owed by the U.S. government (given lower socioeconomic, working and lower middle class communities
pay more in taxes than upper middle class and wealthy people), but White institutions, families and individuals who continue to benefit from slavery and subsequent oppression of the descendants of enslaved Africans. We might get our checks, but if average white folk and their institutions don’t have skin in the game at some level—beyond charity and philanthropy—we will always be subject to the racial terrorism that we experience in every facet of Black life.
The businesses that benefited from slavery and its emerging society-shaping legacy extends to all White Americans, given the
direct correlation between the injustices Black folk experience and the privileges or moral debt that is conceived as wealth that white folk are a beneficiary to.
But a moral debt requires healing—physical, spiritual, and mental; the return of what was stolen—or restitution; compensation, education, and memorialization so this society can be aware at every turn what its imposition of slavery has done; and guarantees of non-repeat to make sure that changes are in place to prevent from happening again a legalized system of enslavement.