Generally, my thinking about mission and vision statements led me to offer these generalities.
· A mission statement should include: What do we do? Whom do we serve? How do we serve? It should be actionable, specific. Put another way, we should tell: Our cause (who, what, where); our actions (what we do); our impact (changes we can enact).
· A vision statement is aspirational, made of hopes and dreams, addressing problems we are solving, who or what we are inspired to change.
· The mission statement is about today; the vision statement is about tomorrow.
In thinking about our mission and vision statements, I have an initial concern that they should not convey the meaning of “reparations” as solely the act(s) of giving money – whether singular one-time acts or ongoing acts; whether to address a single need or ongoing grievance.
That leads me to think “pay” as a verb is too specific and narrow (perhaps use, “make”?) unless we expand the meaning of what “pay” means.
I have three points to make about this:
One. If indeed the word reparations comes from the root of the verb “to repair,” then the effort to make repairs can include acts other than gifting stipend-like monies towards an identified need, no matter how justified, and even though the well-conceived acts of gifting money can be appropriate and ennobling.
Two. To call it a “debt” too suggests a moral imperative and there is no way that awarding monies alone ameliorates the racist historical roots of and ongoing rot in our systems that led to the need.
And last, the act of giving money – if that’s all we do – feels kind of transactional, and I don’t know what would help elevate the acts towards something that more affects a sense of repair. I think we need to somehow get at that.
All of that said, I am not making the argument that we – or I – steer clear of the act of giving monies to identified needs; I just want to expand the reach of what “reparations” means. But I also do not want PRN to be overly focused on the acts of raising money, except for specific purposes; and I do not want my own monetary reparation(s) to appear to be only acts of guilt-giving (more below). While here I am making mostly a personal statement with this reference to guilt-giving, I think we as a group have to monitor our actions carefully so as not to appear to be guided by a concept of guilt as the impetus of our actions.
Word quibbling again: The word “debt” might be too easily conflated as a component of a transaction; I want to avoid any notion that the idea of paying a debt can in any way be construed as it being possible to buy one’s way out of true reparations, much like the Big Polluters buy their way out of real environmental policy or systems change by buying carbon offsets.
Like I said, I don’t want to get into a fight over word choice. If “pay” is the consensus opinion, so be it. Likewise, “debt”: I cannot deny that I have a debt to bear.
I am reminded of something I read from Michael Eric Dyson that guides my thinking. He said in any interview, “Look, if it doesn’t cost you anything, you’re not really engaging in change; you’re engaging in convenience. You’re engaged in the overflow. I’m asking you to do stuff you wouldn’t ordinarily do. I’m asking you to think more seriously and strategically about why you possess what you possess.”
But Dyson also wrote that Martin Luther King Jr. believed that charity is a poor substitute for justice. I cannot confirm whether Dr. King wrote or said that, but the idea gels in my thinking about what we attempt to do, how it must also include acts that cannot be misconstrued as charity but instead build to the idea of enacting/ensuring/acknowledging the need for justice.
And that leads me to consider what other acts of reparation might look like.
In the Reparations Workbook offered by the Movement for Black Lives, the case studies fascinate me. I think we can learn a lot from them. For the concept of reparations, M4BL enumerates many different actions as qualifying as reparations, including:
In the Chicago Police Department case study, the acts of reparation included: An Apology ❖ Financial Compensation ❖ Services and Support for Survivors ❖ Public Education ❖ Memorial
In the Georgetown University case study, the acts of reparation included: ❖Services ❖ Policy change ❖ Investment in institutions ❖ Education
The specifics of these case studies and the others in the workbook appear to be directed at institutional racism and the need for multiple acts of redress. I am not sure we’d be in a position to identify something as complicated and entrenched as a major police department or a major research university (maybe one day, maybe later), but I infer ideas here that I think we could consider as a model for some of our goals:
Clearly the M4BL did research, probably lots of it, to identify systemic circumstances where acts of reparations could clearly be tied to specific needs or acts; they could identify specific individuals who would be directly affected by acts of reparations; they could identify people or institutions who could be led to make public offerings of apologies and changes that can be enacted to ensure the historical grievance is rectified.
What does that mean for us? I think we can and should do some work to research and identify specific cases whereby giving money alone is not the act of reparation, but where our actions and efforts can lead to change.
Let me elaborate and make this personal. This is something I can and need to do on my own even if I do not represent PRN.
I don’t mean to separate myself from the group in any way, but I am keenly aware that my personal history might lead me on a different path than most of us. At the least I have to consider tentacles that come very close to identifiable needs for reparations. I know I have ancestors that fought on the side of the South in the Civil War. I cannot yet identify family members that bought/sold/owned slaves, but without knowing any personal opinions of my great-grandfather, I can see that even rationalizing his fighting in that War was a complicit acceptance that slavery was defensible. The idea of defending a state’s rights, defending a homeland against Northern aggression (which was one way the Civil War was taught in the South in my lifetime) is indefensible; it’s built on a complicity about slavery as a condition of a way of life. So while I might not identify slave-owners in my family tree, the branches are filled with ancestors who benefited from the then-status quo.
Let’s say in the course of my research about my family or about the places where my family has geographic roots that I can identify a person or a group of people or even an institution that warrants attention and act(s) of reparations. Maybe I can, in the context of the specifics of that case, determine a means of reparation that addresses the wrong and to which I have a deeply personal connection/responsibility. I hope and plan to make that effort, to research my story and make the decision about what constitutes my personal reparation.
And maybe this is where my personal story affects how I am interacting with PRN. I feel I need to identify with a specific case, not just a current need, where my act(s) of reparation is somewhat tied to the legacy my personal history AND my personal position of white privilege places me. Maybe the concept of debt plays here: My debt, my act of reparation, is linked.
I even imagine this scenario leading me to giving/interacting with something like The Southern Reparations Loan Fund (https://southernreparations.org/invest-give/).
Even though this is one place I want to focus my effort, I’d like to think that PRN can apply the same strategy on a broader scale, multiple times, over a period of years.
Left undeveloped in our statements is the articulation of areas of systemic racism that could be our target areas for making reparations.
· We can and should think of ways to:
o change systems
o transfer capital
o make atonements/amends/apologies,
o make investments in/support for black-owned businesses.
· We need to think about reparations that specifically address:
o wealth accumulation/Inter-generational wealth
o housing
o education
o health care
o jobs
o business
o political/legal representation
o land/property
· We need to listen/learn/research; consider our conversations and acts a kind of reckoning; acknowledge our history (personal, cultural).
· Our acts need to be tied to specific plans, not just an emotional release.
· We need to consider how and whether this as done as direct vs indirect reparations.
· We need to consider how to message and grow our activities and participation.
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