I think there have been various attempts at a reparations bill.
My belief is, the reason reparations as it pertains to descendants of former enslaved Africans haven't been able to gain true traction is because the parameters haven't been efficiently determined.
Who should receive the reparations? When should it be enacted? What form should reparations come in?
I think the "what form" question is truly the most important.
If we believe reparations should come in the form of a check or some monetary lump sum - that's a risky proposition.
We live in a materialistic society that breeds on the combination of financial illiteracy + large pool of money. When you consider that the same society is responsible for the piss poor educational system, most of the dispersed reparations pay out would be in danger of not translating into the recycling of the black dollar - it would be fed back into the exploitative hands of big business without doing its job of correcting the dysfunction that slavery and the trajectory of trauma it set on the descendants of formerly enslaved Africans.
How heart breaking would it be to see a reparations check being dispersed in the U.S without an overwhelmingly reformed financial literacy initiative being accompanied with it? You'd have the machine of white supremacy literally given a get-out-of-jail-free card because, post-reparations check, if the majority of recipients are still in dysfunctional woes, the trolls and white supremacists would argue "our hands are washed clean."
Reparations needs to come in the form of sweeping changes to the educational, law enforcement, and loan policies that directly impact the urban and rural communities that black Americans/African Americans tend to be apart of. Reparations, instead of a check, needs to be voucher systems for said people to hire tutors to come to their homes to provide excellent educational advancements without having to inconveniently send children to the exclusive and, many times, hostile schools that the elite attend.
Law enforcement reform, as a result of reparations, needs to literally be completely overhauled and the majority of resources that fund local and state precincts needs to go into EFFICIENT mental health, drug treatment, and local developmental child and adult social/recreational/community building programs.
Loan programs and government subsidized home/property repairs need to be revamped and encouraged and intertwined with financial literacy courses, whether they be online or in person, and should set a goal regarding the expected percentage of black american property owners by the end of a particular decade.
A purely monetary check is tantamount to giving the man a fish in that cliche parable. Giving the man a complete reform of education and financial opportunities is tantamount to teaching him how to fish, again.
I wrote something similar when I commented on Ta-Nehisi's Coates piece on Sander's stance on reparations a while back.
