Essays
Personal Reparations
When reparations discussions began to make big news, I didn’t need to understand what, exactly, was being proposed — money, acknowledgements, land, legislation — in order to know in my bones that they were due. The ways in which wealth was built on the backs of Black...
Personal Reparations 2: Black Wealth, White Saviorism, and H.R. 40
For Part 1 of this story, click here. Last week I caught a red eye to Hilton Head, spent a day recovering, and then my mother, step-father and I drove the 40 miles southwest to Port Wentworth, Georgia, to meet up with my cousin Koelker and his wife, and then with...
Personal Reparations 3: Heirs Property, “Safe” Words, and ‘Slave Play’
Spoiler alert: This essay details the last scene of “Slave Play.” Part 1 and Part 2 of this story can be found by clicking these links. “Understand…” seventy-four-year-old Andrew Quarterman Jr. said to me from across the table as I ate avocado toast at Le Pain...
Personal Reparations 4: Representation
Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of this story can be found by clicking these links. It seemed obvious to me that in a country grappling with what reparations to Black Americans for slavery and Jim Crow and beyond might look like, what they should not look like was a Black...
Reparations in the Time of Corona: Why they’re even more relevant now (Personal Reparations 5)
The rate of Black land loss doesn’t decrease during a national disaster. In that respect, our legal team came together just in time. The lawyer I called “Liz” in my last piece didn’t work out. Well-meaning and wise but admittedly not well-practiced in heirs property...