By Allison Perrine
RED BANK – What can be done today to rectify the wrongs of the past?
That’s what guest speakers discussed Wednesday, Aug. 25, during the latest virtual session of the Red Bank Public Library’s program, Let’s Talk About Race. Specifically, they explored the topic of reparations and restorative justice, or the redress of wrongdoing, for Black and indigenous people.
The goal was to inform attendees and provide them with steps for action to “repair the harm that has been done over centuries,” said Rev. Kerwin Webb, NAACP Greater Red Bank president and one of the panelists for the evening. “If you are one of those who believe that there’s been no harm done and that there is no repair due, then I am not speaking to you because we have different frames of reality,” said Webb. “But those who acknowledge a problem… we invite you into the conversation.”
Webb was joined by guest speakers Derek Minno-Bloom of Trinity Episcopal Church; Anwar Uhuru, Ph.D., assistant professor of African Diaspora Studies and Literature at Monmouth University; and Muata Greene, a former New York firefighter, paramedic, Vietnam veteran and community activist. Later, the public had a chance to ask questions and weigh in with their thoughts.
To Uhuru, restorative justice means “righting the wrongs that were never righted.” The topic has been circulating for centuries for indigenous people and former enslaved Africans and their lineage. There was a 10-year period of restorative justice after the Civil War ended in 1865, and slavery was outlawed by the Emancipation Proclamation, but that ended with the Plessy v. Ferguson case and Separate but Equal doctrine, he said. In the 20th century, some civil rights activists like Queen Mother Moore petitioned the government for restorative justice – not only fiscally but politically and socially.
“That’s why certain political candidates avoid the topic – because it often focuses on fiscal compensation, but there’s not enough conversation about social services and other aspects that could help people,” said Uhuru.
Up until the 1990s, reparations were considered a “left” cause being discussed by liberals and Democrats, said Minno-Bloom. But it’s not a Marxist or socialist idea; it’s “basic human decency,” he said. Even Nazis got reparations from the U.S. government despite the atrocities they caused because of the decimation of their cities after World War II, [see editor’s note below] and that prompted Webb to ask – “what does it say that the Nazis have received reparations from the U.S. government but Blacks in America have not?”
“I think it just screams white supremacy,” said Minno-Bloom. “That war wasn’t fought because people were so horrified of what was happening to the Jewish community. But I do believe that even at that point, people saw the European model and idea of governing – even if it was the Nazis – as more valid than thousands of indigenous nations in the United States, than thousands of indigenous nations in Africa.”
Being that the program is about race, Minno-Bloom was quick to address why it’s important for people like him, a cisgender (identifying as the same sex as assigned at birth) white man, to participate in the discussion with Black speakers. It’s simple, he said, because white people of European ancestry “are the ones that cause and benefit from slavery, genocide and land theft.”
“No matter who we are, if we are of European descent, we have certainly benefited from the land that was stolen from thousands of different indigenous nations here, from the stolen labor of millions of Africans, from the stolen lives of millions of Africans,” said Minno-Bloom. “I think it’s our responsibility to figure out how to make reparations happen… I think it’s about land, it’s about power, access to power, access to democracy – it’s so much more than just economic.”
Greene, who attended the founding meeting of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (NCOBRA) in 1987, has been advocating for restorative justice for decades. His goal is to make reparations a demand rather than a goal, like voting rights.
“It has to be a people’s movement to make it happen,” he said. “Reparations simply means to repair, to restore.”
“In the case of African people and indigenous people here, our case is clearly met once you understand the real history of this country and not try to erase it,” he said.
Some progress has been made over the years, but there is a long way to go. Uhuru gave the example of efforts to aid indigenous people though there has never “truly” been a pathway of restorative justice for those individuals, he said. There have been some treaties made among indigenous groups and the U.S. government but they are “always broken” and the groups are pushed out of their designated land spaces to areas that are not environmentally sound.
“There is this ignorance that people of indigenous descent are given government compensations and that’s not necessarily true,” said Uhuru. “It’s only indigenous groups who are federally recognized. There are tons of indigenous groups that are not federally recognized.”
Speaking from the church’s perspective, Minno-Bloom suggested that one way to move forward is to form and fund groups of individuals of African and indigenous descent to discuss what reparations could look like. Understanding that African and indigenous groups are not “one monolithic community” and that the task may not be easy, he said it would be a great first step “allowing the people most effected by the decisions, to make the decisions.” Another step could be to give back land, Webb suggested – but that would also be a tough sell.
“America’s god is money. Capitalism. The dollar,” he said. “And so giving back land, giving back millions of dollars worth of stuff under your ground is going to be a hard sell for people who historically have had a problem seeing those people who look different as… human.”
The conversation on reparations does not end there. Webb and Minno-Bloom are looking to create a working reparations task force and plan to discuss the idea Sept. 27. The two have been on a few reparations Zoom calls with one another and are both feel that it’s “time to do something” with the information that they have.
This article originally appeared in the Aug. 26 – Sept. 1, 2021 print edition of The Two River Times.
Editor’s note: Minno-Bloom clarified after the event that he did not mean to suggest the U.S. government paid reparations directly to Nazis but rather that Nazis indirectly benefited from the U.S. and other countries helping rebuild Germany after World War II. The German government did, however, pay reparations to Israel in 1953 for the losses Jewish people suffered during the Holocaust.
