What are Comprehensive Reparations?
The National African American Reparations Commission supports Comprehensive Reparations for Black America. Comprehensive reparations are expansive and focus on redressing crimes against humanity endured by Black communities (people of African descent) due to chattel slavery, U.S. Apartheid system (Jim Crow), the current period of systemic racism, and their on-going impact. Also, Comprehensive Reparations focus on repairing Black communities with forward-thinking initiatives that safeguard the future of Black America. Comprehensive Reparations are holistic and include remedies for reparations based on a range of harms. Read NAARC’s Ten Point Reparations Plan.
Fighting for Full Reparations
Full reparations are the international standard for reparatory justice, through which countries must address and remedy the range of harms stemming from the crimes they have committed. The goal of full reparations is to wipe out all consequences of harms committed by a government. To meet the standard of full reparations, there are five areas of intended outcomes: Cessation, Assurance and Guarantees of Non-Repetition, Restitution and Repatriation, Compensation, Satisfaction, and Rehabilitation. As such, reparations must repair beyond monetary gain, it must dismantle the institutional structures that continue to perpetuate white supremacy.
Eligibility
The eligibility criteria for Comprehensive Reparations should be determined by the remedy. Thus, different remedies will include various eligible parties. For example, remedies for slavery, Jim Crow, and systemic racism address various harms and affected parties. All Black people harmed in America by America, should be repaired in America by America.
Avoiding Nativism in the Reparations Movement
We advise against reparations programs that are too restrictive for large-scale reparatory justice initiatives. So-called “lineage-based” reparations are a form of limited-access reparations that create additional barriers for Black communities to achieve comprehensive and full reparations. This leads to additional harms. Nativist and limited-access reparations models, when suggested, to address the extensive crimes against humanity endured by descendants of enslaved Africans and other people of African descent in the United States of America fail to address the continuing systemic violations due to the legacies and manifestations of slavery. This does not diminish the importance of direct family and or descendant-based repair, providing remedies to descendants of harmed persons in specific families or neighborhoods that have experienced specific community-based violations. However, limited-access programs are best utilized for smaller-scale reparatory justice initiatives. Examples of family and or descendant-based reparatory justice include Georgetown University’s slave descendants, Bruce’s Beach, Tulsa Race Massacre survivors and descendants, Gullah Geechee family land lost, and Evanston, Illinois housing discrimination survivors (1919-1969).
Reparations are part of the on-going struggle against white supremacy and its manifestations.
