- [Woman] Major funding for this program was provided by... (upbeat music) - [Norris] Slavery is a stain on America's fabric, that cannot be removed.

However, can the harm caused by slavery be repaired?

Is reparations enough?

How much would that cost?

And what should be on Black America's atonement agenda?

( upbeat music continues) Hello, I'm Chris Norris.

And welcome to the final episode of "The Atonement Agenda."

Today we'll address businesses in Black America, and consider how atonement could support, and grow the rank of entrepreneurs.

Create pipelines to capital and resources, and ultimately eliminate the racial wealth gap.

In the prior two weeks, we've covered a lot of ground.

Here's a look back.

- There are a lot of folks out there that would like to buy homes but are just intimidated, by the process.

Or they grew up in public housing, their mother was in public housing, their grandmother was in public housing.

So, just the concept of owning a home, it's a figment of their imagination.

Because they've never thought that that would be something that they could achieve.

That is a construct of all of the supremacy, that our communities have have seen.

Is that some folks don't even believe that they can own a home.

- And we're back with our wonderful panel.

Lisa Sharon-Harper, author of "Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World and How to Repair it all.

State Representative Jordan Harris, House Democratic Whip.

Khaleef Alexander, Co-founder of Millennial Juneteenth.

And Reverend Naomi Washington Leaphart, Director of Faith Base and Interfaith Affairs, at the City of Philadelphia.

Welcome back guys.

- [Panel] Thank you.

- So when we left last week, we were talking about HBCUs.

And I wanted to bring up this question before we jump into business.

So one could argue that HBCUs were established as a form of reparations.

Since they were created by the Freedman's Bureau, after the Civil War to educate African Americans.

Today, HBCUs awards 17% of all bachelor degrees earned by black students.

However, whether public or private, HBCUs have seen steep declines in federal funding and their endowments lag non HBCUs, by at least 70%.

So, should a federal reparations proposal include compensation to these institutions as well?

Rep?

- [Representative Davis] Absolutely.

- Yeah.

- That was my... (panel laughs) No, absolutely.

I mean, when you look at the jewels that we have here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Cheyney University, being the nation's first HBCU, and Lincoln University being the nation's first degree granting institution.

You see how I did that?

'Cause I ain't trying to get into no Cheyney Lincoln beef.

(laughter) Somebody gonna tweet me.

'Cheyney- Lincoln'.

No, but when you think about what we have here... We have an opportunity in Pennsylvania to really support with funding, both of these universities.

But not only that, use them as the pipeline for all of the things that we're lacking.

Here's what I mean by that.

We need more African American teachers in our classrooms, in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, Allentown, and the likes.

There should be programs at Cheyney, at Lincoln, that are giving us those things.

We need more African American doctors, Cheyney and Lincoln.

We have those institutions.

So when you talk about how to not just have reparations, but how to have real atonement.

Real repair and real restorations.

We have to look at the HBCUs as the pipelines to creating those things that we need.

That then provide real restoration for our community.

- [Norris] Thank you, Rep. Lisa?

- I would say HBCUs are critical because they offer space for sovereignty.

(panel agrees) Space for us to have full control over our own education and our own preparation to lead in the world.

And as long as the public system or the federal system is still in question.

Still questioning whether or not they want to prepare people of African descent to lead America.

And help lead America, then we must have our own space.

- [Norris] Mm.

Khaleef?

- [Khaleef] Yeah.

So two things with the HBCUs.

I believe personally, that HBCUs are owed some form of reparations.

When we begin to look at the reason why HBCUs were founded, they were founded upon as being land grant universities.

Which means that these schools were primarily based in agriculture.

I actually went to a land grant university, Delaware State University.

Out in Dover, Delaware.

But these schools were built upon agriculture and different things of that nature.

So, when we start talking about, what would that reparative component be?

It's to go back and do what you used to do.

What they say?

Sankofa rewind yourself.

And so we looking at a situation, where we're saying that HBCUs should be able to invest in agriculture and farming to restore the black farmer in this country.

In fact, Raphael Warnock, he had a bill.

Well Senator Raphael Warnock.

He had a bill in that in Congress, I believe last year, and it was around the black farmers.

And we're looking at how can we get more black farmers?

How can we get more black farmers?

Well, you just stated that, these are like our institutions in which we can utilize and build.

These are our own silos.

So why not have a better... hat better place could be utilized than HBCUs to restore the black farmer?

And also restore the community.

- [Lisa] That's good.

- [Norris] Reverend?

- I agree.

I mean, I think that...

I'm interested also in grant funding to our HBCUs for research programs, to deepen... Because that's how universities can sustain themselves.

We have elite research programs that attract students who are interested in that discipline.

We have elite academic departments that attract scholars who will be interested in staying there.

And not just seeing HBCUs as some kind of stepping stone to another predominantly white institution.

So, not only do these institutions need to be supported so that they can continue to be accredited and draw students.

But they need to be able to lead in the various disciplines and fields.

Are the philanthropies looking at HBCUs when they want to fund innovative kinds of sociological research for example?

No, they're not.

And I wanna know why.

I wanna know why there seems to be a diminishment of the excellence located right at HBCUs.

So that's one thing.

And then I would just add, I teach at Villanova University, which is not an HBCU.

I wonder if we can see it as reparative to support black faculty who are at predominantly white universities, often languishing, right?

Feeling unsupported.

They don't have spaces of refuge.

There is no sovereignty at those institutions.

How can we support those faculty?

Who are furthering the cause of liberation for black folks.

From within those institutions?

I'm interested in how we can do that work, also.

- [Norris] I appreciate that.

I'm gonna go back around.

Rep, I want to switch our attention to business.

Roughly 9.5% of private or closely held public U.S. businesses are black owned.

And together they make only 1% of the income of white businesses.

How could reparations support the growing rank of black entrepreneurs?

- [Representative Harris] Well, one of the things that I said a couple segments ago was really talking about access to capital.

Like we really have to have a significant conversation about access to capital.

Black folk are just as creative, have just as many ideas as others.

I think one of the problems that the disenfranchisement of black folk in this country has done to us, is it's distanced us from the rooms where the capital is being divvied up.

So, I mean, I hate to be repetitive, but the difference between the person cooking in the kitchen and the restaurateur.

A lot of times in our community is really just about access to capital.

- [Norris] And networks.

- Yeah.

And so for me...

So for me, when we talk about black business, we have to talk about the access to capital.

But the other thing that we have to talk about goes back to our other conversation around education, too.

We have to teach our young people to be entrepreneurial.

- [Norris] Yes.

- Right?

Look.

I look at my cell phone and I look at all of the folks on Twitter, on Instagram, on TikTok and all of these folks who are building social media empires, right?

Who are modeling for this brand or this outlet.

And they're influencing this and influencing that.

But where in their school curriculum did they teach them how playing on your phone... Because that's what a lot of folks thought it was 10 years ago.

How playing on your phone on these platforms could actually build you a brand and a business.

So where other schools and where other young people are learning how to monetize the creativity that they have.

Our young people are still just finding their way in these things.

So for me, it's about how you build black business.

You gotta have access to capital.

You gotta make sure that we have access to capital, but we gotta start early on.

Teaching our young people about entrepreneurship.

Teaching them about business and teaching them how to monetize all of the skills that they have.

'Cause when we don't, somebody else takes them.

And instead of them being the owner, they become the worker.

- [Lisa] That is for real.

- Any reaction to that?

- [Lisa] Yes.

I'm like, yes and amen, Pastor.

(laughter) - You're gonna leave this table with a new calling.

(laughter) - We're gonna ordain you, here.

- All we gotta do is lay hands.

(laughter) - Oh wait, wait a minute, now - [Lisa] Well, I think the only thing I would really add to that is that when we talk about business in the black community, we have to recognize that most people of African descent in America actually get their gainful employment in the non- profit sector or government.

So it's either government or non-profit.

And governments...

There's good stuff there.

There's not a whole lot of creativity that is allowed because you have so much regulation.

- [Representative Harris] Right.

- But then you also in a nonprofit sector, you're expected to be paid at less than the worth of your work.

And on the high level, on the high scale, 85% of the pay, of what your pay would be in the for profit sector.

Usually it's not even that much.

And it could literally be like, I might get paid this week.

- [Chris] Mm.

- [Lisa] Like it literally is that sometimes.

In fact, many times.

So if that is the place where most people of African American descent are getting their employment, then we are not thinking of ourselves as being worth... Of our work being worth something.

And that's a mindset change.

And that has to do with healing from 500, 400 years of being told that your work is not worth being paid.

So, I mean, honestly, I've had a revolution in this area in the last four or five years.

Five years, I became a business owner and I went from struggling every month.

Like literally just barely making it, in the justice sector.

I was doing nonprofit work for most of my life, doing justice for my community and for the people.

And I barely made it.

And then I decided, you know what, I'm a monetize this.

I'm gonna say, okay, we're gonna consult now.

We're gonna get people to actually pay what it's worth.

And we're not gonna apologize for the price tag, because it's what we are worth.

- Yes, yes.

- And guess what?

I bought a home in Point Breeze.

Right?

- Welcome.

- [Lisa] And guess what now?

Guess what?

I can see the sky.

- [Chris] Yeah, Mhm.

- [Lisa] I can see the sky because I own a business and I'm able then to have the capital to buy a house where we have a roof deck.

But what I realize is that most of the people in the community who have been there forever, they don't have roof decks.

- [Chris] Yeah.

- [Lisa] They can't see the sky.

- [Chris] Yeah.

Absolutely.

And we will go do the after party on your roof deck.

- Yes.

(laughter) - I'm gonna take a...

I'm gonna take a pause right here.

We'll come right back.

We wanted to hear even more about what others thought about reparations.

Take a listen to this.

- I'm co-chair of the Mayor's commission on faith-based and interfaith affairs.

And we're really committed to a campaign to engage a hundred white majority congregations, sincerely in reparations.

And to do the work.

To do the... To do the inquiry, the thoughtfulness around that.

To move towards really doing the work, really committing to reparations.

And one of the things that I think of, and the pushback against critical race theory is a part of this.

Is that it's our right to know the truth.

And that we need to know and grapple with the truth.

And all of this maintaining and attachment to lies.

And maintaining and attachment to investment in white supremacy.

That is not only harming, so many BIPOC people in the global south.

But it's also harming, I believe, white people.

- So I wanna bring up Robert Johnson, he's the founder of BET.

He doesn't think reparations... That there's the political support to materialize that.

He's come up with something called the Boost Act that he's trying to get Congress to enact.

And then there's also Jovan Scott Lewis.

He's an assistant professor of Geography and African American studies at UC Berkeley.

And he said, quote, "The understanding of reparations by contemporary advocates is something that must be taken, not given."

What does that mean to you?

Let's start with you, Rev.

- I do think that we cannot solely rely on the government to repair these wrongs.

It's been so long.

And so the advocacy for federal reparations or even reparations at the state level.

Is a long game.

Right?

I do think that there are things we can do for ourselves.

I think entrepreneurship, we're talking about business ownership.

Should be a tool for mutual aid in our communities, right?

We can't, black folk can't do capitalism in the same way white folk have done it.

Because it is toxic the way white supremacy takes capitalism and uses it against the very folk doing the labor.

Right?

So we've gotta work our ingenuity and be even more creative with how we use our business savvy.

I think the private sector can jumpstart reparations, movements right in our communities.

- [Chris] Mm.

- It starts with corporations even doing some of that confessional work that I talked about in previous segments, right?

How have we participated in and profited from the oppression of black folk?

And can we write that wrong financially and materially in other ways?

So, you know, I absolutely agree that this has to be a multi-pronged effort.

We cannot wait.

We can't afford to wait for the federal government to make us whole.

- [Norris] Khaleef.

I feel like when I hear Professor Lewis say that contemporary advocates, that it's something to be taken... Again, I feel like he's talking about you.

(laughter) And the smile on your face suggests that you agree.

- You know, it's funny.

Professor Lewis, he was actually on the California Task Force.

The California Reparations Task Force with a good colleague of mine, chairwoman, Kamilah Moore.

She was the chairwoman and he was the advocate.

And believe it or not.

The thing that's actually funny is that he wasn't actually on the side of... And we're gonna get to this later I know.

But he wasn't on the side of lineage in the beginning.

We had to actively... the grassroots movement and then organizers in California for various different organizations.

They had to lobby him in a certain way to get him to kind of understand what we're talking about.

So when he says it has to be taken.

That's him learning from the people itself.

And he's Jamaican.

And it's big because you know, he voted on lineage base.

But to the second part where you said the Bob Johnson or Rob Johnson, rather.

He makes sense when he said, we don't have the political power to get reparations at the moment.

That's why it's building.

And we have to, you know, take that power.

But also there's other things in the mix of reparations.

You have Hollywood, you have the insurance companies, you have the banks.

These three entities, they need to be sued by Black America because they all played a major role.

in the slavery institution itself.

When you started talking about the money, when you started talking about the insurance.

Because Black bodies had an insurance claim on them.

Because we were a property.

So these are things that a lot of people aren't really looking at.

But those three entities in Hollywood for depicting us in these manners.

When you talk about the Birth of a Nation, when you talk about these movies, so.

- [Norris] Yeah.

I appreciate that.

I wanted to go to Rev and Lisa, 'cause Khaleef brings up one of the institutions around banking.

You can't talk about building and growing black businesses without talking about the discrimination historically that Black entrepreneurs have faced.

Right?

In the context of loans.

How do you repair that legacy of harm?

The harm that's done and the harm that's actively happening?

- [Lisa] I think the first thing that we need to do is we need to actually have truth commissions around the country.

- Like they did in South Africa.

- Like they did in South Africa.

Exactly.

And it needs to be federally run, but locally administered and locally based.

So that we get the stories out there.

I think in some ways you're right, that there's only really two options for how reparations happens.

Either it's taken or it's given.

Right?

And I think that...

I don't think that the end is already written.

We can actually write an end that is a peaceful end.

We can write an end that has people giving the abil- or giving...

Choosing a new way to be together in the world.

And what that would require is actually then the stories being told.

That's how people change their minds.

That's how they change their hearts.

At this moment, I think it would need to be taken because people don't know the stories.

- [Norris] Yeah.

Rep. Harris taken or given?

- Both.

And here's what... And here's what I mean by that.

You have to take it, but I don't want us to let the government off.

Off the hook, you know?

And for me, I believe that there can be the political support, but you have to build it.

And I tell people all the time, you have elected officials who come into office who have things that they're just passionate about.

But then you have other things where you gotta push 'em.

And I think one of the things that we have to remind ourselves.

Is that power can seize nothing without demand.

- [Reverend] Without demand, yep.

- It never has.

And it never will.

- [Chris] Yeah.

- So I think we have to remember that when we talk about the concept of reparations.

Are we there now where we have enough political support?

No.

Can we get there?

Yes.

Should we do other things in the meantime?

Absolutely.

But should we let the government off the hook?

- [Chris] Right.

- Nope.

Because guess what?

You still gonna pay taxes.

You still gonna pay sales tax.

You still- all of these things that you're still going to do as a citizen.

If that's the case, you still should be requiring certain things of your government.

- [Chris] I want to- go ahead.

- Can I just add that, we actually do have political will right now for HR-40.

They have enough votes in the house to pass HR-40, right now.

What they couldn't do is get past the Senate.

And right behind it is H. Con.

Res.19.

Which is the infrastructure that would actually create a truth commission's infrastructure in the United States.

And also an archive for all of that truth that we surface.

- I appreciate that.

I wanna close out on this conversation point.

Cause I think we'll end up on a high note.

So we agree that reparations are owed to descendants of enslaved Africans, right?

In terms of individual compensation, but should there also be a reparations agenda for all black Americans, regardless of lineage, based on systemic injustice?

So it brings that question of, race versus lineage, or can you do both?

You spent three decades researching your family.

- [Lisa] I did.

- So I'd like to hear from you and then Khaleef.

Rep, and then the Reverend.

- Yes, I did.

Three decades.

1991 was the beginning and then this book came out this year.

I think that lineage is important because lineage actually helps us to uncover the story of what happened and how it happened.

I think though that through the years, through those centuries, four centuries of our history on this land.

People of African descent have come here at various points in the history and still come into the overarching story of blackness and whiteness in America.

So people who are Jamaican, people who are Nigerian, they may not have come here understanding that they were black, but they figured it out pretty quick.

When they too had to interact with our injustice system.

When they too had to interact with our housing policies.

When they too had to interact with our public schools.

So I don't think that it should...

When it comes down to the, "Who gets the check?".

That's where that question comes from.

But if reparations is much more than a check, if reparations is the repair of the systems that were created in order to encase a caste system.

Well then all of us would benefit by restructuring and transforming that system so that all flourish.

- Mm, amen.

Khaleef?

- Yeah, I would say- So I traced my ancestors back to 1870.

And North Carolina and other parts of the south.

So I'm a firm believer of lineage.

But when we begin to look at first off, just, you know, lineage base is the only way that has been deemed as constitutional because race is deemed as unconstitutional.

But when we start talking about reparations for the entire black community.

So there's something big because a lot of people aren't familiar with CARICOM.

Which is England and France working with their former colonial states if you will.

To basically get them reparations.

That's been going on for almost 20 plus years.

And then you also have this thing that's... it's been around, but people don't know about it because our black immigrant brothers and sisters, they don't actually take advantage of it.

Because they don't know about it.

But it's called the office of New Americans, which is another office that was designed by the federal government and these state governments to give people some type of...

I don't wanna say reparations, but something that makes sense for them.

So when we say that reparations is specifically lineage based only.

Now of course we know people in the proximity of the lineage will be able to benefit of it.

But we also have to go point at these other things that are already out there that people aren't- That they don't know about and people aren't educating them on it.

- Rev.

I keep calling you Rev, I'm speaking it into existence.

(laughter) With lineage and race, how do you think about those two?

- I've been able to trace my family back to my great, great, great grandfather, who actually did fight in the Civil War.

- Mm.

- Wow.

- And, you know, it was an, an illuminating experience.

- [Lisa] Oh yeah.

- It's particularly when you see the documents, and you find out things about your family that you just never knew.

- Do you know what regiment?

- I have it written down.

I do.

And they were in West Virginia.

- [Lisa] Oh.

- They were in West Virginia.

So I was able to trace it back.

The thing for me about this question is will the banks ask about my lineage?

Will the appraiser who comes to my home, asks about my lineage?

- Yeah.

- Will the schools that my children go to ask about my lineage?

- [Lisa] Right.

And I say that because when you look at a person that has melanin in their skin.

You don't know how far back their lineage goes to being in this country.

So for me, I understand that the argument around lineage.

I get that.

And I get the constitutionality about it, but a lot of things that hinder, or that disenfranchise black folk in this country, ain't just about their lineage.

It's about what people can see.

- Can I- - Reverend your last remarks and then benediction.

(laughter) - Grab the hand of the person next to you.

(laughter) Well, you know, I think that that anti-blackness cares, not what you can trace, what your family tree looks like.

I think that anti-blackness has grown in scope beyond lineage.

And so therefore we have to take seriously, the fact that reparations is due or are due to folk who experience anti-blackness.

And so for me it's pretty...

I won't say it's cut and dry, but I wanna be spacious in my definition of reparations.

I don't think we can afford to carve up the little scraps that are falling from the table, to allude to this encounter.

- [Norris] ] Yeah.

- That a woman had with Jesus.

She wanted what she deserved.

She wanted healing.

She wanted restoration and Jesus wanted to slice the pie.

- [Lisa] Isn't that so?

- Right?

Jesus alluded to the fact that this ain't for you, right?

And the woman had the wherewithal and the fortitude and the dignity to say back to Jesus: 'I deserve even what falls from the table'.

Right?

'I deserve those scraps' Well, I'm saying that here in 2022, we deserve much more than scraps, right?

We deserve a piece of the pie.

We deserve a whole pie, right?

We never had the pie.

- And we made the pie.

(laughter) - And then got kicked out the kitchen.

- Listen, listen talk about it.

So I think that all who have been undermined by anti-blackness deserve to be part of the reparations conversation.

Just like folk who immigrated, white folk, European folk, who immigrated to the United States were made white and conferred those benefits and don't complain, right?

I think that, that's the racial analysis we need to apply to this reparations conversation.

Blackness is an imposition as well.

Right?

And so everybody needs to be able to participate.

- I appreciate that.

We could keep going, but I gotta leave it there.

State representative, Jordan Harris, House Democratic Whip.

Lisa Sharon-Harper, author of the book, 'Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World and How to Repair it All'.

Khaleef Alexander, co-founder of Millennial Juneteenth, and Reverend Naomi Washington Leaphart, director of Faith Based and Interfaith Affairs at the state of Philadelphia.

Thank you guys so much.

I'd like to thank all of my guests for their contributions to this discussion and for you, for watching.

We welcome your comments, email them at talkback@whyy.org or tweet me @Floodthedrummer.

For WHYY, I'm Chris Norris, goodnight.

- [Narrator] Major funding for this program was provided by...