What Do 2020 Candidates Mean When They Say ‘Reparations’?
Earlier this year, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, and other Democratic presidential aspirants began speaking positively about reparations, in contrast to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who opposed the policy.
Just 26 percent of voters favor reparations in polls.
In the telling of The New York Times, this shift is due to the fact that “grass-roots organizers and many liberal voters of all races are now pushing elected officials to go further on policies of racial equality, regardless of any political calculations.” While that is likely a factor, I suspect something else is going on too: When average Americans hear reparations, they still think of “the idea that some form of compensatory payment needs to be made to the American descendants of slaves,” to quote from the definition of the term on Wikipedia.
But among some influential Democratic constituencies—educated, left-of-center Brooklyn, for example—reparations is understood differently, as illustrated by a roundtable on the subject broadcast last month by a Brooklyn TV station. It’s worth watching, regardless of whether you love or hate the idea of reparations, because it clarifies the degree to which Americans discussing the subject can talk past one another or mistake how much disagreement actually exists, fueling everything from mild confusion to needless polarization.
“Give me your working definition of reparations,” the moderator, Brian Vines, began.
Chief Dwaine Perry of the Ramapough-Lunaape
