FAQ
Q: What are reparations anyway?
A. Great question! Reparations have taken many forms in various times and places, but is broadly defined as acknowledgement, atonement, and compensation for wrongs committed by one party against another. In this case, we are concerned with the reparations owed by the United States government to African Americans for four centuries of mistreatment and abuse, including enslavement, redlining, Jim Crow laws, and many, many others.
Q. What happens to the money contributed here? Are you going to just hand out checks to people?
A. No. The Fund for Reparations NOW! exists to pilot what reparations could look like once granted by the federal government, following the 10-Point Plan of the National African American Reparations Commission (NAARC). Instead of giving checks to individuals, the 10-Point Plan focuses on community projects within the national African American community. 80% of the funding generated here go toward implementing a part of the 10-Point Plan, and the remaining 20% is used for ongoing advocacy for formal reparations from the Federal government.
On July 4, 2020, NAARC and FFRN! announced that our first rounds of funding will go toward Point 9 of the 10-Point Plan: Preserving Black Sacred Sites and Monuments. Our first reparations project will be addressing the injustices of the Elaine, AK Massacre of 1919, and we will provide more information in the coming months as that community shapes this important project.
Q. Reparations seems so complicated! Who should be paid? Who shouldn’t? And how much? Doesn’t all this complication make this issue a non-starter?
A. We agree that reparations, like the rest of our story with race in this country, is a deeply complicated issue. However, as white Americans who are unwilling to live with the current realities of inequality and racism within our country, we see reparations as a rare chance at redemption and healing that simply outweighs the complications associated with them. We also believe that that the job of deciding what those reparations look like is to be filled by leaders from African American communities nationwide, and we are committed to following their leadership both now and in the future. NAARC’s 10-Point Plan outlines a communal and tangible vision of reparations that we are proud to support, and we fully believe in the possibilities that this plan will create if implemented at the federal level of government.
Q. I didn’t own any enslaved peoples, and neither did anyone in my family. Why should I have to pay reparations?
A. We’re going to let Ta-Nehisi Coates address this one, since he explains it more eloquently than we could:
The only thing we would add is that even beyond enslavement, it’s hard to know all the ways that your ancestors and our ancestor have actively participated in White Supremacy. Whether it simply didn’t seem like a problem at the time, or it was a shameful act that has been intentionally buried (like some of us have personally discovered) much of the history we’re presented with is often very sanitized in the interest of protecting our sense of “innocence.” Unfortunately, no matter what our ancestors did or what part of the country we’re from, it would be impossible to live as a white person in this country and not benefit from the legacy of enslavement and ongoing racism, which why it’s clear to us: reparations are past due.
Q. Black Americans aren’t the only ones that have been harmed by the U.S. government. What about reparations for Native Americans and other impacted people?
A. We absolutely could not agree more! Reparations for African Americans is part of a larger reckoning that we believe the federal government and white Americans specifically are going to have to deeply grapple with if we ever hope to move forward as an authentically United States. While The Fund for Reparations NOW! is focused on long overdue reparations for African Americans, we invite you to use this model to advance reparations for other groups as well. Who knows, we may even be able to collaborate!
Q. What is the relationship between NAARC and the Fund for Reparations NOW!?
A. The Fund for Reparations NOW! (FFRN!) is the white ally initiative of the National African American Reparations Commission (NAARC). This means that FFRN! is financed and administrated by its white board members, following the Black leadership of NAARC, which is itself an initiative of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century (IBW21). We know this might be confusing, so here is a quick org chart to help explain it:
