Reparations could heal America

A member of the December 12th Movement holds a Pan-African flag as he awaits the start of a rally for reparations at the African Burial Ground National Monument on July 23, 2021, in New York City. | Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

How the US can create a better future by reconciling the past.

How have slavery and Jim Crow policies compounded into injustices like housing inequality, health disparities, generational wealth gaps, and a fractured society? In this multimedia project, Vox explores how reparations have worked globally and what they might look like in the United States.

Vox Conversations: 40 Acres

This four-part Vox Conversations series, hosted by Vox policy reporter Fabiola Cineas, explores what reparations might look like in America. Listen to the episodes below, and follow Vox Conversations on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

The original promise
The history of the fight for reparations in America. Though they came to the forefront during the 2020 election in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, activists have been fighting for repayment for slavery for decades. Fabiola Cineas talks with Nkechi Taifa, the founder and director of the Reparation Education Project.

$14 trillion and no mules (Coming September 8)
Paying the price. One of the typical questions asked during conversations about reparations is how to pay for them. Fabiola Cineas talks with scholars William “Sandy” Darity and Kirsten Mullen about how reparations could be executed. The husband/wife team lays out a comprehensive framework in their book, From Here to Equality, for who would qualify, and how the federal government would afford the $14 trillion price tag.

The old Jim Crow (Coming September 12)
Why slavery? Marxist scholar Adolph Reed Jr. argues that Jim Crow — not enslavement — is the defining experience for Black Americans. Reed recounts his childhood in the segregation-era South in his book The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives. Fabiola Cineas speaks with Reed about his experience, his argument that reparations isn’t necessarily the healing balm that some think it is, and what policies and resources are needed to create a more equitable society.

Reaching reconciliation (Coming September 15)
From educational institutions in the nation’s capital to cities with histories of redlining, entities and local governments are taking reparations into their own hands. One of the latest examples is Bruce’s Beach. The waterfront land in California was owned by Black families until they were pushed off the land by the local government. Now ownership has been returned to those families’ descendants. Fabiola Cineas talks with activists Edgar Villanueva and Kavon Ward, who worked to restore the land, about how local organizations and jurisdictions are repaying Black people for what was taken from them — and if that repayment can be considered reparations at all.

Let us know your thoughts about Vox’s reporting on reparations and the impact it has had on you. Take our survey.

Missing Chapter, Vox’s award-winning video series, is devoted to telling stories that have been left out of textbooks, underreported by the news, or intentionally hidden from view. A special reparations episode will publish this fall, focusing on a moment in history that will help us understand how we can move forward.

This series on reparations is made possible by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to Canopy Collective, an independent initiative under fiscal sponsorship of Multiplier. All Vox reporting is editorially independent. Views expressed are not necessarily those of Canopy Collective or Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Canopy Collective is dedicated to ending and healing from systemic racialized violence. Multiplier is a nonprofit that accelerates impact for initiatives that protect and foster a healthy, sustainable, resilient, and equitable world. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is committed to improving health and health equity in the United States.

Read more of Vox’s work about reparations:

• The German model for America
• There’s no freedom without reparations
• Slavery reparations are workable and affordable
• The mirage of the Black middle class
• Reparations aren’t just political. They’re deeply personal.
• Six times victims have received reparations — including four in the US
• America is having an unprecedented debate about reparations. What will come next?