Multimedia project explores how reparations could heal the nation, create a better future by reconciling the past
Today, Vox launched a multimedia editorial initiative exploring how reparations have worked globally and how it could take shape in the United States. The reporting is focused on how slavery and Jim Crow policies have impacted access to housing, health disparities, generational wealth gaps and more for Black Americans and explores a path forward.
Key to the editorial effort is a four-part Vox Conversations series, “40 Acres” hosted by Vox race and policy reporter Fabiola Cineas, as she takes listeners through what reparations might look like in America.
The inaugural episode, The original promise, introduces audiences to the history of the fight for reparations in America. Though reparations 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 talks with Nkechi Taifa, the founder and director of the Reparation Education Project. You can listen to the episode here and by Vox Conversations on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
In upcoming episodes, Fabiola will speak with economist William “Sandy” Darity and folklorist Kirsten Mullen about how reparations could be implemented; Marxist scholar Adolph Reed Jr. who argues that Jim Crow — not enslavement — is the defining experience for Black Americans today; Indigenous philanthropist Edgar Villanueva, founder of the Decolonizing Wealth Project and creator of the Case for Reparations fund, about the reparatory justice efforts underway across the country and the role that individual donors might be able to play in reparations; and activist Kavon Ward on how jurisdictions are repaying Black people for land that was taken from them, and whether that can be considered reparations at all.
In addition, Missing Chapter, Vox’s award-winning video series devoted to telling stories that have been left out of textbooks, underreported by the news, or intentionally hidden from view, will run a special reparations episode this fall, focusing on a moment in history that will help us understand how we can move forward.
Vox is also inviting readers to share thoughts about its reporting on reparations and the impact it has made. The survey is available here.
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.
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