(From L-R) Dr. Raymond Winbush (photo: Morgan State University), Jessica Ann Mitchell Aiwuyor (photo: National Black Cultural Information Trust), Dr. William Darity (Duke University), Kamilah Moore (photo: https://oag.ca.gov/ab3121/members/bios)
Reparations is a heated topic, not just between Black and White Americans but within the Black community as well. When it comes to who should receive reparations, there is a school of thought that it should be given to Black Americans in general. Other reparations scholars, such as Dr. William Darity, Duke University professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy, say reparations should only go to Black people who can trace their ancestry back to a Black slave in America.
Recently, there was a panel discussion featuring pro-reparations advocates, such as Dr. Raymond Winbush, who are against lineage-based reparations. Many of the organizations have ties to major funding. Here are three things to know.
Raymond Winbush compared reparations lineage advocates to “slave catchers.” During the panel discussion, a part of which was posted on Twitter by an account named Non-Human Media, Winbush said people who demanded that reparations go only to those who have shown proof of slave ancestry were like “slave catchers” during slavery who insisted that freed Black people show their papers proving they were not slaves. He added that lineage-based advocates also want to depend on documentation that is created by white people. He added too that lineage-based reparation advocates were “pathologically anti-Pan-African,” meaning they were not advocating for the Black community worldwide.
Pan-African activist Winbush is a research professor and the director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University. He has also served as a faculty member and administrator at a number of universities, including Oakwood University, Alabama A&M University, Vanderbilt University, and Fisk University.
Of the people on the panel, which also include Nkechi Taifa (founder, principal and CEO of The Taifa Group LLC, a social enterprise firm whose mission is to advance justice) and Akinyele Umoja (a founding member of the New Afrikan People’s Organization and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement), Non-Human Media tweeted, “Reminder, these people were given a $500,000 grant from the MacArthur Foundation to “challenge cultural misinformation and disinformation surrounding reparations.”
Dr. Winbush’s research has received funding in the form of grants from the National Science Foundation, Cleveland Foundation, Job Training Partnership Act of 1982, West African Research Association, Pitney Bowes, Inc., the Ford Motor Company, and the Kellogg Foundation, according to his Morgan State University bio.
Also part of the panel discussion of anti-lineage reparations advocates was Jessica Ann Mitchell Aiwuyor, a cultural communications specialist based in Washington, D.C. area. She is the founder of the National Black Cultural Information Trust. According to her bio on the organization’s website, she is a descendant of enslaved Africans and maroons in Georgia and South Carolina.
Additionally, Aiwuyor is a leader and advocate for multicultural digital media. She is the founder of Black Bloggers Connect, the first social network dedicated to supporting Black bloggers around the world, and founder of the Blogger Week Un/Conference, a multicultural social media networking conference held yearly in Washington, DC.
In 2021, the National Black Cultural Information Trust Inc. was awarded a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for its work to correct cultural disinformation, advance reparatory justice, and share cultural information, stories, and resources that uplift the collective freedom of Black communities, according to a press release.
The grant is part of roughly $80 million in awards MacArthur announced in support of the foundation’s Equitable Recovery initiative, centered on advancing racial and ethnic justice. The initiative is funded by MacArthur’s social bonds, issued in response to the crises of the pandemic and racial inequity.
In a debate that threatens to divide the reparations movement, some advocates want reparations to be distributed based on race, going to all Black people in the U.S. Others, like reparations scholar Dr. William Darity, insist reparations must be based on lineage, paid only to descendants of enslaved people in the U.S.
Reparations based on lineage have a better chance of overcoming political and legal challenges, according to Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California Berkeley Law School.
Reparations based on lineage, as opposed to race, are less likely to be overturned in court, Berkeley Law School Dean Chemerinsky said during testimony in early March 2022 at one of the commission’s hearings, The New York Times reported.
The historic California Reparations Task Force, chaired by Kamilah Moore, elected to provide reparations based on lineage.
Moore is a reparatory justice scholar and an attorney. She was elected task force chairwoman at the group’s first meeting on June 1, 2021. When the task force opted for a lineage-based route, she said, that not going with a lineage-based approach would “aggrieve the victims of slavery.”
(From L-R) Dr. Raymond Winbush (photo: Morgan State University), Jessica Ann Mitchell Aiwuyor (photo: National Black Cultural Information Trust), Dr. William Darity (Duke University), Kamilah Moore (photo: https://oag.ca.gov/ab3121/members/bios)
