The Reparations Conversation We Keep Not Having

The debate over reparations is not really a debate about whether harm was done. The historical record is unambiguous. The debate is about whether we — as a society — are willing to reckon with the consequences of that harm, and what reckoning would require.

Opponents of reparations most commonly argue that no one alive today is responsible for slavery. But reparations are not about assigning individual guilt. They are about acknowledging that wealth, land, and opportunity accumulated across generations — and that the theft that enabled much of that accumulation has never been accounted for.

The cities that have begun to study reparations — Evanston, Illinois, being the most prominent — have found the process itself to be valuable, regardless of what comes after. The study forces a community to look honestly at its own history. That honesty has value independent of any transfer of funds.

We believe this conversation is one that communities of conscience cannot continue to defer. It is not comfortable. It is not simple. But the avoidance of discomfort has never been a defensible moral position. What we owe each other — and what we owe history — requires more from us than that.