What are Comprehensive Reparations?

1. Comprehensive reparations (Sometimes referred to as harms-based reparations) focus on repairing harms endured by Black communities (people of African descent) due to chattel slavery, Jim Crow, systemic racism, and their continuing vestiges; and repairing communities with forward-thinking initiatives that safeguard the future of Black America. 

2. Comprehensive reparations focus on making reparations accessible, inclusive, and constructive. 

   
   

3. Comprehensive reparations include three primary periods addressing reparative justice for crimes against humanity: The TransAtlantic Slave Trade, Intra-American Slave Trade and Chattel slavery, Jim Crow/the U.S. Apartheid system, and modern-day systemic racism.
   

   Comprehensive reparations recognize that each period of harm can not be disconnected when seeking to repair injuries on a large scale (especially for state or nationwide initiatives). Some reparations advocates focus only on the period of chattel slavery. However, this limitation does not sufficiently account for ongoing harms, the continuation of enslavement under different names, and the ongoing vestiges of slavery. Contrary to popular belief, many African Americans were not freed directly following the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. For example, in Texas, many African Americans continued to be enslaved for an additional two years, ending on June 19, 1865 - resulting in Juneteenth. 
   
   

   Additionally, following emancipation, many African Americans were forced to work in slave-like conditions under the sharecropping system well into the 1940s. They also were subject to vagrancy laws that forced them into forms of servitude like convict leasing. Many families affected by this continued oppression still face obstacles to upward mobility. Fair housing was denied to many African American families due to racial discrimination and government policies preventing African Americans from buying homes in various neighborhoods. It wasn’t until seven days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. that the Fair Housing Act was passed. However, the denial of access to homeownership and fair housing has contributed to racial wealth disparities and continues to affect Black America. 

   
   

4. Comprehensive reparations are about human rights and the right to self-determination, not just owed debt. Comprehensive reparations address the economic toll caused by years of forced labor while recentering anti-Black dehumanization, genocide, white supremacist terrorism, and racism as the primary focus for change and remedies. This includes financial compensation but also significantly uplifts structural changes that benefit Black communities and remedy the overall dehumanization and criminalization of people of African descent. Addressing the racial wealth gap alone does not manage or rectify issues that continue to cause harm to our communities.

   
   

5. Comprehensive reparations include repairing harms caused by governments. Comprehensive reparations examine and seek to provide remedies to direct harms inflicted by local and federal laws and policies. For example, some policies addressed by comprehensive reparations include Black Codes in various states, laws preventing access to fair housing for Black Americans, African Americans prevented from G.I. Bill benefits, and more.

   
   

6. Comprehensive reparations include repairing harms caused by businesses, religious institutions, and academic institutions. Comprehensive reparations examine and seek to provide remedies to direct harms inflicted by entities that participated in chattel slavery and benefited from the TransAtlantic Slave Trade, IntraAmerican Slave Trades, chattel slavery, Jim Crow, and systemic racism.

   
   

7. Are comprehensive reparations the same as “lineage-based reparations”?

   No. Comprehensive reparations prioritize accessibility and reject false purity ancestry standards for large-scale reparative justice initiatives. “Lineage-based” reparations are under-inclusive, create costly barriers, and too restrictive for large-scale local governments, state, and national reparative justice initiatives. Eliminating unnecessary barriers to access is essential for reaching and repairing Black communities. Comprehensive reparations recognize that Black communities have endured centuries of dehumanizing delays and obstacles to reparative justice. Thus, comprehensive reparations reject false and invasive purity standards and redirect focus on documented harms done to our communities. So-called lineage-based reparations place the onus of proof and belonging back on Black Americans that have experienced centuries of varying injuries depending on location, socio-economic status, etc. 

   Requiring extensive genealogical background checks (even those promoting the concept of negative proof) would delay or serve as additional time-consuming or costly barriers (potentially millions of dollars) that would deny timely repair for communities in need. This money and time could instead be used towards reparative justice initiatives. Comprehensive reparations focus on repairing harms and not punishing Black communities for lack of slavery documentation by focusing on continual injuries for historical accuracy and accessibility. Comprehensive reparations advocate other verifiable standards to gauge the needs and distribution of reparative justice resources to communities. 

   
   

8. Comprehensive reparations include African Americans and descendants of Africans harmed by the vestiges of slavery in the United States (regardless of national origin). Comprehensive reparations uplift that Descendants of Africans Enslaved in the United States (DAEUS) or descendants of free or maroon Black communities are owed reparations, and people of African descent residing in the United States that were also harmed by the vestiges of slavery and Jim Crow, regardless of national origin, are also owed forms of reparative justice.

The enslaved ancestors of Black America were primarily from multi-ethnic groups of West and Central Africans. The harms of chattel slavery and Jim Crow relegated them as property instead of human beings based on being a person of African descent. The United States did not give birthright citizenship to African Americans until Congress passed the 14th amendment on June 13, 1866, and ratified it on July 9, 1868.

This system captured Africans from the continent and exchanged them throughout the Intra-American slave trade, constantly moving enslaved Africans across international borders. As a result, descendants of Africans enslaved in the United States share lineages and experiences with other African descendants in the Diaspora, for example, in Barbados, Haiti, Jamaica, Trinidad, Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Canada. 

Enslaved Africans were primarily taken from West and Central Africa, among various ethnic groups including but not limited to Kongolese/Angolan (Mbundu), Igbo, Ashanti, Bakongo, Fon, Mende/Mandinka, Fulani, Abron, Wolof, Chamba, etc. 

The harms against African descendants in the United States have always been multi-ethnic and multi-national. Thus, reparative justice for these harms must include remedies for all persons of African descent who were harmed in the United States or are descendants of harmed communities in the United States, regardless of their ethnic background or national origin. Based on current population and historical calculations, the vast majority of reparative justice recipients will be African American (Descendants of Africans Enslaved or free in the United States), and a smaller number of recipients will be African descendants of Black immigrant populations. For example, the Afro-Caribbean population in the early 1900s and following endured Jim Crow, systemic racism, and other continuing vestiges of slavery that should also be remedied.

9. Comprehensive reparations can also include direct family-based repair, providing remedies to descendants of harmed persons in specific families or neighborhoods. Since this often requires different and complex types of verification, this is best utilized for smaller-scale reparative justice initiatives. Examples of family-based reparative justice include Georgetown University’s slave descendants, Bruce’s Beach, Tulsa Race Massacre survivors and descendants of survivors, Gullah Geechee family land lost, and Evanston, Illinois housing discrimination survivors. In these cases, the descendants of harmed families can be directly remedied by at-fault parties on a case-by-case basis, at a smaller scale that prioritizes accessibility. 

Comprehensive Reparations includes three time periods of crimes against humanity towards people of African descent in America:

• The TransAtlantic Slave Trade and Chattel Slavery

• Jim Crow

• Systemic Racism

Comprehensive Reparations includes Several Eligible Groups for People of African Descent in America

• Descendants of Africans Enslaved in the United States (DAEUS)

• Black communities oppressed by Jim Crow/U.S. Apartheid System including DAEUS and early arrival Black immigrant populations.

• Black communities in need of family-based repair, including victims and their descendants of specific historical injustices (for example Bruce’s Beach, Tulsa Race Riot, Rosewood Massacre, Georgetown descendants, Black WWII veteran descendants, etc.

• Black communities oppressed by current day systemic racism including (DAEUS and Black immigrant populations Jim Crow era to current day.)