Our writers dug into reparations. Here’s what two of them took away.
There’s more to the reparations discussion than what typically makes the news. Two writers – one white, one Black – found that many, on both sides of the issue, care deeply about honestly acknowledging history.
California’s Reparations Task Force has finalized its report to the state legislature. It’s the first such statewide report, but it lands in a conversation already well underway.
Bringing insights to that conversation are Monitor writers, including Clara Germani and Maisie Sparks. They discussed their recent stories – and the challenges that came with them – on our “Why We Wrote This” podcast.
“This is a really tricky balance to do a story about white people and reparations,” Clara says. “I had to be very aware of the words I was choosing, the way I was posing questions.”
Clara discovered that, despite polls showing that 80% of white people oppose reparations, there’s a lot of grassroots action occurring. Millions of dollars are being transferred, without fanfare, to the Black community for housing, education, and business support programs. But she also found that reparations aren’t just about money. Of nearly 500 programs she saw online, most sought instead to memorialize and acknowledge.
In speaking with descendants of those enslaved at St. Louis University, Maisie discovered something similar. While money is a concern, it’s far from the sole focus. After learning about their ancestors’ lives, the descendants were determined to honor and recognize their ancestors, who have been left out of the university’s history. A key goal was to acknowledge what had happened and start to bring some kind of justice that will move us into the future.
“I know that a lot of people get ticked off by a more panoramic view of our nation’s history,” Maisie says on the podcast. “And so that caused me a little concern initially, but I realized that I did have to set it aside. It’s a story that needs to be told.”
Episode transcript
Trudy Palmer: The California Reparations task force has finalized its report to the state legislature. Despite technically having been a free state, California is the first state in the U.S. to consider compensating eligible Black residents for historical harms ranging from slavery to Jim Crow laws to redlining. But the group’s report, more than two years in the making, isn’t kicking off the country’s discussion about reparations. On the contrary, it lands in a conversation already well underway: in cities, educational institutions, churches, and among individuals. For months now, the Monitor has been talking about the topic too. Two goals surfaced: exploring the issues not just in the United States, but around the world, and, as always, embracing a wide range of views – not endorsing any, but reporting on them fairly and factually. The reporters you’ll hear from today contributed to our kickoff series that appeared in the June 19 Weekly issue of the Monitor and constituted the full issue of the Daily on June 16.
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Palmer: This is “Why We Wrote This.” I’m this week’s host, Trudy Palmer. I’m joined by Maisie Sparks, a regular contributor to the Monitor who traveled to St. Louis to talk with descendants of those enslaved by Saint Louis University. I’m also joined by Clara Germani, a longtime Monitor correspondent and editor who traveled to Michigan to report on some of the ways white congregations and individuals are thinking about reparations. Thanks for being here, Clara and Maisie.
Clara Germani: Good to be here.
Maisie Sparks: Yes, good talking with you this morning.
Palmer: Can each of you give a little background about your stories and how you approached them?
Sparks: So often when we talk about slavery or reparations, we kind of get away from how it impacts individual people, and we think it’s something that happened long ago and far away. But in this case, talking with the descendants of the families who were enslaved by Saint Louis University, with their intimate knowledge of their enslaved ancestors, moved this from a very high level kind of understanding and made it very personal and real and relevant to me. There are traces and remnants of this history that are still with us today.
Palmer: How about you, Clara?
Germani: My premise was this: If 80% of white American adults oppose reparations, how can there be movement on reparations at all? And my question was: Are hearts being changed at all in deeper discussions? Central to this is: What even does “reparations” mean? In casual conversation, reparation is almost always reduced to money. And one source said to me: “It’s the fear of having your stuff taken away by someone else.” And of nearly 500 programs that I could see online, most are not financial reparations. They have a lot to do with memorializing and acknowledging. So there was a lot to look at in terms of what white people are doing and how their hearts are changing.
Palmer: That’s really interesting in terms of how it runs, frankly, contrary, both to news and polling. And I should add, for the sake of listeners: Maisie is Black; Clara is white. I wonder if you could share a little bit about the impact of the reporting on your own sense of racial identity. Obviously you weren’t writing personal essays, but I’m sure that doesn’t mean you weren’t moved by what you learned. You wanna go first, Maisie?
Sparks: Sometimes when I’m in an interview, I get what I call a graced moment. And it’s basically a gift of knowing how I’m going to begin and end a story. And that was the case here. At the very beginning the family talked about a letter that they had received from Saint Louis University telling them that the university had owned some of their ancestors. But then near the end of the interview, they shared about an ancestor who was up in age who also wrote a letter. And in that letter he shared how he was going to have to move over a loft, over an outhouse. And I didn’t even know that there could be lofts over outhouses, and that image made me pause. And as I thought about it, I said, I want this to also make other people pause. I do realize that as a reporter I’m supposed to stay objective, but in that moment I almost cried. I did manage to hold myself together and I finished the interview, but I’m also glad that I could be human, and empathize with the family and their willingness to share their family’s history: the good, the bad, and the very inhumane.
Palmer: Wow. That sounds like a very powerful experience. Clara, did you have any of those kinds of moments of surprise and personal reckoning?
Germani: This is a really tricky balance to do a story about white people and reparations. I didn’t want to appear to be endorsing it. I also was hyper aware of being offensive by appearing to make reparations a white-centered thing. I had to be very aware of the words I was choosing, the way I was posing questions. And I got a taste of the fear and loathing that’s involved in this tricky balance. I was invited by reparations activists, a group of mixed Black and white people, to a Sunday service where they attend church. Then the night before, I was disinvited when they got cold feet about how a white reporter asking questions about reparations might sow disruption within their church.
But I do want to say the most exciting thing about this story to me was [that] as I started networking, I was amazed to find that there’s [been] change of heart and action at a grassroots level, mostly in churches, that’s not even registering in headlines. Millions of dollars are already being transferred quietly without fanfare to the Black community for housing, education, and business support programs. It was really amazing.
Palmer: That is. Maisie, did you also have that sense of sort of setting people off?
Sparks: Yeah, Clara brought up something that reminded me about a feeling I had when I was starting to write the article, and that was just a concern for my personal safety. I don’t remember ever having felt that way about writing anything else. But in our current national climate, where books are being banned, books about racial issues, I know that a lot of people get ticked off by a more panoramic view of our nation’s history. And so that caused me a little concern initially, but I realized that I did have to set it aside. It’s a story that needs to be told.
Palmer: Do you want to share specific examples of the change of heart that you saw?
Germani: One of my favorite anecdotes was from the Lake Street Church in Evanston, Illinois, where the city has created a reparations program, but the churches there are also involved in this. And a very animated minister, Reverend Michael Woolf, told me how it was the very nice church ladies who came and basically cussed him out when the church decided to share its ownership with the Second Baptist Church in Evanston, which is Black and had broken away from their church a century ago because they weren’t treated as full members. And all of the money and work that those Black members had put into building their church was lost when they broke away. Lake Street Church decided to share ownership of its $17 million edifice with the Second Baptist Church in Evanston. And one of the women who was most vocal in being angry about the Reverend “giving away” her church actually started talking about it among friends in town, and was made aware that all of them knew about this terrible history of how the church had just allowed its Black membership to fall away after the Black membership had supported it so much. She really had a change of heart when she realized everybody knew this, and that it was true. And she ended up saying to the reverend: “Maybe we’re really not giving away our church, maybe we’re just sharing the future.” And I just thought that was great.
Palmer: I love that.
Sparks: That’s a powerful story. In my experience talking to the family, it wasn’t so much a change of heart. I think it was more, they felt they had more courage, more determination ... that they needed to do something to honor and recognize their ancestors, who have been left out of the history of that university. And I think that is a starting place for a lot of people who find out about these kinds of injustices. It’s not just a giving of money, but it is acknowledging what has happened to a family and groups of people, and how do we start to bring about some kind of justice, as well as relationship that will move us into the future.
In the article, there was this idea about history making people feel that they belong. And I got that question from several different people. You know, what difference does it make if you know your family’s history? And I had to sit and really ponder it. And I landed on this, really based on my long-term curiosity about the genealogies that are listed in both Hebrew and Christian scriptures. Why are they there? Why is it so important to know who begat who? And I came to the conclusion that knowing history, knowing our family’s background, they not only give us a sense of our humanity, but I think they give us a sense of our divinity. That life didn’t start with us and life won’t end with us. That we belong to something much greater than ourselves.
Palmer: Wouldn’t that be a wonderful basis for understanding the work of reparations? Thank you so much, Clara and Maisie.
Sparks: It was my pleasure. Thank you.
Germani: I was so glad to do it.
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Palmer: Thanks to all of you for listening. You can find links to the stories we discussed at CSMonitor.com/WhyWeWroteThis. And you can find all the stories in the series at csmonitor.com/reparations, including coverage from outside the United States. We’ll be adding articles all summer long. This episode was hosted by me, Trudy Palmer, and produced by Jingnan Peng and Clay Collins. Alyssa Britton and Jeff Turton were our engineers. Our original music is by Noel Flatt. Produced by The Christian Science Monitor. Copyright 2023.
