History of who's gotten them, and the most valuable weath being informatoin that was not able to be accumulated by the enslaved, the real reparations are in the sharing and creating of wealth, Power of compounding generations of access & expertise,
Let’s be clear: reparations are not some mythical or radical concept. America pays reparations all the time. Japanese Americans got them after internment. Holocaust survivors received financial compensation. Even slave owners were paid after slavery was abolished — not the enslaved, but the enslavers. Harvard’s Policy Cast breaks this down plainly.
So, when folks act like reparations for Black Americans are some complicated, impossible ask… it’s not that the system doesn’t know how to do it. It’s that it refuses to do it—for us.
What was really stolen during slavery wasn’t just labor or wages — it was information, knowledge and strategy. The kind of insight that allows wealth to grow, pivot and compound. The kind of understanding that becomes inheritance.
The NAACP frames it clearly in their reparations resources: it’s not just about a check — it’s about access. To land, capital, credit, healthcare, education and opportunity. And that access has been deliberately withheld from generations of Black people.
While white families were stacking wealth off land grants, tax breaks and favorable banking systems, Black families were boxed out. That gap was never accidental—it was engineered.
You want real reparations? Start with Black entrepreneurs. Fund them. Support their businesses. Normalize giving Black founders the same access to capital and coaching that others get by default. Reparations are as much about infrastructure and ecosystem as it is about cash.
We need more than one-time payments, we need pipelines, systems that don’t just redistribute money but compound it over generations. Black business deserves long-term investment, not charity.
Because the real power? It's in generational compounding—when expertise is passed down, when land is never lost, and when kids grow up learning about LLCs, credit stacking, and ownership, not just survival.
If you’re building for the culture, building for the future—that’s reparations too. And the best part? We don’t have to wait for permission to start.
Read: Where did the "black people are violent" stereotype come from? and why it is patently false
