Engage: The Case for Reparations

Our society has discussed reparations for Black Americans due to their enslavement, exploitation, and intergenerational oppression for a long time, but not much has manifested. As we become a more race-conscious society, examining and finally accepting the ways in which institutionalized discrimination has disseminated wealth, education, health outcomes, and other quality of life indicators for so many of our marginalized communities, we don’t talk enough about the free enslaved labor of Black people that built this country into one of the most powerful and rich  democracies in the world - laying the foundations of capitalism and its view of human bodies as “units of production.”

With so many Black Americans continuing to be left behind in wealth and educational attainment - how do we make amends? How do we repay the many families who have paid the price, intergenerationally, for the rest of Americans to prosper? Join us for a virtual discussion on the need and movement for reparations for Black Americans, and local exploratory efforts happening both in Detroit and Washtenaw County. Speakers include:

• Chris Watson, Ann Arbor City Council Member
• Cynthia Harrison, Ann Arbor City Council Member
• Lauren Hood, Assistant Professor at the Taubman College for Architecture & Urban Planning and former Co-Chair of Detroit’s Reparations Task Force
• Michael Steinberg, Professor and Director of the Civil Rights Litigation Initiative at the University of Michigan Law School, Justice InDEED, and the Washtenaw County Advisory Council on Reparations 
• Stacey Deering, Political Science Department at Eastern Michigan University 

University of Michigan’s Mellon Foundation- funded project on reparations, “Crafting Democratic Futures,” will also be discussed. 

Event Recording