Repair: Redeeming the Promise of Abolition, by Katherine Franke.
I’ve served on several law school panels with Katherine Franke and I’m excited to read her book, “Repair: Redeeming the Promise of Abolition.” I wanted to read this book because it is an academic treatise exploring the historical context for reparations, and offers a detailed account of the inspiring, yet damaging circumstances that surrounded the emancipation of enslaved Black people in the South Carolina Sea Islands and Davis Bend, Mississippi.
I first learned of these settlements under the tutelage of Brother Imari Obadele of the Republic of New Afrika. He drummed into me that these were examples of Black nation-building and, if Black folk after the Civil War had been left to prosper and develop our own without the interference of white people and with true #reparations, our ensuing and current circumstances could have been much different.
I think Professor Franke does an excellent job unpacking the intergenerational, systemic #racism and white privilege at the heart of American society. I am thrilled that she argues that reparations for the enslavement era [and I will add for post- enslavement apartheid practices], are necessary, overdue and possible.
An important read.
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