Reaching Reconcilation

What good is piecemeal reparations? From Georgetown University, where school leadership once sold enslaved people, to Evanston, Illinois, where redlining kept Black residents out of homeownership, institutions and local governments are attempting to take reparations into their own hands. But do these small-scale efforts detract from the broader call for reparations from the federal government?

In this Vox Conversations podcast series on reparations, Fabiola talks with Indigenous philanthropist Edgar Villanueva, founder of the Decolonizing Wealth Project and creator of the Case for Reparations fund, about the reparatory justice efforts underway across the country and the role that individual donors might be able to play in reparations. Fabiola also speaks with activist Kavon Ward, who worked to restore Bruce’s Beach, waterfront land in California, to the descendants of Black families who were pushed off the land by eminent domain. (Ward’s work was funded by Villanueva’s organization.) Ward and Fabiola discuss how jurisdictions are repaying Black people for what was taken from them — and if that repayment can be considered reparations at all.

At minute 29 Edgar Villanueva outlines seven steps to healing and reconciliation: grieve, apologize, listen, relate, represent, invest, and repair.

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