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What is reparations? Reparations is about repaying a debt to a people group that has historically faced injustice and been wronged. For the purposes of the Alliance for Honor and Repair that focus is the injustice that has occurred with the Black churches in Pittsburgh Presbytery.
With that in mind let’s play the word association game! I say ‘reparations’ you say…
What word immediately came to mind for you? For some it might be ‘now’ because of a conviction it needs to happen soon. For others it might be ‘unnecessary’ because of a belief that we need to move forward and not look back. Yet another word that may have come to mind is ‘impossible’ because whether or not you think it is needed or unnecessary it seems like an impossible task to actually achieve.
Let’s try another word for the association game. I say ‘repair’ you say…
What came to mind for you that time? Whatever the word it was probably not the word ‘impossible’. We very much like to think when something is in need of repair we can and will find a way to get things back in order and restored to proper health and operation. Whether that is a broken car, broken bone, or broken relationship. We can at least all think of actions to take that will get us back to a place of wholeness for that car, bone, or relationship.
I think that is why I like the book Creating a Culture of Repair: Taking Action on the Road to Reparations by Robert Turner.
As former Pastor of Verona AME Church in Tulsa, the only edifice on Greenwood Avenue to survive the 1921 massacre, Turner certainly believes we must engage in reparations now.
But he also recognizes the feelings of impossibility that accompany that work and offers us helpful actions we can take now that will help bring repair to the broken places of racial injustice in our country while on the journey to broader reparations.
In his book he highlights 100 different actions we can take to offer repair on the road to reparations. He breaks the actions down to Individual Reparations, Societal Reparations, Institutional Reparations, and Spiritual Reparations.
I found this menu of options to be far from impossible and in fact very doable! From supporting Black owned businesses (Individual), to encouraging schools to teach Black history (Societal), to helping restore voting rights (Institutional), to having your church form a reparations committee (Spiritual), there is an opportunity for everyone to do something to enact repair for the harm which still exists in our American culture from centuries of racial injustice and inequity.
And when we all seek to do something for the greater good of one another by working to repair what has been broken in our relationship with each other, then I believe the impossible suddenly becomes possible after all.
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