Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire
  • omnibus

Ta-Nehisi Coates, Blackwashing, the Reparations Brand, and a Last Refuge For Scoundrels
Bruce A. Dixon, BAR managing editor
18 Jun 2014

No sensible person should doubt the fundamental justice of arguments for reparations for the historic crimes of slavery, Jim Crow, and today's prison state. Accomplishing reparations would require a massive political realignment. But is reparations today a political movement, or is it an empty brand available for African American public figures in need of a little blackwashing?

Why is Ta Nehisi Coates suddenly a public reparista, and what does this say about the reparations movement?

Back in the day when black politicians used to fall out of favor, their friends ratting each other out before grand juries and prosecutors combing their personal records for evidence of wrongdoing, the standard thing for the political figure to do was to get very publicly right with Jesus. The church, after all, seems to never turn anybody down.

Nowadays a disgraced black politician is as likely to blacken herself up with a public embrace of reparations in addition to the old confession of religious faith. Like the church, all one has to do to join the reparations movement is to make that confession of faith, a kind of secular Shahada.

Nobody here at Black Agenda Report disagrees with the fundamental justice of the case for reparations. But it's a just cause with a huge problem. Reparations for the descendants of slaves, the victims of historic Jim Crow and the current prison state is an immense political project. But apart from a single piece of legislation and a few lawsuits over the last 30 years, reparistas seem to take no responsibility for proposing, discussing or advancing even the sketchiest of political roadmaps to bring us to reparations.

I'm a lifelong socialist, somebody who believes political mountains can and must be moved. But when proponents of reparations don't even try to discuss what the needed political coalitions might look like, what sectors of society we need to win over to make reparations happen, or how many years or decades all this might take, are they acting like a political movement, or like something else? What kind of political movement advances no measures, discusses no plans, takes no responsibility for advancing its own just cause? The answer is that movements don't behave like that at all. But brands do.

Brands neither say what they mean, nor mean what they say. Brands are stories, brands are narratives contrived to get specific emotional reactions, to pull real or imagined memories, sights, smells or feelings from a target audience. To do this brands operate outside of and independent from fact and/or logic. Reparations is not a movement, it's a brand.

A centerpiece of the reparations brand is the study bill that Rep. John Conyers has introduced in every one of the last dozen Congresses except the 110th and 111th. In those two Congresses, Rep. Conyers, with four decades of seniority finally chaired the powerful House Judiciary Committee with the ability to make demands or cut deals to move the study bill, or at least the discussion of reparations. If reparations was a political project instead of a brand, he would have done just that. But Conyers put the reparations study bill in his desk drawer until Republicans re-took the House and he no longer had that power. Safely back in the minority again in early 2011, he re-introduced the reparations study bill once more.

After five and a half years of the Obama presidency, during which the problems of black America were ignored and in some cases made worse, some of his black enablers and apologists feel the need to get their ghetto passes re-stamped. Wrapping themselves in the reparations brand is their way of asserting fictive allegiance to African Americans along with some imaginary distance from the president. If Wal-Mart and BP pretending to be environmentally responsible is greenwashing, this is blackwashing.

Polls indicate that a majority of African Americans do favor reparations. But in the absence of a reparations movement with discussions of plans and strategies against which to measure progress and performance, reparations is only a brand, available for scoundrels to hide behind whenever their faces need blackwashing, and their ghetto passes need re-stamping. Today it's Mr. Coates. Tomorrow? Well...

For Black Agenda Radio I'm Bruce Dixon. Find us on the web at www.blackagendareport.com, and subscribe to our free weekly email updates at www.blackagendareport.com/subscribe. That's www.blackagendareport.com/subscribe.

Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report, and a state committee member of the Georgia Green Party. He can be reached via this site's contact page, or emailed directly at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.

Your browser does not support the audio element.

listen
http://traffic.libsyn.com/blackagendareport/20140617_bd_brand_reparations.mp3
reparations

Related Podcasts

Tulsa newspaper
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Tulsa Massacre Instigated by White Supremacist Media
21 June 2024
The Oklahoma Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit that argued that the remaining survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Massacre should be compensated by that ci
Reparations Supporters Need to Unite Around Specific Demands
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
Reparations Supporters Need to Unite Around Specific Demands
30 June 2021
Efia Nwangaza, director of the Malcolm X Center for Self-Determination in Greenville, South Carolina, is trying to unite the member organizations o
 Reparations Not Yet a “Mainstream” Demand
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
Reparations Not Yet a “Mainstream” Demand
08 December 2020
Reparations “hasn’t reached the point where there’s really a discussion among white politicians” on the merits of the issue, said Zuri Arma

More Stories


  • Black Alliance for Peace US Out of Africa Network
    AFRICOM Watch Bulletin #56
    04 Jun 2025
    The Congo remains ground zero for Africa’s resource wars, where Rwanda and Uganda act as looters for the West. While international scrutiny has largely focused on Rwanda’s aggression, Uganda’s role…
  • Alina Selyukh
    Skulls Once Subject to Racist Study in Germany are Laid to Rest in New Orleans
    04 Jun 2025
    Looted African skulls come home after a century in German labs, exposing colonialism's history of dehumanizing "race science."
  • The Cradle News Desk
    US Greenlights Syrian Plan to Integrate Foreign Extremists Into New Army
    04 Jun 2025
    After 2011, tens of thousands of foreign extremists flooded into Syria with the backing of western intelligence agencies to help topple the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad.
  • Palestine Chronicle Staff
    Another Massacre at Rafah Aid Center as Gaza Death Toll Mounts
    04 Jun 2025
    Gaza health officials report mass casualties as Israeli forces shell humanitarian aid distribution points.
  • John Perry , Roger D. Harris
    US Reinstates Funding to Propaganda Outlet: NED Weaponizes “Democracy” in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba
    04 Jun 2025
    After a brief pause, Washington's regime-change efforts against Latin American countries via the National Endowment for Democracy has returned.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us