Book Review for 9.29.24: Creating a Culture of Repair

Title: Creating a Culture of Repair

Author: Robert Turner

Date: 2024

Publisher: Westminster John Knox

ISBN: 978-1747983773

Quote: "Simply put, reparations are not merely given; they are a matter of justice."

As a minister, Robert Turner was invited to preach in a place called Greenwood, Oklahoma, near Tulsa. Greenwood has an interesting, if deplorable, history. It was part of the "territory" ceded to indigenous people as a reservation, on which White and Black people encroached. It became the Black neighborhood, or town, that was a counterpart to White Tulsa. It prospered. It had what was known as "Black Wall Street"--Turner gives the names and histories of some of his congregation's grandparents who were part of that success story. Then, in 1921, rioters whipped themselves into a froth about a reported crime and destroyed ss much of Greenwood as they could, because it was not about revenge for one man's crime; it was about race hate. "How did we ever let them get all this?" 

But that is not all. Greenwood people were optimistic, energetic, motivated. They built back better. And then, one generation later, Greenwood sustained real economic damage from the construction of a US highway that seemed designed to divide and destroy the town. And then even Greenwood people began to feel bitter. 

Turner is in favor of the kind of melodramatic gestures toward "justice" that are not just, are boondoggles, and are likely to be as divisive as that highway. That's what's not to love about this book.

He is also willing to do the research, identify what was done to whom by whom, and talk sensibly about the kind of specific reparations that would be a very good thing if the law required them to be settled within the complaining victim's lifetime. We need to stop letting offenders stall and play the system. We need no system that, e.g., Bayer can run out before compensating victims of glyphosate poisoning; we need a system in which, on the day glyphosate is proved to have harmed a persn, all glyphosate production stops, Bayer's assets are frozen, and all Bayer is allowed to do is pay damages to victims while we are alive.  And something similar should most definitely apply to any living survivors of what was done to places like Greenwood. Turner makes intelligent cases for specific reparations, not the kind of "pay everybody for being Black even though every other kind of people on Earth have been victims of past injustice too" that would ruin the economy if taken seriously, but the kind of "pay this and that individual for specific material harm done to them" that ought to be the basis of our legal system.

That is why you want to read his book. I don't expect anyone will be able to take all of Turner's 100 suggested acts of reparations seriously, but his list includes more good ideas than bad ones. He suggests things like:

* It's true that most Americans don't know where their ancestors were in 1850; many don't even know, by now, where their ancestors were in 1950. We can do something about this. Trace your own ancestry if you can afford it and it's not already been done. Help other people trace theirs if they can't afford it. Find out, so far as possible, which of us are descendants of slaves or slavemasters. In some cases, descendants of the owners and the slaves on specific plantations may even want to have a reunion. Are the owners' descendants still rich? Are the slaves' descendants still poor? Is it the other way round? If a "legacy of slavery" has harmed the descendants of slaves, what would they suggest, once they know what the descendants of plantation owners have, that the descendants of plantation owners do for them?

* Black schools were historically underfunded. (Turner ignores the fact that being underfunded can actually motivate students to achieve more, given the right kind of teachers.) Individuals could make contributions to equalize funding, or to provide scholarships for qualified students.

* Black churches historically did fantastic feats of mission work. Often this left little money available to maintain the church or its grounds. People in both churches may want to preserve individual churches' identity and the different liturgical traditions that have developed in segregated American churches, while rejecting rigid segregation, but also White churches could contribute to Black churches' maintenance funds. 

This and much, much more. I may come back to some of his ideas in posts here. I'm not going to try to summarize 100 ideas in a blog post. Read the book for yourselves. Turner is angry, and sometimes he's unrealistic about what a suggestion might actually accomplish, but he's not hostile, and more of the time, I believe, he recommends things that could be good for both sides. Airlines, e.g., might profit by giving away visits to people's ancestral homelands. Why not publicize research and essay contests that award a Black American family a trip to Cameroon, once they've traced their ancestors to that country?