Back in May, The New York Times reported that Virginia Theological Seminary had begun giving reparations to the descendants of the enslaved people who built the school.
Although slavery was ended by presidential decree in 1863, many southern slaves did not find out about their freedom until 1865. However, at the Virginia Theological Seminary, Black people were used for forced labor until 1951. According to CNN, even the jobs that offered a wage were severely lower than the appropriate salary for the time.
“When white institutions have to face up with the sins of their past, we’ll do everything we can to prevaricate, and we’ll especially prevaricate if it’s going to have some sort of financial implication,” said the Rev. Ian S. Markham, the president and dean of Virginia Theological Seminary.
Although the school now issuing reparations to the tune of about $2,100 a year to descendants of the enslaved is a nice idea, the toll that slavery and the subsequent government-sanctioned racial abuse of Black people took cannot be healed with a couple of thousand dollars a year.
In fact, experts have suggested that each African-American should get $151 million in reparations for the economic toll that being enslaved caused.
The school itself is considered the most powerful Episcopal Church and has a $191 million endowment, but the reparations fund is only $1.7 million. Further, the Episcopal Church released a racial audit this year and cited at least nine different patterns of racism within the religious organization.
The bigger issue that both Virginia Theological Seminary and society at large misses is the mental and emotional cost that being enslaved has imprinted into the DNA of Black people. Because anti-Blackness is a global currency, yearly checks do not make up for the irreversible psychological injury Black people endure even before birth.
Monetarily, reparations are back wages that are past due. But, until the government and its institutions dismantle the systems that administratively hobble us actively, Black people will be rich people who still have to jump the hurdles that white supremacy put in place.
Proof of this is the Tulsa Race Massacre when Black people who were doing well economically still fell victim to white hatred.
Reparations are only a vacuum in a house that needs a deep cleaning.
