Our nation’s foundation is rooted in racism. We won’t be whole until we repair what’s broken.
If slavery was America’s original sin, reparations remains its unrealized penance.
Conversations about how to address the legacy of slavery for the descendants of the enslaved tend to sputter on the fumes of guilt, resentment, denial and defeat before shutting down altogether.
“I refer to it as the barbed-wire history,” said Danita Rountree Green, an author and trauma healing facilitator. “Every time we come close to it and get pricked, we back up and say, ‘Oh no, we’re not going to deal with that.’”
But the idea of reparations, she added, “is so much more than money. And just like anything in your house that’s broken, the longer you wait to fix it, the worse it gets.”
To read the rest of this article, go to: Our nation’s foundation is rooted in racism, by Michael Paul Williams for Richmond Times-Dispatch.