By Dreisen Heath
The 250th anniversary of the United States was predictable; celebratory but devoid of the reflection necessary to move the nation forward. There were huge tractor-trailer Freedom Trucks–financed by the Trump Administration–on the streets of D.C. broadcasting a whitewashed story of the nation’s origin.
Many omitted the nation’s abominable systems of economic and cultural exploitation from the living record. Although the racialized chattel enslavement and human trafficking of Africans is the gravest crime against humanity, the United States has failed to make any amends for the harms it has caused to Black Americans. Though the legacy of slavery shapes every facet of American life, many federal lawmakers dismiss even a hint of healing and repair via a comprehensive reparations program for Black Americans.
At a moment rife for reflection, this was a missed opportunity but certainly not the last opportunity. Now we must assess where we’ve been, to understand how we drive corrective, reparative action.
We arrived at the 250th after celebrating Juneteenth and Reclamation Day, both carrying the same lesson: announcing freedom isn’t the same as delivering it. Black people in Texas learned they were free two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation, and the country has turned that gap — between what it announces and what it repairs — into a habit ever since.
Even progress was meaningful but insufficient. The civil rights movement, for example, produced legislation without repairing the underlying wounds. That isn’t a failure of the people who marched and bled for it. It’s the clearest argument for what reparations are supposed to accomplish.
The country keeps proving it. The week of June 8, recognized as Equity Week, under the leadership of Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, members of Congress stood at the House Triangle to advance a federal reparative justice agenda. Weeks later, the Department of Justice joined a lawsuit to prevent the city of Evanston, Ill., from making amends for documented harm the local government has caused. One branch of government extends a hand; another slaps it down. That isn’t a contradiction in the system. That’s the system functioning exactly as built.
Yes, we’ve marked the 250th but, what are we going to do now? I hope the answer is to push Congress to deliver a reparative justice agenda. And let us not be confused.
Our country knows how to do reparations when it decides a wrong is worth fixing — survivors and descendants of the Rosewood massacre got paid, as did Black victims of police torture in Chicago, Black survivors of state eugenics programs, and Japanese Americans forced into incarceration camps during World War II. I’m not litigating the merits of those decisions; I’m suggesting the U.S. has a pattern of remuneration for those it deems worthy.
For our part, Black Americans are keenly aware of the debt that is owed. We know epigenetics stores the experiences of our ancestors in our bodies today. We know that our health and wealth are all impacted by race and racial injustice. And descendants kept the receipts.
Some may wonder what the receipts look like. You need not look further. The Why We Can’t Wait Network, the largest reparations network, and organizing and coordinating body, produced an installation called “We Kept the Receipts.” The installation was unveiled on Reclamation Day, June 20 in Brooklyn, N.Y. The installation reframes reparations through the logic of retail: if something was taken, there’s a return policy. Receipts are required for most returns. Descendants have kept the receipts.
Featuring the work of visual artist Andre Woolery, whose “Black Stacks” series reimagines the dollar bill as a reparative instrument, the installation visualizes what happens when policy, art, and community converge in one room. “We Kept the Receipts” is both a cultural intervention and a direct counter-demand: the debt to Black America remains unpaid.
In this moment of reflecting on next steps for healing and justice, we must remember that the passage of time doesn’t necessarily settle a score, much less a debt.
For all its promised excitement, the 250th has come and gone. It was a celebration of a founding myth that conveniently blots out who actually built and tended this land. As Congresswoman Summer Lee said: “Reparations the Black community are the only way our country will exist for another 250 years.”
The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the writer and not necessarily those of the AFRO.
