What are reparations?
Reparations are measures taken to acknowledge and repair a serious wrong, carried out by the party responsible for it or by its successors. The idea is older and broader than any one country's debate.
Under the United Nations' 2005 Basic Principles on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation, full reparation has five forms. Money is only one of them.
Reparations in the United States
In the U.S., "reparations" most often refers to redress for the enslavement of Black Americans and for what followed it: Black Codes and convict leasing, Jim Crow segregation, lynching and massacres, redlining, exclusion from New Deal and GI Bill benefits, highway construction through Black neighborhoods, discriminatory lending, and mass incarceration. These were not only private prejudices. Many were written into federal, state and local policy, which is why advocates argue the government has a specific debt to pay.
The same framework applies to other groups: Indigenous nations whose land and children were taken in violation of treaties, Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II, and the descendants of people enslaved by specific institutions such as universities and churches.
Source: Federal Reserve, Survey of Consumer Finances analysis (2023); H.R. 40 on congress.gov.
Reparations have happened before
Reparations are sometimes described as unprecedented. They are not. A few examples:
Holocaust survivors
Under the Luxembourg Agreement and later programs, Germany has paid tens of billions of dollars to survivors and to Israel, administered in part by the Claims Conference. Payments continue today.
Japanese American incarceration
The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 delivered a formal apology and $20,000 to each surviving person incarcerated during World War II, about 82,000 people.
First U.S. city program
Evanston became the first American city to fund reparations for Black residents, starting with housing grants paid for by cannabis tax revenue. See the city's program page and NPR's report.
Institutional repair
The Jesuits pledged $100 million toward the Descendants Truth & Reconciliation Foundation for descendants of people the order enslaved and sold, including the 272 sold in 1838 to sustain Georgetown University.
State task force
Created by AB 3121, the California Reparations Task Force spent two years documenting harms and published a final report with more than 100 recommendations to the legislature.
Land back
Tribes have regained land through purchase, donation and government transfer, and movements like LANDBACK push for the return of public lands and the honoring of treaties.
The debate, briefly
Supporters point to documented, traceable government policies, a measurable wealth gap, and the precedents above. Critics raise questions about who should pay and who should receive, the cost, and the time elapsed since slavery. This site is not neutral: it starts from the view that harm this well documented deserves repair. But you don't have to settle the national argument to act in your own life, which is where micro reparations come in.