Opinion

Opinion: Moral and Ethical Issues of Reparations

Published

7 years ago

August 2, 2019

Summarizing the familiar patterns of some white people’s responses to racial discomfort as White Fragility has resonated for many people that responded to last week’s column.

The sensibility is so familiar because whereas our personal narratives vary, we are all swimming in the same racial water.

Dr. Wade Nobles

Dr. Wade Nobles, an Oakland psychologist, uses fish as a metaphor of the slave trade in which Western man is depicted as a saltwater fish and Eastern man (Africans) is a freshwater fish that is captured and forced to swim in an alien saltwater culture. The fish can swim but the salt irritates their sensibilities and reddens their eyes.

The salty water represents W.A.S.P/Individualism.

However, African Americans and all nonwhite folks are fresh-water fish whose vision has been irritated by the salt because they have been forced to adapt.

The Right Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, testified at Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee’s committee at the same hearing as filmmaker and seminarian Katrina Browne in June.

Sutton addressed the theological, political and economic complexity and intersectionality of the morality of reparations.

Sutton said Americans should avoid quick emotional responses to the word ‘reparations,’ because it could divide us and create resentment and suspicion.

He said just the term reparations accentuates the pains of the inherited mess of slavery that has long plagued this country.

There was an ominous judgment day tone to his words when he said, “None of us caused this brokenness, but all of us have a moral responsibility to fix it.

Bishop Sutton

“For generations the bodies of Black people did not belong to themselves but were bred, used and sold for the purpose of attaining wealth. Our nation prospered from that evil, and many of our institutions- including, sadly, the church, profited as well.

Sutton told Congress that moral leaders must be committed to repairing our “broken foundation.”

The economic and theological questions intersect, and Browne lived in a house on the corner of Seminary Avenue and Ill-Gotten Gain$ Boulevard (pun intended).

While theologians debate the moral issues of right and wrong and while they rhetorically ask, “What must I do to be saved?” I will focus on the economic, political and legal issues of reparations as I have for the past 30 years.

As the great writer Victor Hugo said, “Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come.” The reparations issue is “woke,” and the time has come to examine the founding documents down the streets of government from Ms. Browne’s childhood lemonade stand.

While the whole world watches, my city of Oakland is again in the vanguard of the fight for justice and equity with its newly formed Department of Race and Equity. That new department is under the supervision of the city administrator and the mayor with the limitations of the budget and finances.

Oaktown, the seat of the Alameda County government, is the cultural hub of several ethnic and racial groups that seek the review and removal of some of the past actions of government and private cultural entities…

Unlike the early debates over the definition of “Black Power” in 1966, which often excluded whites, the reparations debate is open to all Americans.

Reparations is a struggle for the “Soul” of our beloved nation.

It is ‘all-hands-on-deck’ time.

It’s ‘repair the ship of state’ time.

Its reform and discard institutions time.

Let us think nationally but act locally to examine our local governments to find the hidden obstacles.

Leo Bazile

Posts by Leo Bazile

Arts and Culture

COMMENTARY: Black Music is the Sound of Black Freedom: Let Us Reclaim Both This Juneteenth

Black Music Month started when Black Music Association members Ed Wright, Kenny Gamble and his wife, journalist and radio host Dyanna Williams were able to persuade President Jimmy Carter to establish the observation on June 7, 1979.

Published

1 day ago

June 9, 2026

Oakland Post

Robert Johnson (1911-1938) is thought of as the godfather of blues music, especially Delta blues. The 29 songs recorded by him during his short life have been of massive inspiration to guitarists and musicians over the last 80 years. Public domain photo.

By Wanda Ravernell

Black Music Month and Juneteenth are inextricably linked – Black music is the sound of our freedom.

From the plaintive moans of the enslaved Africans’ ‘sorrow songs,’ to the fields of Civil War battle where Black soldiers picked up abandoned bugles, to the upright piano played in juke joints on Saturday night and churches come Sunday morning, our ancestors’ innovation in the face of want, fear, degradation, and hopelessness has yielded genres of music imitated ’round the world.

In 2000, Congress made it official. In 2009, Pres. Barack Obama changed the name to African American Music Heritage Month and in 2023, Pres. Joe Biden changed it back to Black Music Month, two years after he declared Juneteenth a national holiday, the result of a movement led by Opal Lee.

Our ancestors battle for freedom over these last 400 years and the music that allowed them expression of their humanity deserved to be honored.

But we may be losing sight of the value of their sacrifices.

‘Sing a Song Full of the Faith That the Dark past Has Taught Us…’

Along with the long-known exploitation of Black musicians whose recordings were stolen by record companies, the commercialization of Juneteenth feels like another kind of theft.

I had never heard of Juneteenth until I moved to the Bay Area from my hometown of Philadelphia. I didn’t know it was one of many freedom festivals celebrated by descendants of enslaved people in the United States.

Emancipation Day was Jan. 1 in Pennsylvania, April 16 in Wash., D.C., May 20 in Florida, and Aug. 8 in Kentucky. But Juneteenth, June 19, has the most renown, known in Texas as the ‘colored peoples’ Fourth of July.’

It was marked by parades, beauty pageants, rodeos, backyard barbecues and church picnics.

Yes, church.

The formerly enslaved began the day praying in thanks for their freedom just as they had prayed for Jubilee – the day of freedom – when they had chains on their feet and hands. They ‘testified’ about their past suffering and how they had managed to overcome.

And they sang.

Although, we will not hold it this year, Omnira Institute’s Juneteenth Ritual of Remembrance recalled this part of Juneteenth with prayers in the languages of the African captives. In the middle of the ceremony, a soloist would lead us in singing “Many Thousand Gone” while we took turns reciting portions of the Emancipation Proclamation, the news of freedom that took more than two years to reach Texas – two months after the Civil War ended.

“Many Thousand Gone” was famously recorded by Black luminary Paul Robeson in 1947:

“No more auction block for me,

No more, no more

No more auction black for me

Many thousand gone.”

Other verses refer to the ‘pint of salt’ and the ‘driver’s lash,’ the realities of enslavement that they had survived.

‘Sing a Song Full of the Hope That the Present has Brought Us’

All of the genres of African American music have at their root songs like that, the essence being, as Stevie Wonder, wrote, “the joy inside our pain.” So Black music is not just music. It is our story, our history, our very strength.

During the Civil Rights Movement, which peaked 100 years after slavery ended, the people testified that it was the freedom songs – based on spirituals – that gave them the heart to march, face attack dogs, fire hoses, beatings, and shootouts with vigilantes.

The music reminded them that power was in the people. That music, our music, can do so again. We don’t have to accept the commodification of the products of our culture.

The power of those songs is showing a resurgence across the South as we battle again for the right to self-determination through the ballot box.

Those songs are the voices of our ancestors, voices forged in their blood, their sweat, their tears, joy and, above all, faith. Those songs, those prayers live in our blood and our very breath.

This Juneteenth, let us reclaim those holy voices expressed in Black music for ourselves. It is our birthright. It can neither be bought nor sold. No more. Never again.

Wanda Ravernell is the executive director of Omnira Institute, sponsor for 18 years of the Juneteenth Ritual of Remembrance and Oakland’s 11^th Annual Black-Eyed Pea Festival, which will take place on Sept. 12.