Personal Finance & Reparations
A few weeks ago I received an email from a reader asking that She Spends cover reparations in an upcoming newsletter.
The reader said they are “thinking through the challenging ways I relate to my own wealth, and how to balance the need for reparations and redistribution of wealth with my own financial goals.”
Let’s dive in, shall we? At a high level, reparations often come in the form of money and are paid to make amends for wrongdoing. Today, reparations come up when we talk about the United States’ long history of slavery, redlining, Jim Crow laws, and other discriminatory practices toward Black Americans.
Ta-Nehisi Coates made the case for reparations in a 2014 Atlantic article far better than I ever could. It’s a bit long but provides important context for this conversation. The link includes a voice recording of the article, so if you struggle to pay attention while you read, that may be a good option for you.
What Coates proposed in 2014 is important and necessary, yet still far from reality. So what can we do in the meantime?
This is something a Portland-based non-profit called Brown Hope tested in 2018. The group hosted regular Reparations Power Hours, providing food and drinks for Black, Brown, and Indigenous people. Brown Hope encouraged “racially privileged” people to give money to the organization, which would be distributed $10 at a time to the folks who attended the events.
Per the group’s website: “While we wait for Congress to do something, we call on folks to imagine what reparations in their own communities could look like.”
The group’s website doesn’t show that it has hosted any recent events. But the concept itself, of voluntary reparations, is something we should all be considering.
Poet and former Black Lives Matter organizer Didi Delgado addressed reparations in a 2019 Medium post, offering ways white folks who don’t have a lot of money can pitch in.
Her suggestions, laced with humor, include offering free childcare to Black friends, sharing rides to the grocery store for people without cars, or adding Black folks as beneficiaries to your life insurance plan or will.
What I like about her suggestions is that they go beyond just giving money. Delgado offers creative ways to share financial privilege, like adding someone as an authorized user to your credit card, with the goal of helping them build credit.
That said, it is important to think about how to build giving into a monthly budget. And I don’t just mean giving to nonprofits. Sending money to mutual aid groups, Venmoing someone in need, or supporting someone’s work via Patreon or other platforms are all important ways of redistributing wealth.
One of my favorite personal finance bloggers, Ride Free Fearless Money, has a workbook called Resilient Donations & Giving Plans that I have found enormously helpful as I think about giving back. It’s $4.99 and well worth the money spent.
The author, Hadassah Damien, acknowledges something I think is really important: there are so many resources out there for wealthy donors, but few for helping regular earners plan their giving. Her workbook aims to fill that gap.
When coming at monthly giving from a reparations perspective, it’s important to consider the organizations you give to. Try choosing a group that benefits Black people directly, whether that’s a nonprofit or one of your favorite Black creators on Patreon.
You should also think about using your time to advocate for those systemic changes mentioned above. Coates wrote about HR 40, a federal bill to commission a study on reparations, in 2014. That bill, which would simply explore reparations, hasn’t passed yet. Call and write your representatives in Congress and ask them to throw their support behind it.
I’d love to hear about other ways we can redistribute wealth and start working toward reparations. Send me an email, shoot us a DM on Instagram, and keep the conversation going in the She Spends Facebook Group. Also! If you want us to cover a topic like this in the future, send over an email.
