Hear Me Out: Descendants Of Slaves Don’t Need Reparations

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🗓️ 20 June 2023

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On today’s episode of Hear Me Out… an archaeology of grievances. In honor of the third Juneteenth being celebrated as a national holiday, it’s worth unpacking symbolic gestures like Juneteenth — and, as many states are finding out, like Reparations. The movement to compensate the descendants of slaves is gaining more traction than ever before, in many parts of the country. Could this be our chance to clear a massive, lingering blight on our nation’s history? Our guest today argues no. Podcast host and columnist Coleman Hughes joins us to make the case that compensating the victims of slavery was something we should’ve done long ago – and now, it’s too late for it to be anything other than a problem. If you have thoughts you want to share, or an idea for a topic we should tackle, you can now email the show: hearmeout@slate.com Podcast production by Maura Currie You can skip all the ads in Hear Me Out by joining Slate Plus. Sign up now at slate.com/hearmeoutplus for just $15 a month for your first three months. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Hear Me Out. I'm your host, Celeste Headley. We've just celebrated the
0:05.2	third June 10th since it was made a federal holiday in 2021. Adding June 19th to
0:11.1	the roster of federal holidays was a victory for many advocates. They'd been
0:14.3	pushing for this for a long time. And it's certainly an important day in our
0:17.9	country's history. On June 19th 1865, the last group of enslaved people in
0:23.4	Texas learned about the emancipation proclamation. We now know that slavery
0:28.0	did not end in practice at that time, and nor did the harm that Black Americans
0:33.9	continue to endure today. So when we talk about reparations, a more tangible
0:39.1	idea for writing these wrongs, is it possible that reparations is also an empty
0:43.8	gesture? Our guest today is, like me, a direct descendant of enslaved people. And
0:47.9	he testified before Congress in 2019 against reparations for those whose
0:52.7	ancestors were considered subhuman. He still thinks it's a bad idea.
0:57.4	What does this actually do in terms of helping Black people move forward? Or does
1:02.8	it merely a symptom of being deeply stuck in a past?
1:06.6	Colonist and podcast host, Coleman Hughes joined us on today's episode of Hear Me Out.
1:10.6	Stay with us.
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