海角大神

In reporting and editing on the Monitor鈥檚 ongoing聽reparations project, I鈥檝e been reminded repeatedly by sources that reparations are a process 鈥� institutional as well as personal. They are not a big-fix payoff with an endpoint. Most often, they are not financial at all, but an acknowledgment of, atonement for, and education about the cascade of damage sent rolling down the centuries by slavery.

As Monitor reporter Ali Martin聽reports in today鈥檚 Daily, California鈥檚 Reparations Task Force sent the legislature its recommendations yesterday, but that鈥檚 just the beginning; the state has to figure out what it can actually do.聽

鈥淲hen will this be finished?鈥� is a frequent question reparations advocates field from white people.聽

鈥淭here is no endpoint,鈥� answers Debby Irving, who wrote the book 鈥淲aking Up White: And Finding Myself in the Story of Race.鈥� The undergirding of reparations 鈥渋sn鈥檛 linear. It鈥檚 cyclical. ... Reparations is not a one-and-done. Who knows when there will be sustainable balance? But that鈥檚 going to take years and years.鈥�

When she first started to probe her own feelings about race, wrote Ms. Irving, 鈥淚 didn鈥檛 think I had a race, so I never thought to look within myself for answers. ... I thought white was the raceless race 鈥� just plain, normal, the one against which all others were measured.鈥�

She points to an 鈥渋nexplicable tension鈥� many white people admit to when considering race, a feeling of 鈥渟omething鈥檚 not right.鈥�

Addressing that feeling can often be the first order of business in the reparations process.