Repairing Our House
There’s a house on Sand Cherry Drive near Williamston where I used to live. It was a good sturdy home by all outward appearances. We kept it in good repair and looking nice. But one day while checking on the water pump in the crawlspace, my husband discovered that one of the main support beams was rotting. Apparently, over the years, rain water had collected down there and kept the dirt floor wet for long periods of time causing decay.
To fix the problem meant not only replacing the beam working in a four-foot-high space, but also lining the dirt floor with plastic and covering it with gravel to prevent further rotting of the support beams. Not an easy task, but well worth the time, money and effort. It was frightening to imagine what would have happened if my husband hadn’t discovered the rotting beam.
Old houses are known for having cracked, leaking and decaying foundations. It’s unpleasant going down into a damp basement, or a tight crawl space or a musty cellar to check on things, especially if all above appears to be okay. But anyone who is familiar with construction knows how vital a good, solid foundation is to the structure that it supports.
Isabelle Wilkerson, in her book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent, writes, America is an old house… The owner of an old house knows that whatever you are ignoring will never go away. Whatever is lurking will fester whether you choose to look or not….will gnaw at you until you gather the courage to face what you would rather not see.
The dehumanizing of African Americans with the practice of chattel slavery caused severe damage to the original foundation of our nation’s house. Since the Emancipation Proclamation, the cumulative effects of uncompensated slave labor, Southern slave-like systems of sharecropping, Jim Crow laws, redlining and other laws such as the G.I. Bill of 1944, which mostly excluded Blacks have continued the huge wealth inequities between Whites and Blacks. Black Americans are the only ethnic group who started life here with zero wealth, even though our nation’s wealth was built on slave labor and the abuse of Black bodies.
To this present day, Blacks continue to suffer inequities in employment, housing, education, health care and our legal system. Pew Charitable Trusts published this in May 2023…although a wave of changes to sentencing and corrections policies over the past two decades has helped lessen disparities in federal and state prisons, Black adults still were imprisoned in 2020 at five times the rate for White adults.
On top of that, a plethora of regulations have been enacted to deprive formerly incarcerated persons from being able to secure a decent place to live, a job, a loan, further education or adequate health care, so that even after serving sentences, Blacks are often denied the ability to gain wealth.
Further on in her book, Wilkerson writes, We…are like homeowners who inherited a house on a piece of land that is beautiful on the outside, but whose soil is unstable loam and rock, heaving and contracting over generations, cracks patched, but the deeper ruptures waved away for decades, centuries even. Many people may rightly say, “I had nothing to do with how this all started. I have nothing to do with the sins of the past. My ancestors…never owned slaves.” And, yes. Not one of us was here when this house was built. …but here we are, the current occupants of a property with stress cracks and bowed walls and fissures built into the foundation. We are the heirs to whatever is right or wrong with it.
No, I did not have anything to do with how this all started. But, as Whites living in America, my ancestors and I have benefited from the legacy of slavery in more ways than we will ever know. And so, I want to say I’m sorry for all that Black Americans have endured, the enslavement, the abuse, the deprivation and discrimination, and I want to help repair the foundation of our old house.
Since our nation’s leaders have been unable or unwilling to pass a Reparations bill, many communities and grassroots organizations across the country are taking it upon themselves to begin repairing this long-standing economic injustice. Called to be “repairers of the breach,” the Justice League of Greater Lansing working in collaboration with faith-based organizations and other community partners is helping repair wealth inequities for Blacks in our local communities.
From contributions that are being made, they have created an Endowment Fund, which is focused on supporting educational scholarships, homeownership and business startups. A few weeks ago, 10 college-bound Black students from Ingham, Eaton and Clinton counties, who are descendants of enslaved African Americans, were selected to receive the first disbursements from the Reparations Endowment Fund in the form of scholarships. You can read these students’ powerful essays and see their pictures on the Justice League’s website.
It is my hope that this momentous step and similar ones happening in other communities will create a ripple effect, setting in motion a true reckoning for all descendants of enslaved African Americans.
May it be so.
Vicki Potter