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Colleges
pushed
anew for
reparations
for
slavery,
racism
By
PHILIP
MARCELO
apnews.com
PROVIDENCE,
R.I. -
For
Brown
University
students,
the Ivy
League
college’s
next
step in
its
yearslong
quest to
atone
for its
legacy
of
slavery
is
clear:
Pay up.
Nearly
two
decades
after
the
Providence,
Rhode
Island,
institution
launched
its
much-lauded
reckoning,
undergraduate
students
this
spring
voted
overwhelmingly
for the
university
to
identify
the
descendants
of
slaves
that
worked
on
campus
and
begin
paying
them
reparations.
At
the
University
of
Georgia,
community
activists
want the
school
to
contribute
to
Athens’
efforts
to atone
for an
urban
renewal
project
that
destroyed
a Black
community
in the
1960s to
make way
for
college
dorms.
And
at
Georgetown
University
in
Washington,
D.C.,
there’s
growing
dissatisfaction
among
some
slave
descendants
about
the
Catholic
institution’s
pioneering
reparations
efforts.
Nearly a
year
after
the
killing
of
George
Floyd by
Minneapolis
police
sparked
the
latest
national
reckoning
on
racism,
student
and
community
activists
from New
England
to the
Deep
South
are
demanding
institutions
take
more
ambitious
steps to
atone
for past
sins —
from
colonial-era
slavery
to more
recent
campus
expansion
projects
that
have
pushed
out
entire
communities
of
color.
“There’s
been a
shift in
America,”
said
Jason
Carroll,
who was
student
council
president
during
the
spring
referendum
at Brown
University.
“We’re
at a
different
place.
Just a
few
years
ago, it
was
controversial
to say
‘Black
Lives
Matter.’”
The
22-year-old
Maryland
native,
who
graduated
this
month,
argues
Brown
has
taken
nearly
every
conceivable
step to
atone
for its
past —
save for
making
slave
descendants
whole.
The
school
released
an
exhaustive
historical
report
in 2006
and
followed
it up
with the
dedication
of a
slavery
memorial
in 2014,
among
other
efforts.
An
“Anti-Black
Racism”
task
force is
expected
to
deliver
recommendations
soon for
how the
school
can
further
promote
racial
equity.
But
university
spokesperson
Brian
Clark
stressed
it’s not
clear
whether
the
panel,
which
was
formed
following
last
summer’s
racial
unrest,
will
address
reparations.
“There’s
real
trauma
and pain
here,”
said
Carroll,
who is
descended
from
Carolina
slaves.
“This
shouldn’t
just be
an
academic
question.
There
are real
families
that
have
been
burdened
and
harmed
by this
— and
probably
still
are.”
Students
at
Harvard
are
similarly
calling
for
reparations
after
years of
headline-grabbing
announcements
from the
school,
including
dropping
the law
school
emblem,
which
was
derived
from the
crest of
a
slave-owning
family.
A panel
looking
at the
university’s
slave
legacy
plans to
release
its
findings
and
recommendations
later
this
year.
At
the
University
of
Chicago,
students
are
frustrated
that the
university
continues
to
distance
itself
from its
slavery
ties,
even as
it touts
efforts
to
advance
racial
equity
and
justice,
said
Caine
Jordan,
a
graduate
student
who
co-authored
a recent
report
on the
school’s
fraught
racial
history.
Last
year,
the
university
removed
markers
honoring
U.S.
Sen.
Stephen
Douglas,
but
maintained
the
Mississippi
slave
plantation
owner
donated
land to
an older
version
of the
school
and had
“ no
connection
” to the
current
one.
“All
of it
rings
hollow
if
you’re
founded
on Black
pain,
and
you’re
not
willing
to
acknowledge
that,”
Jordan
said.
A
university
spokesperson
declined
to
respond,
but said
University
President
Robert
Zimmer
will
provide
an
update
soon on
the
school’s
racial
equity
efforts.
In
Athens,
Georgia,
students
and
community
groups
complain
the
University
of
Georgia
has
largely
stayed
silent
on the
city’s
recent
efforts
to atone
for the
displacement
of some
50 Black
families
to make
way for
new
dorms
for the
school
in the
1960s.
Earlier
this
year,
Mayor
Kelly
Girtz
signed a
resolution
acknowledging
the
taking
of the
homes
under
eminent
domain,
and
setting
into
motion a
process
to
provide
“equitable
redress.”
Student
groups
rallied
Wednesday
to call
attention
to the
issue,
among
other
racial
justice
demands.
“UGA
has got
to do
more.
It’s got
to come
to the
table
and
acknowledge
what it
did,”
said
Hattie
Whitehead
Thomas,
a
72-year-old
Athens
resident
who grew
up in
the
destroyed
Linnentown
neighborhood.
The
university
responded
in part
that the
dorms
have
housed
tens of
thousands
of
students
“from
all
races
and
socioeconomic
backgrounds
—
providing
those
students
with the
transformational
benefits
of a
higher
education.”
In
Virginia,
a new
law
mandates
the
state’s
five
public
colleges
provide
“tangible
benefits”
for
slave
descendants.
Cauline
Yates, a
descendant
of one
of
Thomas
Jefferson’s
slaves,
said she
hopes
the law
compels
the
flagship
University
of
Virginia,
which
Jefferson
founded,
to
provide
academic
scholarships
and
economic
development
projects
for
descendants.
“It’s
time for
them to
stand up
and
honor
our
ancestors,”
said the
67-year-old
Charlottesville
resident,
who
works at
the
university
and
co-founded
a group
advocating
for
UVA’s
slave
descendants.
Brian
Coy, a
university
spokesperson,
said
it’s
premature
to say
how UVA
will
meet the
new
reparations
requirement.
But he
noted
the
school
has
already
met the
first
provision
of the
law — to
honor
and
identify
the
slaves —
with its
Memorial
to
Enslaved
Laborers
dedicated
last
month.
Back
at
Georgetown,
the
Jesuit
university’s
reparations
efforts
are
meant to
atone
for the
local
Jesuit
province
selling
around
272
slaves
to
settle
the
school’s
debts in
the
1800s.
Ruth
McBain,
a
Georgetown
spokesperson,
said the
university
hopes to
award
the
first
grants
from a
new
$400,000-a-year
fund for
community-based
projects
benefiting
slave
descendants
sometime
this
year,
and will
work
with the
campus
and
descendant
communities
on that
effort.
The
recent
launch
of a $1
billion
“ racial
reconciliation
”
foundation
by the
Jesuit
order
that
owns the
university
is
another
“important
step in
building
trust
and
partnership”
with the
descendant
community,
she
added.
But
one of
the main
concerns
among
descendants
and
students
is how
committed
funds
will be
spent —
and
whether
descendants
will
truly
have
adequate
say in
the
process
—
according
to
Shepard
Thomas,
who
graduated
from
Georgetown
last
year and
was
among
the
first to
benefit
from the
school’s
new
legacy
admission
status
for
descendants
of the
272.
“The
fear is
that the
university
will use
these
funds
for
their
own
purposes,”
the
23-year-old
New
Orleans
native
said.
“The
university
is
trying
to
control
the
narrative,
and
we’re
trying
to
prevent
that.”
Davarian
Baldwin,
an
American
studies
professor
at
Trinity
College
in
Hartford,
Connecticut,
isn’t
optimistic
many
colleges
will
ultimately
meet the
demands
of
students
and
activists,
even
with the
renewed
activism.
“Universities
will do
as
little
as they
can get
away
with,”
he said.
Indeed,
at
Brown,
university
leaders
have
long
touted
the 2007
launch
of an
endowment
to
benefit
the
Providence
public
school
system
as a key
part of
its
slavery
atonement.
But
the
university
only
fully
funded
its $10
million
pledge
to the
troubled,
state-run
school
district
last
year
after
the
mayor
and
others
complained.
Carroll
also
argues
the
effort,
while
laudable,
has
nothing
to do
with
compensating
Black
communities
for
slavery.
The
school
district,
after
all, is
overwhelmingly
Latino.
“That’s
not
really a
solution,”
he said.
“In a
way,
it’s
even
more
insulting.”
___
AP
Education
Writer
Collin
Binkley
in
Cambridge,
Massachusetts,
contributed
to this
story.
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