A basic definition
Reparations are concrete actions, financial and otherwise, intended to repair harm caused by historic and ongoing injustice.
In practice, reparations can include direct payments, land return, community investment, tuition support, legal advocacy, and sustained resource sharing. They are not charity. They are a form of repair and accountability.
Why this belongs in a grief course
In The Wild Edge of Sorrow, Francis Weller teaches that grief is not only personal, it is also communal and cultural. There is a kind of grief that arises from living in a world where harm is normalized, denied, or left unrepaired. Injustice generates grief.
I offer a Reparations Code as a small, practical response to that reality: an attempt to let money and access participate in repair rather than reinforcing the familiar pattern where some people carry disproportionate pain while others keep receiving disproportionate benefit.
Ancestral grief and the weight some people carry
Many people carry ancestral grief, grief that is not only about an individual loss, but about lineage: enslavement, forced displacement, stolen land, broken treaties, cultural erasure, family separation, and the ongoing impacts of racism and colonial violence.
If you carry that kind of grief, I want the door to this course to be more open, not because grief is “worse” or because anyone needs to prove hardship, but because the world has not distributed safety, wealth, or rest evenly.
Why I’m offering a Reparations Code
Most of my family came to the United States long after legal chattel slavery ended. The one family story I can find connected to the Civil War is a relative who was on the Union side and got sick before any battle.
Still, that detail doesn’t change the larger truth: as an American, I have benefited from systems built through enslaved labor and through the dispossession of Indigenous peoples. Even when our individual family stories feel “unconnected,” the nation’s story is the water we are all swimming in.
So this is one way I’m trying to honor what I have received at others’ expense and to practice a different relationship to that inheritance: honesty, grief, and repair.
Some ways we still benefit today
This is not an exhaustive list, but a few examples of how benefits persist across generations:
Benefits rooted in enslavement and its aftermath
- Wealth accumulation patterns: many families and institutions were able to build wealth through enslaved labor, while Black families were systematically blocked from wealth-building through laws, violence, and discrimination.
- American economic growth: forced labor in agriculture and infrastructure helped build regional and national wealth that still shapes opportunity today.
- Institutional foundations: universities, banks, insurance companies, and other institutions benefited directly or indirectly from slavery-era profits and policies.
Benefits rooted in Indigenous dispossession
- Land access: much of the land that became “available” to settlers and later generations became available through forced removal, broken treaties, and violence.
- Resource extraction: industries built on land and resources taken from Indigenous peoples continue to generate wealth.
- Cultural erasure as convenience: when a people’s presence, sovereignty, and history are ignored, it becomes easier for the dominant culture to live without discomfort and without accountability.
What this code is, and what it isn’t
This is:
- A voluntary tool for access and resource sharing.
- A small practice of repair inside the constraints of an online course.
- An acknowledgement that grief and injustice are linked.
This is not:
- A claim that a discount “solves” historical harm.
- A substitute for broader reparations efforts.
- A requirement that anyone disclose personal stories or justify need.
How to access it
Use the contact form to message me and I will add your email to the list of those that can use the reparations code. This is a trust based system, so I ask those who are not American Descendants of Slaves or Indigenous to not request access.
If you are an American Descendant of Slaves or Indigenous and don’t need the code, I invite you to use it and make an equivalent donation to a reparations-focused organization or an Indigenous-led initiative in your own community.
Closing note
I’m committed to doing this imperfectly but sincerely, staying honest about what grief asks of us, and letting our care take material form, not only emotional form.