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White Scholar Urges Reparations For Black Slave Descendants

Nathan Glover · Nov 12, 2015 · 4 min read

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Author Jennifer Harvey is touring churches in hopes of racial reconciliation.

In America, racism is still a very large and rampant issue. This is not only apparent in all the big and cosmopolitan cities, but in the small towns as well.

White Scholar Urges Reparations For Black Slave Decendants[/tweetthis]

Dear White Christians: For those still longing for racial reconciliation discusses how citizens should be moving away from a reconciliation paradigm. Instead, focus should now be shifted to a reparations paradigm.

A white scholar, by the name of Jennifer Harvey, is touring churches all over the United States and convincing Christians about how racial reconciliation would not be sufficient. Instead, measures need to be taken to ensure that the descendants of slaves are also receiving reparations.

The main sect which is finding this the most controversial and offensive is the group of mainline and white Protestants. This is because in her book, Jennifer writes about how the white people consider themselves to be superior amongst the black population. Even though it is written in Hebrew that if a sin is committed, it should be given back seven fold, it is not actually implemented in reality. According to Harvey, the whites are not truly sorry and also do not repent for the sins they have committed in the past. This is the main issue which is apparently dividing America in to two parts.

“Our differences are not only skin deep” – Jennifer Harvey[/tweetthis]

In a lecture hall which was packed to the brim with Duke Divinity School students, she openly addressed this issue. She said, “Our differences are not only skin deep. Our differences are the deepest and most complex manifestations of genealogies of harm done to some and perpetrated by others.”

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In her book, she talks about how the playing field should be level between the two parties. In their society, the white people have been found to be able to get away with almost anything. They are at least earning twenty times more than the black people. On the other hand, upon closer inspection, she found that the black people did not have any safety net under them. For her, what she means by reparations is not writing checks to every person. Instead, she wants to develop such a system so that everybody has a fair and equal chance.

However, she has resisted the urge to specify what kind of reparations should be made. This is because she wants this demand to come from the wounded parties. Men and women of color always had a very big impact on Jennifer’s life. That is why she urges them to come forward and embrace their “whiteness.”

The book, which was published in 2014, has led to many gatherings and speaking engagements taking place in various parts of the city. Over the course of the next year, she will address UCC wide meetings in the Midwest, a Lutheran congregation in Arkansas, social justice conferences in Georgia and New Mexico, college students Michigan and in Pennsylvania, United Methodist and Disciples of Christ seminarians in New Jersey and Oklahoma.

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