Please note: This transcript has been automatically generated.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: Black folks have been asking for reparations for almost as long as slavery existed. Most of us never got them, but that doesn’t mean that we never will. ‘Cause even if we don’t think we’re going to see it, it doesn’t alleviate us- Yeah … of the mandate to fight for a future that our children and our children’s children deserve.

I may not see it, but I’m damn sure not gonna go down as one of those people who didn’t fight for it anyway.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Hey, y’all. This week, on the 250th anniversary of this beautiful, complicated, yet exploitive experiment of a nation, we have a special treat for you, a live episode we recorded last week in, where else? Washington, DC. We were there at the headquarters of the global women’s organization, Vital Voices, and we were there to talk about reparations.

That’s a topic we got into two weeks ago with our friend Adam Serwer, and if you haven’t listened to that episode, definitely go do that. But this is the time for another all-star lineup. We’ll be sitting down with the incomparable Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the 1619 Project, for a special keynote talk.

But first, we set the stage with an illuminating, raucous, very silly, and very informative group chat with attorney, activist, Bravolebrity, and Senior Director of Legislative Affairs at Common Cause, Preston Mitchum, and Aria Florant, Co-founder and CEO of Liberation Ventures, which supports the modern work for reparations.

Let’s go. This is our first live show of the year. It’s absolutely not an accident that this gathering is happening this week. We are in a very special stretch of time between T- Juneteenth, and I know some of y’all was outside this weekend. Between Juneteenth, the holiday, of course, that celebrates Black liberation, and the 250th anniversary of the United States next week.

I keep saying this is a birthday party they don’t deserve, but we’ll talk about it. Um, so we’re thinking, obviously, about Black freedom and especially about the idea of reparations. I’m gonna ask you to show me a quick set of hands if you are able. Who here believes that there should be reparations for African Americans?

Raise your hands. Now, who here feels like they have a clear understanding of how reparations in America would work? Raise your hands for that. Okay. A few less. Last question. Who here believes that reparations for African Americans will happen in your lifetime? Hmm. Okay. All right. You know, there were fewer and fewer hands each time, but there were more hands on that, on that third question, um, than I anticipated.

And for those listening at home, what we just saw in this room speaks to something real, um, and what, what our friends at Liberation Ventures call a hope gap. So Aria and then Preston, when was the first time you ever thought about or heard of the idea of reparations in your own personal life?

Aria Florant: For me, I think it was the first time was actually not in the context of slavery, it was in the context of the Holocaust.

Mm. I studied abroad in Berlin when I was in college, and learned a lot about the work that Germany has done to repair after the Holocaust. Um, like spoiler, way more than the US. Yeah. Uh, in Germany, Holocaust education is required in every school. Mm. I don’t need to tell y’all what’s happening here. So, I think that was important for me, and like since then I’ve learned about how many communities all over the world have received reparations.

Reparations is not a Black specific term. Mm. It’s a tool that the United Nations defines as being critical for repairing after gross human rights violations, and in particular, often helping countries move out of authoritarian periods and into democracy.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Well, isn’t that timely to

Aria Florant: talk about? Isn’t that timely?

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: So- And isn’t it always interesting how everybody finds a coin for everybody but Black folks? Anyway.

Aria Florant: Exactly. Uh- Exactly. Somehow the word is only a problem when- Hmm … it’s applied to Black folks. Hmm.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Isn’t that fascinating? Preston, when’s the first time you thought about or heard about reparations?

Preston Mitchum: First, can I use privilege just to say, happy Pride Month, happy Juneteenth, and happy Pride- Happy Pride-teenth, period

teens. All the things. I am Black and queer together at all times, so I always wanna honor both of those things about me. Uh, you know what’s funny? I grew up in a household that, um, thankfully in many ways, uh, had a stepfather who was in the Nation of Islam, specifically the Fruit of Islam. Um, and so though I don’t think I appreciated it then, I was exhausted with learning about- Making Kwanzaa

Kwanzaa- … and everything grow- I’m like, “I have to make these presents every day?” Um, so I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but I do remember honestly forcibly reading, uh, words by Dr. John Henrik Clarke, and learning a lot about Haile Selassie, and just African leaders and obviously Black American leaders, and I just kept stumbling upon a word that I had no idea what it meant.

Yeah. But I grew up in a family that said, “Oh, you don’t know what it mean? What you gonna do? You gotta research it.”

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Okay.

Preston Mitchum: Go to something.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Somebody’s encyclopedia- Look … dictionary something. Don’t ask- On a shelf.

Preston Mitchum: Right.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Not online.

Preston Mitchum: In a shelf. Don’t Ask Jeeves.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Okay.

Preston Mitchum: Yeah. Right? That’s what encyclopedia is. Get, get Dewey

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: and his Decimal

Preston Mitchum: System.

Yeah. Right. Gotcha. And so, you know, I knew even then that other countries, other institutions, found their communities valuable enough to make sure that they were fully compensated for the abuse that they experienced by their government.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Mm. Amen. I, I remember, it wasn’t the first time I had heard about it, but it was the first time I internalized the idea, and I saw the book Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome on my mother’s desk by the, the seminal work by Dr.

Joy DeGruy. Yeah. And when I picked it up- Uh, and read it. I, I too had to consult the dictionary for a lot of things because I was young, but I’m glad that I did because it deposited the understanding that both epigenetically and systemically, those things are still with us. Yes. And therefore, the repair- Yes

is still necessary. Aria, you’re the co-founder of Liberation Ventures. You all focus on this issue. Can you quickly define reparations for us? I mean, I know you think of it as having four different forms. Mm-hmm. So quickly explain those for us.

Aria Florant: Mm-hmm. So the simplest definition is reparations are a process of a government making amends for harm.

Mm. The United Nations has a definition. We took that definition and applied it to the unique harm of chattel slavery and its legacies, and we define comprehensive reparations as four, four parts: reckoning, acknowledgement, accountability, and redress. So importantly, a lot of people think reparations is just about money.

It’s not. It’s comprehensive. Um, and- I still want my check, but yes … it looks like it includes money, let’s be clear. Um, but it is, it is more than that. It’s about really, like, systemic change and- Yeah … and transforming society. Um, and that’s, that’s also, I think, uh, been a distraction used by our opposition, like, making it feel like it’s just cash, um, is a way to actually dampen support for it.

Um, and when, and we know actually from our research that when people understand it as comprehensive, they are way more likely to support it, even when that, they know that it still includes the financial part.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: That’s so helpful, especially considering, as we talked with Adam Serwer last week on the episode, considering that a lot of people also just attach it to the institution of chattel slavery when there are, there were repeated harms to African Americans- Absolutely

by government systems and institutions- Absolutely … over multiple decades and generations. Yes. You know, there’s a lot here, and still, Preston, there’s a lot that we could be focusing on. I mean, it constantly feels like the world is on fire. We could be gathered here today talking about voter participation and protection, we could be talking about the midterm season, we could be talking about the Knicks.

But we’re here to talk about reparations, which is of course not a new idea by any means, but a lot of people, I think, think this is not a timely conversation. Um, I’m thinking of course of the, uh, the late representative John Conyers, who first introduced, um, H.R.40, the bill in Congress to study reparations.

That was 40 years ago Why is this an issue that’s important to keep talking about now in 2026, even with all that’s swirling around us?

Preston Mitchum: Oh, goodness. Um, yeah, shout out to the Knicks, ’cause I’m a bandwagon fan. Period. Yeah. Listen, many of us. I- H- Here’s the thing, I think that is unfortunately a false choice that many feel compelled to answer in a very specific way.

By that, I mean it is something that is directed to many of us to say you are focused on this thing when you should be focused on th- that. But it’s specifically done, again, by institutions, by government, by government actors to make it feel like this is the wrong thing to discuss. And guess what? We’ll never discuss it if it’s up to those actors.

And I think at the end of the day, the reason why reparations is such a critical conversation is because we’re still experiencing high rates of maternal mortality, especially for Black women, right? We’re still experiencing high rates of criminal penalties and criminal legal systems that are impacting, to the detriment, Black people.

Uh, we still are having conversations around a 17-year-old Black boy who was just found guilty by a non-Black jury, right? No one on the jury being Black. Reparations is a through line and a nucleus of a lot of that work, because to Aria’s point, we really need to discuss reparations and accountability and repair.

And so it is a false choice. It is one that we do not have to make, and is one that I certainly don’t encourage people to make.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Especially not this Freedom Summer.

Aria Florant: Also, we are seeing s- this government cause so much harm. That’s

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: right.

Aria Florant: We are gonna need to be able to repair it. The reparations movement is the movement that has been building the infrastructure to do that.

Yeah. And so I think it’s actually, like we are in such a harmful era, we are gonna need a reparative one. We are gonna have to usher that, that era in. We are gonna all have to work together. That is, all of us need that. That is not just about Black people. That is about living in a just, multiracial democracy that everyone- Yeah

actually benefits from. And so I think it’s also, like right now we are seeing so much harm that repair is the only way that we will get through, and it is, it is now.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: I just also think it’s important people realize that repair is literally the least we could demand. ‘Cause repair is not revenge, right? Yes.

Yeah. And if we actually wanted to talk about that, that would be a fundamentally different conversation. I often think about reparations in the context, because I’ve done so much work on it in my life, on, um, police violence, and I’m thinking about one-year-old Kaian Wiley right now, who was, um, shot by police, um, because the police were accusing his mother of stealing diapers from Walmart, a theft that has yet to be proven.

Um, and even if it were proven, a baby’s life is worth more than some Huggies. And I think about the families that whether or not they get accountability in the criminal court system, then find their way to the civil court system, and taxpayers are now paying millions of dollars into repair for this family that they are certainly deserving of, and none of that brings their child back.

So literally, repair is the least we could be demanding. It is the very least that is owed. For each of you, quickly, if you could snap your fingers and Black Americans had received reparations in all of the forms that was- were deser- are deserved, um, in our mailboxes, in our institutions, in our systems 20 years from now, Preston and then Aria, what is one thing each of you think would be different about our world?

Preston Mitchum: The thing I’m coming back to what would be different is the freedom to have abundant thinking. Yeah. Right? To know that our limitation should not be in existence, right? The limit does not exist. Sorry for quoting Mean Girls here. Anyways- But I mean that, right? Like, we have to be expansive, and I really hope that the conversation of reparations allow people to think more holistically and expansively about what we deserve and need as Black folks.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: That’s good. You go, Glen Coco.

Aria Florant: Aria? I wanna live in a world where, uh, we have an actual culture of repair where everyone, people, institutions, society, has the skill and the will to repair harm anytime it’s caused. I think that’s what the other side of reparations looks like. I often say I don’t wanna fight people to the other side of reparations, I wanna seduce them there.

Mm. And I’m like, if we knew, if we had the confidence that we could repair no matter what… Like, think about it just in your marriage, right? How important repair is. Think about how much more whole- You hear that, Reggie? How much more open- How much more free, how much more you- Yeah … you would feel if you were never trying to…

Never, like, afraid of stepping on a toe or afraid of saying this thing or a conflict- Mm … or whatever because we all– ’cause you knew that we were gonna get through it, and we were gonna get through it connected- Yeah … and close and together. I just think, like, that is, that is what this is all about. I love that.

I think that we… And I think that, you know, fundamentally- You have to dehumanize yourself in order to dehumanize another person. Yeah. And so that’s why I think this is about white people too. Mm-hmm. Because, like, I’ve… always go back to all the Baldwin quotes on this one. Like, the price of the, of the liberation of the whites is the liberation of the Blacks, you know?

And I think that all of us being able to live in a world where we know that we are doing what we know is right all the time- Yeah … like, that is the whole- most whole, most aligned, most, like, in integrity feeling that we don’t get to have right now, and that we would if we did it.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Absolutely want those worlds.

I also want a world where 20 years from now we will have seen 20 seasons of Summer House: Martha’s Vineyard. Um, Preston- Justice

Preston Mitchum: for Summer House: Martha’s Vineyard.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Preston, Aria, thank you for your visions. Thank you for your work, your brilliance. Thank you for kicking us off tonight, group chat besties.

Hell yeah. Let’s give them a round of applause.

Aria Florant: Thank you. Thanks for having us.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Now, was that not amazing? This is why the group chat is always live and lit. For those just joining, we’re listening in on a sit-down I had last week in front of a live audience in Washington, D.C. at the Vital Voices global headquarters.

Next, we’re going to listen in on part two, which is a conversation I had with the woman who has done more to put reparations and Black history on the map than almost anyone else in our modern times. It was an honor to have Nikole Hannah-Jones back on Undistracted. Here we go. Nikole Hannah-Jones won the Pulitzer Prize for The 1619 Project.

Her essay What Is Owed? made a very explicit case for reparations for the descendants of enslaved people. She is a MacArthur Fellow, a whole genius, y’all, and the Knight Chair in Race and Journalism at Howard University, where her Center for Journalism and Democracy is now funding student journalists’ research to build the case for reparations.

And I believe she was a pr- professor of one of the young women working here tonight, so your reach goes so incredibly far. Friends, let’s welcome Nikole Hannah-Jones.

My sister, my sister Nicole, welcome back to Undistracted.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: Hello. Thank you. Hey, y’all. Hey, everyone.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: So, I’ll start off the way that we start off all of our interviews. You get three words. How are you doing today?

Nikole Hannah-Jones: How am I doing? How am I feeling?

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Yeah, how you feeling today?

Nikole Hannah-Jones: Three words. Um, I already said tired.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Mm-hmm.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: Enraged.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Real.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: Determined.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Okay. Tired, enraged, and determined. That feels like it’s scaling up in the way that you want it to. Yeah. Um, what are you determined about right now?

Nikole Hannah-Jones: Um, I’m really just determined to, uh, bear witness in a way that will not allow the people who are doing what they’re doing in this country and across the globe to one day pretend they didn’t know.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Mm.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: So all of the people who are, uh, complicit in what’s happening, uh, will one day swear they marched against it. Uh-huh. And, uh, I’m, I’m here to bear witness and, and keep the toll.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Keep the toll. I remember going to Selma for the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday and being with Dr. Bernard Lafayette, the civil rights giant, God rest his soul.

Um, and he looked at, he looked at us and he said, “This weekend everybody- Mm-hmm … is claiming that they were there- That’s right … on Bloody Sunday.” ‘Cause everybody wants to be right next to President Obama, and they wanna walk the bridge, and they wanna be in all the pictures and have all the interviews. He said, “If everybody who says that they walked the Edmund Pettus Bridge that day actually walked the Edmund Pettus Bridge, that would not have been Bloody Sunday.

That would’ve been the day the bridge collapsed.” Oof.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: Okay.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: And it just stuck with me so clearly because everybody wants to lay claim to righteousness after it’s too late to have participated. You- When it

Nikole Hannah-Jones: doesn’t cost you anything.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: When it doesn’t cost you anything.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: That’s the, that’s the thing is it’s, it’s easy, um, to look backwards and have courage- Mm-hmm

when courage is not really required.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Yeah. And speaking of the cost, though, when you wrote What Is Owed for The New York Times in 2020, you argue that Black individuals cannot by themselves close the racial wealth gap in this country. Speaking again of what the cost is, you said, quote, “Not marrying, not getting educated, not saving more, not owning a home can mitigate 400 years of racial plundering.”

Explain the generational impact you were trying to really convey.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: Reparations does, according to, uh, the United Nation, have several components. But frankly, I’m most interested in cash. And I say that because that’s the thing that we least want to talk about. We feel like somehow if we say that, uh, financial repair is a foremost part of reparations, that that almost makes it feel dirty- Mm-hmm

or less pure. Um, but we need to understand that slavery was an economic system. Mm-hmm. Slavery was not about a bunch of racist people who just decided to transport, uh, 13 million Africans across the Atlantic because they just didn’t like Africans. Yeah. Right? It was created to extract profit from the stolen labor of our ancestors.

Uh, the, the period, the 100-year period of racial apartheid was a system of economic exploitation to try to keep p- Black Americans in as economically exploitable as a state as possible, as close to slavery. And so of course the repair has to revolve around financial repair. The very first time I, I, uh, heard of the concept of reparations for Black Americans was in 2000 when I read, uh, Randall Kennedy’s The Debt.

Randall Robinson, my bad. So when I, when I Was thinking though about what are all of the arguments- Mm-hmm … against reparations, because I’m a journalist, so my job is narrative. Yeah. Uh, as my, as my Howard student knows, I always say in class that narrative drives policy. If you want people to support policy, you have to be able to shape the narrative- That’s right

that will convince people to support that policy. And the narrative against reparations has always been Black people are irresponsible. Mm-hmm. So, it’s, one, we’re not deserving of reparations, but two, we’re irresponsible, that we are, um, uh, the cause of the racial, racial wealth gap is we simply don’t wanna work hard- Yeah

that we simply don’t wanna get a education- We just wanna buy Jordans and

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: get passports, yeah … that we

Nikole Hannah-Jones: just… Right. And first of all, so what? Yeah. Right? Like, freedom is I spend my money how I want to. But it’s also just not true. Mm. So the idea that if we just got married and stopped having children out of wedlock and bought a home, and did all the things that white Americans do, we would close the racial wealth gap.

So, I wanted to center the argument in data. Right? In research which shows that, one, we save m- we save a higher percentage of our income, we just have less income to save. Mm. That even when we get married, we actually have less wealth than unwed white Americans. Mm. That our homes don’t appreciate, so home ownership does not close the racial wealth gap for us.

That there’s actually nothing we can do on our own, uh, to undo, uh, 400 years of a headstart that, that white Americans and really other groups have had. So, if you’re going to dispel a narrative around why we don’t deserve it, it’s easily done with facts. Yeah. And I wanted to drive directly into that. So, for me, when I was constructing the argument in What Is Owed, I was thinking of what is everything I’ve ever heard, what is every argument I’ve ever heard against reparations, and I’m gonna answer that directly.

Mm-hmm. So sometimes I’m writing to us. Mm. But in this case, I was explicitly not writing to us. I was explicitly writing to all of those, um, who try to foster a narrative of Black pathology. Mm-hmm. When really, the pathology was those who thought that they had a right to enslave people and force them to work for profit.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Yeah. It’s interesting, ’cause you put out that piece in 2020- Mm-hmm … and the environment was very different than it is right here in 2026. What was the reception like to that story when it came out? Did it, did the reception affect your belief in the possibility of reparations in America? Do you feel like we were moving forward?

Nikole Hannah-Jones: Yeah, man. Man, man, man.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Memories. Whew.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: That was not a good time in America, but damn, we would love to go back to that time right now, right? Oh, wow. So I, you know, I was actually, um, trying to finish The 1619 Project. Mm-hmm. We had started working on The 1619 Project book. I was working on The 1619 Project book, uh, when we saw the racial pr- justice protests following, uh, the murder of George Floyd.

And I just remember in that moment thinking that our asks were too small. Mm. Right? That- Criminal justice reform was very important, yes. Juneteenth holiday, great. Uh, definitely take down statues to, you know, Confederates and traitors, absolutely. But we weren’t asking for enough. Mm. Like, if in that moment, if we had, um, large numbers of, uh, white Americans and other Americans who are not Black finally paying attention to racial justice…

I looked at the polling, and at the height of, uh, that summer, almost 45% of re- of self-identified Republicans believed that racism was a primary obstacle to Black advancement. Mm. Now, that is an astounding figure. Mm-hmm. Almost half of Republicans, right? Um, this is the party, uh, or used to be the party of individual responsibility-

or at least that’s what they said. Um, not a party known for its racial sympathies, and yet they had been convinced, uh, that racism was an obstacle. So, I just thought, in that moment- Yeah … you have to push for the thing. Like, you have to push for the real thing, not around the edges of it. Now, looking back, all we got out of that summer- Mm.

was Juneteenth.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Mm.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: Like, literally.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: No, no, no. Wait. We had some members of Congress put on Kente cloth and kneel. Don’t forget that.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: All we got out of that summer.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Okay. I just wanted us to be clear. Uh-huh.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: Was Juneteenth, right? So, it did feel like the issue… You know, Ta-Nehisi Coates, I would say in the modern era, right, was the one who first put reparations kind of back on the mainstream- Yeah

map. And the case for reparations. And then you saw… Mm-hmm. Right. You saw all of these, um, different organizing groups, groups who had been working on it for a long time, um, but also newer groups. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris actually talked about the issue of reparations. Reparations was an issue for the first time in my lifetime, and probably the first time ever, that you could ask a mainstream political candidate a question about it.

Yeah. So now, anybody who knows me know I, I am not an optimistic person about anything in America. I was not convinced that suddenly we were going to get reparations, but it did seem like that work, that n- work on narrative change and this moment of a so-called reckoning had opened the door for a serious conversation- Mm-hmm

on reparations in a way that it never had. Uh, you started seeing for the first time philanthropy. Mm. You know, the MacArthur Foundation, other foundations actually funding reparations work, which as far as I know had never happened. But then we all knew, I mean, I, I know I don’t have to tell you this- No … or probably anybody in this room, that the window to push-

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Mm

Nikole Hannah-Jones: was going to be very short.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Limited. Yeah.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: We knew that if you had, um, this reckoning, that there was going to be a counter reckoning, and that it was going to come swiftly- Yeah … and that the people who wanted that reckoning have always been able to enact policy far, far quicker- Mm … than, than we, uh, have been able to.

So I felt in that moment we had to push, and it did feel like we had the potential, and of course we did see for the first time, uh, some successful reparations efforts- Yeah … uh, being passed at the, at the local level, and for the first time, states seriously taking up the issue of reparations, right?

California started a reparations commission and became the first. Illinois, New- uh, New York. Um, so there was possibility where there had not felt like there was before.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: So that’s 2020. Fast-forward from there. In 2022, you speak at the United Nations General Assembly during a commemoration of the transatlantic slave trade.

And when we think about this narrative work, it’s one thing to talk about it in America, it’s another thing to have this conversation globally. ‘Cause you pointed out that it seems to be easier for the US to talk, uh, about slavery that happens elsewhere than what has happened here, and clearly this current administration is hell-bent on erasing those wrongs from libraries and schools and all of our recollection.

I think they wanna just put up that little Men In Black thing and ac- like, blanket in front of our eyes and make us think that these things that we know happened in our bodies never happened. So before we can get to this bill about establishing a congressional commission to study reparations in the US, does it seem to you like we need something almost potentially borrowing from the, the South Africa model of a, of a truth and reconciliation process to really establish a common sense of reality?

‘Cause if I’m telling you it’s 12:00 and you’re telling me it’s 2:00, like, we can’t even get the conversation started. Um, i- is there… is that necessary to kind of create a moral foundation to repair?

Good luck with that.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: You know, I mean, yeah, I, I, I think I, I think a fundamental issue, I mean, this is how we get what we get in the White House right now, is, uh, we have a determination not to tell the truth about our country, right? A, a willful desire to remain ignorant. I mean, just look at the discourse around Juneteenth.

Mm. I mean, it’s actually… The, the fact that large numbers of white Americans cannot even be glad that slavery ended- Yeah … right? Juneteenth is an Emancipation Day holiday. It is when America’s liberated from slavery. It’s not a Black holiday. It is a holiday when America- Mm … can celebrate that it liberated itself from slavery.

Um, so to me, the idea that we could ever really even have a truth and reconciliation committee here- Mm … um, I mean, this is our, our problem. You can look at the blowback against the 1619 Project, you can look at the, the anti-critical race theory propaganda campaigns, you can look at the book bans, you can look at the way that they’re banning our history at the state and federal level to know that this country- Mm

feels that it will crumble under the weight of the truth.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Mm.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: It actively, um, cannot tell itself the truth. And I always think the Germany example is an interesting example, because Germany paid reparations because there were no Jewish people left in Germany. Mm. We… There was a… There was… Almost all the entire Jewish population in Germany had either been murdered- Yeah

or expelled.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Expelled, yeah.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: And so you can have reconciliation when you don’t have to look every day- At the people … at the people that you visited these crimes upon.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: My God. Mm.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: But we’re right here in the country that did this to our ancestors. Slavery predates the founding- America … of our country by 150 years.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Yeah.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: You could never knock down all the statues to enslavers, or you have to remove all the monuments on the Mall in Washington.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Mm.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: Right? Like, we cannot pretend that that history is not who we are, because it is literally in the very fabric of who we are. And so that’s why we struggle here with the issue of reparations more so than other places, because if we acknowledge the foundation of what we’re built upon- Yeah

then we have to acknowledge the entire way we’ve been taught to think about this country is a lie. And paying reparations is an admission of the crime, but it’s not an admission of the crime of a handful of bad apples or a few years of bad policy. Yeah. It is the crime of the entire existence of the United States.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Mm.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: That’s what paying reparations will do, and that is why we see, uh, such a visceral fight against it.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: I mean, the pattern of history shows us, like you said, that this was always going to be the response to eras of progress, or at the very least, eras of awareness and narrative shift. Sometimes I think spiritually, perhaps I hope, rather- That the depth of this blowback is like the, these are like the last bre- gasping breaths of white supremacy.

I, I really hope. I know you’re like, “Yeah, girl, whatever.” Uh, this, this is what I be praying about, okay? This is what I be talking to, to Black Jesus about. But, but I also have been thinking about, uh, shared struggle and how much that may either bring people around to this conversation or push them further away from it.

I mean, today Black people are being re-disenfranchised by this administration because they are intentionally, as you’ve said so many times, undoing every single, uh, point of progress that occurred during the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Power and Black Arts Movement surgically, right, by design. And then, of course, a whole lot of non-Black Americans are starting to realize that the attacks on us strip away their rights, too, and their class mobility, right?

‘Cause all of those promises about lower, uh, grocery prices have not been kept. So how do you think we can approach keeping racial reparations for African Americans on the agenda in an environment and a foreseeable future where everyone is feeling systematically threatened and screwed over?

Nikole Hannah-Jones: Um, so I know y’all, y’all need some hope.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: From somewhere, find it. It’s under the- You probably- … couch cushion or-

Nikole Hannah-Jones: You probably need to bring- In your pocket … the other panelists back up for that, but, um- Because, okay, so this is what I’ll say. But this is honest. This is what I’ll say. Yeah. This is what I’ll say. Um, we clearly know who benefits from, uh, sowing the belief that if Black Americans, um, get equality, that that means other people are losing out on something.

Right. And I actually address this in What Is Old, right? Because again, this is at the pandemic. So briefly, y’all remember the pandemic? Y’all remember that? Briefly during the pandemic, we had universal healthcare.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Mm.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: Right? Anybody who needed a COVID shot could show up and get that COVID shot. You didn’t need ID or a dollar.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Mm.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: We briefly, uh, had universal housing. You could not evict people simply because they couldn’t pay because they weren’t working during COVID. Mm-hmm. And we had universal income- Mm … briefly, right? We paid people to stay home. Uh, my cousin Shamir, who had been working since she was 15 years old, made the most money.

She, she called me one day and was like, “I saved $1,000 for the first time in my life.”

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Wow.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: Because she was making more money staying at home during COVID than she’d ever made working 40 hours a week. Wow. Right? And so we know that the society has the ability to take care of all of its citizens. Yeah. That none of us have to suffer in this country for lack of healthcare, the ability to earn a livable wage, the ability to be housed, if we don’t want to.

Mm-hmm. So I always have believed that the argument about reparations has to go hand in hand, right? People will be like, “Well, what about poor white people?” I want poor white people to live well, too.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Yeah. Yeah.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: We can both have reparations, and we can take care with a baseline standard of living for all of our citizens.

So I do think we have to pair that argument. What I don’t want, though, is what always happens, is Black people are told we need to be silent- Mm-hmm … about our particular and specific history and disadvantage in order to advance a class-based movement, but class in this country is racialized. That’s

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: right.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: And descendants of slavery are at the bottom of that class system. And so we also know that just class-based programs will never close the racial wealth gap. Mm. They will never grant equality for Black Americans. So I think there are ways to pair this message. People always thought there was gonna be a gotcha with me.

Mm-hmm. I’m like, “I don’t want anybody to suffer.”

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Yeah.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: I’ll take care of everybody.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Yeah.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: But taking care of us requires more than taking care of someone who hasn’t, uh, been plundered for, you know, whose, whose people haven’t been plundered for 400 years. Yeah. Uh, so I think we have to do both, but we also have to understand there’s a reason that class-based movements in this country have never succeeded long term.

They never have. Every time we’ve had class-based movements, they’re always broken apart by the race wedge. Mm-hmm.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Mm-hmm.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: That is why Trump runs on race.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Yeah.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: He talked about economics, but he ran on race. So even though, folks, gas prices are high, nobody’s talking about eggs anymore because they’re happy that he’s deporting brown people- Yeah

and putting Black people back in their place.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Yeah.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: And this is what has killed every class-based movement that we’ve ever attempted. You have to understand that since the Bacon’s Rebellion, the Bacon Rebellion, right? Teach now. The white elites understood that our material interests of those on the bottom, which are most of us, should align us, but if we’re aligned, then there’s way more of us, and we have power.

And so they said, “No, no, no. We’re gonna give white people something money can’t buy.” Mm. “We’re gonna give them a racial status.” And so when we speak and we think to ourselves, “Well, uh, white Americans are voting against their own economic interests,” we don’t understand that the interest in itself is whiteness.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Yeah.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: That is the interest As, as

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: constructed.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: Yeah And so if I have that, even though I might be struggling too, I still have a higher status than you are. Mm. So I don’t know how we undo that, because we’re all indoctrinated into those same systems. Mm. And so what we’re told, I mean, this, this was the Bernie Sanders, right, campaign, right?

What we’re told is we just have to ignore race, and we can build movements off of that. It doesn’t work, and what that does, it’s predicated on us always being behind. I also guess I wouldn’t be a journalist if I didn’t know the possibility exists that you can inform people, that you can frame issues in a way that can transform how people think about things.

Yeah. I do think that that’s possible, um, doesn’t mean I think it’s probable.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Well, speaking of, you spoke to some of the places where not only has it been possible, it has happened, right? At the state level, at the local level, we’ve seen some reparations efforts. I’m also thinking about Tulsa. I was actually just in Tulsa, um, for, gosh, the 105th commemoration of the Greenwood Massacre, and I’m sitting in a room with Mother Randle, who is 111 years old, is the, uh, last known survivor of the massacre on Black Wall Street, uh, in Greenwood, uh, in the Greenwood district in Tulsa.

And, um, the last time I was in Tulsa, Mother Fletcher was alive, and she has since passed. And I’m looking at this woman, and I’m like, are, are they just trying to, to wait her out? Yeah. Right? Like, you just are waiting for her to die so that there’s no clear claim, right? People can say, “Well, the descendants don’t deserve anything,” but she’s got a very clear claim.

Um, and yet the mayor of Tulsa, the Black mayor of Tulsa, is working on creating a $105 million reparations fund of not publicly raised capital, but privately raised capital for the descendants of this massacre in which hundreds of people were killed and $40 million worth of property, um, damage was, uh, done.

Uh, they’ve been quick to invest in things like a Greenwood museum and these moments of commemoration to, uh, try to atone and acknowledge what happened, but this has been famously slow. Our friend Damario Solomon-Simmons, the lawyer for these families, has been working on this for a very, very long time, and no one in government has been held accountable.

But I’m curious if you feel like private funds are potentially a path forward for some type of repair, or does that take us down the wrong path and, um, allow government to, to acquiesce their responsibility?

Nikole Hannah-Jones: I have so many thoughts. Um So one, uh, you’re absolutely right that they’re, that they’re waiting for the very last descendant, uh, to die.

Um, we know that the, one of the primary arguments against reparations is no one is alive who was enslaved. Right. Now, clearly reparations is not just for slavery. Uh, it is also for the afterlife of slavery. Uh, Jim Crow was visited upon the descendants of slavery. That’s right. And the harm has never actually stopped.

Like, show me when the harm has stopped. It has not. Um, but Oklahoma, of course, had its own commission.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Mm-hmm.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: Its own state commission, which studied the issue and recommended reparations, and it was shelved. So, the state acknowledged what it did and still would not pay. Um, so I, I think I know that the cause of reparations has to be about the state, and by the state I mean local, state, federal- Mm-hmm

right? By government paying reparations, right? Like, the repair has to be on scale. And here’s the problem with private institutions. One, it’s undemocratic.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Mm.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: They get to decide how they’re gonna spend the money and how they’re gonna make repair. Yeah. And when they decide they wanna build a museum, because again, the discomfort with cash payments, with actually investing financially into communities where finances were extracted, is instead we’ll build a memorial because we feel good about that.

We feel that’s the right way to spend money. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Um, that’s not what a poor community needs. Yeah. Yes, we, we do need that acknowledgement, but when you allow private entities, then they get to decide. This is the problem with philanthropy in general. Mm-hmm. Right? They get

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: to set the agenda.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: To me, pay your taxes.

We don’t need philanthropy- Mm … for one. Mm. Right? But philanthropy wants to determine what they think is the right course, and the people don’t get to decide. Yeah. But if we have government reparations, then that has to be more democratic, and people can determine, uh, what they believe is the best way to have repair.

Think about what the money for that museum, and I love museums, I mean, I’m, I’m a history nerd. Think about what that money could have done-

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Mm-hmm …

Nikole Hannah-Jones: in direct support to that devastated community that you go into when you visit that glossy museum.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Yeah.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: But you have to drive through-

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Yeah …

Nikole Hannah-Jones: right, all the dilapidatedness that has been passed on for generations.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Mm-hmm.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: So I, I think we, we have to not be distracted. Oh. We have to be undistracted. Perhaps we

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: should say undistracted. Yeah, that’s a great idea.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: But I also, I, I also don’t wanna condemn someone who said, “I’ve tried every pathway through the government-

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: I’ve tried and it

Nikole Hannah-Jones: didn’t… Yeah … and it’s just not happening, and I have a way to alleviate suffering in my community- Yeah

I’m going to try.” So again, I think we have to be able to have complicated conversations. Absolutely. And I, I do tend to believe that every time there is some victory, uh, around the issue of reparations, you know, Evanston, it’s not the way I would do reparations, but it is a form of reparations. Mm. Uh, that any time there’s a victory there, it just makes reparations more of a possibility of reality.

Yeah. That any time there’s a small victory, you can no longer have the argument that it can’t be done. That’s

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: right.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: That there’s no way, nowhere that will support it, and there’s no way to do it. So I do think that those small victories do matter.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: That’s right, and in, in the organizing space we call that consolidating the wins.

Mm. Right? It keeps people encouraged. It gives people a model. It helps us move forward. Before we close this up, I, I know that you don’t consider yourself a hope dealer, but- There’s a lot of hope that I think a lot of us get from you, watching how you have navigated the trolls and the naysayers of all of your work, but particularly The 1619 Project, because they feel so threatened by it.

They feel threatened by the truth that you were talking about, where they are afraid everything’s gonna crumble. Um, there have been federal-level attempts to ban The 1619 Project from it, from curriculum. There have been 22 state-level bills, some of which have passed, uh, aiming to prevent the project and others that are deemed similar from being taught.

And now we’re seeing the federal government attempt to interfere with the legality of the Evanston, Illinois reparations program that you just referred to, that gives out up to $25,000 per person for local housing discrimination. This is a room full of folks who have been building this reparations movement, um, for years.

Do you have personal advice for them and the folks listening about navigating the blowback to the truthful work that they are doing, um, as they continue to push for reparations, as we all do?

Nikole Hannah-Jones: Don’t argue with people on X. Um-

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Lesson number one: don’t feed the

Nikole Hannah-Jones: trolls. A lesson that took me a very long time-

uh, to learn, but that I did eventually learn. Ah, yeah,

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: the Ida B. Wells era. We remember.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: Uh… Not my best moment. Um… But-

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Delicious nonetheless, but yes, we get

Nikole Hannah-Jones: it I mean, I enjoyed it at the time- … but in hindsight. Um, I, you know, I, I was thinking about how not to be, you know, completely, um, unhopeful, uh, in this moment, hopeless, especially with folks who…

I mean, you have to, uh, have some ability to conceive- Yeah … of a society, uh, that doesn’t exist and that has never existed to do the work, I think, that any of us are doing. And so since we are, uh, right at the, the cusp of celebrating the 250th anniversary, um, of the founding, founding of this nation, I want to remind us of what we come from- Mm

right, of what, what we’re made of. Because even as hopeless as I often feel, I know I come from a people who had to believe that the impossible could be made manifest. Yeah. My entire life, the lives of everyone in this room, is a product of hope beyond despair. Um, and so in 1852, when, uh, Frederick Douglass gets asked to deliver, of course, his famous oratory, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Yeah.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: Now, this is 1852. Of course, Frederick Douglass is a fugitive from slavery. Uh, he is on the run, and yet he is out, right, fighting the abolitionist cause- Right … in public, and advertising where he’s gonna be.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Mm-hmm. Bold, ’cause I don’t even do that on Instagram Stories.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: Right. Okay. When folks thought it was cute a few years ago to say, “I am not my ancestor,” I was like, “You are absolutely right.”

You are absolutely right. You are absolutely right. Little punk. Uh-huh. You are not. Right. So he won’t go on the 4th of July, right? If you know the story, he refuses to give the speech on the 4th of July because he is offended. Like, “How dare you ask me to come talk about your independence when 4 million of my people are in the worst bondage, uh, in, in the history of the world?”

So he gives the speech, um, What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July, and 13 years later, slavery will fall.

Aria Florant: Mm.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: Now, there would be no reason, no historical reason, no, uh, logical reason to believe in 1852 that slavery could fall in 13 years.

Aria Florant: Mm.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: We were almost at the height- Mm … of slavery in the United States, and yet it did.

And he had to believe, and all of the abolitionists who fought had to believe that it could happen- Yeah … for it to happen. Um, the Emancipation Proclamation was because so many enslaved people were running away, that they forced Lincoln’s hand to use emancipation, uh, as a tool of war.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Yeah.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: He didn’t just one day say, “Maybe I should free the people that I didn’t wanna get into the war to free.”

Mm. So while I don’t know if we will see reparations in our lifetime or not, the very first person, uh, to get reparations was, uh, Belinda Sutton in the 1780s when she sued her former master. The very first person to technically get what we call actual reparations, um, was a woman named Henrietta Wood, who sued her former master for recapturing her and selling her back into slavery, and she won that suit in 1870.

Mm. Callie House was fighting for reparations, uh, for, uh, an ex-slave pension, uh, for all of those who spent their whole life working for free, and she was arrested for that, right? Mm. She ended up serving, uh, federal time for the audacity to call for reparations. So Black folks have been asking for reparations for almost as long as slavery existed.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Mm.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: Most of us never got them, but that doesn’t mean that we never will. Mm. So we do have to believe. We do know that we come from people who believe- That’s right … the impossible could be made manifest. On my dark days, I’m like, “Never.”

Aria Florant: Mm.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: But on my, my brighter days, I know it’s possible. Mm. And I know if anybody can do it-

Aria Florant: Yeah

Nikole Hannah-Jones: if anybody can do it, it’s us. ‘Cause even if we don’t think we’re going to see it, it doesn’t alleviate us- Yeah … of the mandate to fight for a future that our children and our children’s children deserve. That’s right. And that’s what motivates me. I may not see it, but I’m damn sure not gonna go down as one of those people who didn’t fight for it anyway.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: I know, that’s right.

So, on that note, let me ask these questions again. By a show of hands, who here believes there should be reparations for African Americans? Now, who here feels they have a clear understanding now of how reparations in America would work? And lastly, who here believes that reparations for African Americans will happen in our lifetime?

Well, look at that. You, you ought to close the hope gap a little bit- Yeah … Nikole Hannah-Jones. Figure you- In

Nikole Hannah-Jones: spite of myself,

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: yes. In spite of yourself. But let me tell you this. The first time we had you on the podcast, I think it was season one, and you were so kind to come on to the, our little fledgling ship, and I was feeling so distraught and downtrodden.

I mean, we… Or actually it was the second season because we started during COVID. Yeah. Um, and the second season, you know, this was when everybody remembered Black people exist- Yeah … and they wanted to fund us- … and advertise. That’s right. Yeah, girl. Come on, do the podcast. But I was watching the tide turn.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: Yeah.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: Right? And I was remembering how unpopular Dr. King was on the day of his assassination versus how he is discussed by people who would’ve killed him- Yes … back then, now.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: Yes.

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: And knowing that history was going to turn the corner like it always does, and feeling so frustrated, not just by the state of this country, but by this country, period.

We had a conversation about 1619 Project, we had a conversation about the state of things, and I asked you a final question. I don’t remember exactly how I phrased it, but it was very clear that I was not feeling optimistic or hopeful, um, and that I was feeling shame- Mm … about our circumstances. And you actually gave me a whole lot of hope that day that I’ve held onto because you reminded me that the flag whose red stripes run with my ancestors’ blood is worth owning and holding onto, not because of how this country was founded, but because of who they were and who we are- Mm

and what we are capable of. That’s right. And you did that for us tonight, too. So, I wanna thank you for being here. Let’s thank Nikole Hannah-Jones- Thank

Nikole Hannah-Jones: you, Brittany …

Brittany Packnett Cunnigham: for having this conversation with us here at Undistracted.

And before we go, I’d love to ask the reparations organizers in the room to stand so that we can properly thank you for your work. Stand up on your feet. You’re here

Biggest applause of the night, as deserved. Thank you so much for your beautiful work. And thank you to all of you beautiful people for coming out for our live show. I’m Brittany Packnett Cunningham. Let’s go get free.

Our executive producers are Cindi Leive and myself, Brittany Packnett Cunningham.

Our producer at Collective Media is Douglas Forte with supervising producer Ryan Jones.

Our supervising producer at The Meteor is Taylor Hosking and artwork is by Bianca Alvarez.

This episode was produced with support from Liberation Ventures and The Meteor Fund.

You can follow me on all social media @mspackyetti and our incredible team @themeteor.