Narrative North Star

It’s true.
‍In this new world, Black lives not only matter, they are also embraced, welcomed, cherished, celebrated, and deeply loved. 

It’s peaceful here; Black people can inhale deeply.

Exhale freely.

When we wake in the morning, money is not on our mind. Surprise! Stranger things have happened.

No one has just one home because we’ve formed homes in our relationships, in each other.

There’s a selflessness in the air—gifting is the standard, and selling is the oddity.

For some reason, everything tastes sweeter.

Black dance, song, and art are cherished and properly admired.

In a way, it feels like we’ve pushed the reset button. Black minds, hearts, and souls have been restored.

We’ve finally figured out how to distribute the abundance of resources we’ve always had.

We didn't just tell the truth; we chose to go down a new path and hold it close forever.

Land has been returned. Leaves and trees still fall, but no one claims them as their own.

If harm occurs, we don't banish; we embrace. Accountability as a value and practice runs through us.

Caring is neither womanly nor manly—we've abandoned that concept. We care for all at all times.

Anti-blackness does not exist here. Truly. Imagine that

In fact, we’ve unraveled our construction of race and finally concluded it’s much easier to love than to hate.

Yes, we are rich with Black joy here. Stranger things have happened!

Of course, there was struggle, tension, and conflict along the way—but our elders and ancestors warned us there would be.

Guided by their wisdom, we persevered, and through that struggle, we,

The collective we, 

Up from the ground,

Repaired and transformed the world. 

There are no utopias. But damn, it feels good to be here.

Well, well, well. It seems we finally found our way.

Narrative Area of Opportunity

• Cycle-Breaking World-Making: A framing that offers the story of reparations as a transformative process that not only creates a pro-Black world but dismantles oppressive systems and roots out anti-Blackness. 
• Becoming Reparationists: A framing that offers an invitation to become a person wholly devoted to the repair, advancement, and liberation of Black people around the world. 
• Black History In Your Face!: A framing that offers an unapologetic centering of Black visions and visionaries of Black radical thought that stretch beyond the confinements of our current sanitized history. 
• Reparations Unlocking Democracy: A framing that offers reparations as a missing element in the vision of a functioning, inclusive, multiracial democracy.
• Repair In Practice: A framing that explores how we can repair harm at the individual, organizational, and institutional levels and how it connects to the larger call for reparations.
• Radical Solidarity: A framing that details the interconnected nature of reparations and Black liberation to other oppressed communities and transformative social movements. 

Core Narratives

Core Narrative 1: More than a check The call for reparations must include financial payments but must also go beyond monetary compensation. Reparations that fit into capitalism without also seeking to dismantle it and uproot the anti-black narratives upon which our capitalist system was built will not lead to the liberation of Black people. 

Core Narrative 2: Harm wasn’t linear, repair isn’t linear Slavery as an institution was so complex and multifaceted that its tentacles and vestiges touch many aspects of our modern-day society. Therefore,  reparations can’t be drawn in a direct line backward. There are multiple culpable parties, including federal and state governments, universities, corporations, and banks, among others.  

Core Narrative 3: Black people are the experts of their own repair. Black people must lead in the conversation on reparations from both an emotional and policy perspective.

Core Narrative 4: Reparations Now! The longer we wait to repair the trauma of slavery and its legacy, the longer we deny and evade the dignity, integrity, and belonging that is birthed from repair.

Core Narrative 5: History itself is a reparations issue. The erasure of Black history must also be taken into account for repair in any comprehensive reparations effort.

Core Narrative 6: The past is not yet the past; it is with us today. The sins of our past still impact Black people today in a significant and systematic way. 

Core Narrative 7: You can’t heal what hasn’t been revealed. There is immense emancipatory power in truth-telling. Excavating the truths of our nation will set us free.

Core Narrative 8: Reparations will grow from the ground. The power being grown at the local level on reparations will build momentum toward the national call for reparations. Reparations at the local, institutional, and national levels are all needed. 

Core Narrative 9: Reparations is an issue of now. Today’s harm, particularly the violence wrought on Black communities through the carceral system, must be included in the reparations conversation.  

Core Narrative 10: The debt exceeds slavery Reparations is a modern-day issue and the demand for reparations is not just about slavery. 

Core Narrative 11: The future is Black, the future is free. If we center Black people in our advocacy, the future will be free for all of us. 

Core Narrative 12: Reparations are the seed where all Black life can thrive. Reparations, as a process and a lens, create the opportunity for freedom and liberation for all Black people everywhere. 

Core Narrative 13: We need unity, not uniformity. Black people are not a monolith and will never be 100 percent aligned on any topic—though there is potential and opportunity for collaboration toward a shared vision. ‍

Stories

Stories of the Wholeness of Black Life 

Black life, particularly in reality television, is typically shown through a one-dimensional lens or typecasted in certain roles. A 2015 paper that documented the portrayals of Black people over a 20-year span found that Black people were disproportionately represented in sitcoms and crime dramas.³ The study also found that the prevalence of Black characters, particularly when depicted as attaining high social status, positively affected attitudes toward Black people. Of course, stories that cater to white respectability politics will also not do Black stories justice. Instead, we hope to see stories that tell the richness of Black life in all its complexities and nuances – this is critical as Blackness as a racial identity holds major importance within Black communities. 

A Pew Research study found that a significant portion of Black adults (76 percent) noted that being Black was extremely or very important to how they think about themselves.⁴ Pew also found that while 43 percent of Black immigrants saw a commonality between themselves and Black Americans, only 14 percent of Black Americans felt the same.⁵ Stories that tell the full story of Blackness across the diaspora and the ways in which we are connected in deep ways despite the scattering of Black people across the globe that colonialism caused. There is an immense amount of creative potential to harness the rich, joyous, beautiful stories to be told about the daily lives of Black people – we just have to tell them.

Stories of Enslaved People That Don’t Center Violence
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In discussing her Pulitzer Prize-winning book Beloved, Toni Morrison stated that “there is a necessity for remembering the horror, but of course, there’s a necessity for remembering it in a manner in which it can be digested, in a manner in which the memory is not destructive.”⁶ In conversations with Black people, you’ll often hear of folks who were unable to watch Ava DuVernay’s ‘When They See Us,’ which told the story of five young Black teenagers who were falsely accused of raping a woman in central park, or 12 Years a Slave which tells the story of a free Black man sold into slavery, because of the emotional triggers the films illicit. In a 2021 article for The Atlantic, writer Hannah Giorgis describes this fatigue as resulting from the reality that “productions that engage with that real-life terror can, at times, feel more like brutal reenactments of senselessness than purposeful works of art, unintentionally compounding some Black viewers’ traumas.”⁷ 

While the daily realities of enslaved Black people were marked with physical and sexual violence, family separation, and psychological abuse – there are beautiful stories about resilience, reunification, triumph, and joy to be told about those who were enslaved that doesn’t erase the horridness of their bondage, but showcases their humanity. Seeing Black people get tortured, maimed, and killed has long been normalized throughout society, and with the advent of cell phones and social media, clips of Black people being killed by the police circulate at warp speed. Black people should not have to showcase the brutality of slavery over and over and over again for other communities to empathize – we have enough stories of Black pain, it is time for stories that showcase the humanity of those who were enslaved that do not center the viciousness of the institution of slavery but instead the resilience of those who were enslaved. 

Stories of A Black-Liberated Future
‍
‍Ytasha Womack, who wrote Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture, defined Afrofuturism as “an intersection of imagination, technology, the future, and liberation.”⁸ Ingrid LaFleur, an art curator and Afrofuturist, defines it as “a way of imagining possible futures through a Black cultural lens.”⁹ Those who tell Afrofuturist stories usually employ different aspects of science fiction, speculative and creative fiction, history, and cultural commentary.

We need stories that bring to life the liberated world we believe a transformative reparations process will usher forward. As noted in the Narrative North Star, in the new world we are building, Black lives not only matter, but they are also embraced, welcomed, cherished, celebrated, admired, and deeply loved. We need visual artists, musicians, poets, and storytellers from various disciplines to help paint this picture for audiences – so that we may all collectively buy into the future world that reparations will create. 

Stories About Black Communal Power & the Black Radical Tradition

‍In Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America, Stokely Carmichael (who would later change his name to Kwame Ture) and Charles Hamilton opine that for Black people to carve out a place of equality for themselves they would have to create their own terms “through which to define ourselves and relationship to the society, and to have these terms recognized.”¹⁰ A part of this reclamation, according to Carmichael and Hamilton, would require the creation of a new value system that is rooted in “free people,” and not “free enterprise.” ¹¹

According to historian Peniel Joseph, the term Black power “exists in the American imagination through a series of iconic, yet fleeting images – ranging from gun-toting Black panthers to black-gloved sprinters at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics.”¹² These images, while recognizable, do not tell the full and complete story of the construction of Black power, both as a movement and as a system of organization. These systems of organization have a long history, in what Cedric Robinson dubbed “the Black radical tradition,” which he describes as arising as a result of the storied struggle against racial capitalism. 

Across history, predating the bondage of African people, there are stories to tell of Black communities growing Black political, cultural, and economic power (we briefly discuss the story of the thriving Greenwood community in Tulsa in our report) that showcase what thriving Black power structures and systems look like. Stories of how this power was cultivated and acheived, without wading into the meritocracy or bootstraps narrative, can broaden how Black communities are seen and encourage participation in the reparations movement. 

Stories About the Origins of Racial Wealth Inequality 

‍U.S. wealth is built on stolen Indigenous land and largely through stolen African labor. Not only has the federal government reaped the benefits of this theft, but also corporations and families. A study conducted in 2000 estimated that about 20 million people living at the time were direct descendants of those who benefited from the Homestead Act, which gave away acres of land primarily to white families.¹³

Stories of individuals working hard to amass wealth need to be replaced with accurate stories of the structure and history of racial capitalism in the United States, the families who have historically benefited from it, the advantages and power it has given them, and how it was sustained and compounded over time. We must also tell the stories of the people in this category who have chosen to return their wealth and/or begun to repair the harm within their lineage and how it has transformed them.

This, of course, is not to be confused with the wealth amassed that cannot be traced back to slavery, what we commonly refer to as “new money.” While there are Black billionaires and millionaires like Jay-Z, LeBron James, and Oprah Winfrey who fit into this category, we know that this is not the economic reality for the majority of Black people across the country. 

We need fewer “rags to riches” stories, particularly about Black people, that prop up the myth of the “American Dream” and more stories that tell the truth about capitalism and how it subjugates and extracts from everyday workers, particularly Black workers. We also need stories that articulate a new relationship to money and labor in the world without getting stuck in the false binary of capitalism versus socialism. 

Untold or Under-told Stories About Black Giants

The National Monument Audit, released by the Monument Lab in 2021, found that of the top 50 figures memorialized through public monuments, only three were Black. These three were Martin Luther King Jr., Harriet Tubman, and Frederick Douglass. While these three undoubtedly have a presence within the public understanding of this nation’s history, their stories, particularly Martin Luther King Jr.’s, are often whitewashed and watered down to fit modern-day conservative or racially liberal narratives. More than that, there are names and faces to be ascribed to the everyday working-class people who powered the various iterations of liberation movements in the United States and across the globe – these Black people were giants too. Uplifting the individual stories of these unsung heroes is critical in our efforts to untangle the story of democracy in this country. 

What a society chooses to publicly memorialize reflects its cultural values, and unsurprisingly, there are significantly more monuments of former enslavers across our monument landscape than those who were enslaved. We must share the stories of those who sacrificed to escape slavery in search of our collective liberation.  

Stories About Specific People Who Uphold White Supremacy 

‍Progressive movements have steadily enhanced their capacity to identify systemic issues as the antagonists in our stories. There is a degree of understanding of the system of white supremacy and how it entrenches inequality across society, particularly in progressive spaces. Though, as our partners at Get Free, a youth-led social movement working to ensure freedom for all, suggest, it is imperative that we associate specific individuals with the perpetuation of white supremacy and clearly identify the key actors responsible for obstructing the path to liberation. 

Certain individuals, often wielding both political and economic influence, have a well-documented track record of making decisions that inflict harm upon Black communities. This power has been passed down from generation to generation in numerous forms, as revealed by a 2023 Reuters investigation which found that “more than 100 U.S. leaders – lawmakers, presidents, governors, and justices – have slave holding ancestors.”143 Today, many of these people pass policies that limit Black political participation, further enrich corporations and the wealthy, and fortify many of the narrative roadblocks named in this report. As we tell stories about these specific agents who uphold white supremacy, we must link how their individual stories and decisions uphold the tenets of colonialism, white supremacy, and racial capitalism.

Stories About Global Decolonization Efforts and Reparations in Other Communities 

Throughout the African continent, as well as in other nations worldwide, a profound shift in power dynamics has unfolded over recent decades. While often used in a variety of contexts, decolonization is an ongoing effort to terminate economic, political, and cultural control over a population by foreigners. By the conclusion of World War II, only four African nations had achieved independence. Yet, between 1945 and 1960, an unprecedented wave of decolonization led to the emergence of numerous African nations as sovereign entities. Presently, the African continent boasts 54 distinct nations, each bearing its own rich and distinctive histories.

There are numerous stories of African diasporic independence that are purposefully kept out of U.S. public history classes. For example, the compelling stories of iconic leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah and Stephen Biko, alongside a multitude of others. The accounts of the Haitian Revolution and the sweeping mass movements that elevated African awareness and dismantled the enduring vestiges of colonialism within their respective nations serve as vivid illustrations. It is paramount that we not only acknowledge these narratives but also illuminate their intricate connections with the struggle for justice in the United States. 

Furthermore, there are opportunities to connect global reparations initiatives with the movement for Black reparations in the United States. Reparations for Black people are often portrayed as an unprecedented demand, but we must challenge this by sharing the stories of other reparations endeavors and the specific ways the United States has supported them. For instance, in 1947, the U.S. implemented Military Law No. 59, which served as the basis for the inaugural restitution program for Holocaust survivors.145 Reparations is a globally recognized legal process, which the United States has advocated for in other instances. Uplifting this fact will be crucial in holding the U.S. government accountable for its injustices against Black Americans.

Messages

There is no one way to discuss the issue of reparations. What this section will do is provide a snapshot of direct quotes that were communicated throughout the Lab by its members and those within the reparations movement they engaged with during this first phase. 

• “When you look back through history, almost everything that was created to benefit us, ended up being used against us.” —Rob Thomas
• “We have to help people understand our interconnectedness as beings and how this historic and ongoing harm and extraction of our labor, wealth, and genius has to be addressed; that none of us can be all we’re meant to be unless we address it. Building this sense of connection is core to moving our agenda – even among Black people.” —Makani Themba.
• “When we talk about narrative, we can’t just talk about stories, we have to talk about the power that roots that story, and we’re not going to be able to change the narrative if we don’t change the root.” —Makani Themba
• “Our people’s story needs to be tied to the reparations story. We have to tie reparations to every violation of human rights that our people are dealing with right now.” —Dr. Akinyele Umoja 
• “Our struggle for reparations is not a new struggle, and the people aren’t new.” —Dr. Mary Frances Berry
• “There was a spiritual component and a psychological healing component for what Black people were trying to do for each other.” —Dr. Mary Frances Berry
• “Reparations advocacy has been a long part of the Black radical tradition.” —Dr.Jean-Pierre Brutus
• “The bottom line is that our work is to talk about harm as not only needing to be repaired but can be repaired.” —Makani Themba
  
• “We need to specify what the harm is. Reparations are owed to us for what?” —Richard Wallace
• “If everything is reparations, then nothing is reparations to me.” —Erika Alexander
  
• “Everything that Black people have endured is an outgrowth of slavery.” —Dr. Tiffany Crutcher
  
• “ This isn’t just a story of what is stolen and what is owed; it is also a story about the economy.” —Malkia Devich Cyril
  
• “Wholistic repair is not going to come from the government; it’s going to come from spiritual and emotional transformations within our own community and the strengthening of self-determination.”—Dreisen Heath
• “Our liberation is not bound to a corrupt establishment. Coalition and movement building have helped sustain this movement, and that is ultimately where the power is.” —Dreisen Heath
  
• “The Land Back movement is a liberation and reparation framework that facilitates a cross-conversation between movements.” —Nick Tilsen
  
• “There is a world where land is returned to Indigenous people and reparations for Black Americans are implemented. It’s not an either-or thing.” —Nick Tilsen
  
• “We’re dealing with systems and a social movement, and this helps us respond effectively to both; whether it’s about reparations or criminal justice reform, we need to take into account both white supremacy and white nationalism.” —Eric Ward 
• “Our opposition understands that there is political benefit in attacking Black movements and Black leadership.” —Eric Ward
  
• “The guarantee of non-repetition as it relates to chattel slavery, we would need to eradicate anti-Black racism in the United States.” —Richard Wallace
• “We should look at reparations as being on a continuum. Abolition and reparations are interrelated and connected with overlapping processes that are aligned in certain ways.” —Dr. David Ragland
• “We must look at this as a balance sheet—we are still dealing with some harm.” —Kenniss Henry 
  
• “Full reparations for me means that at the end of the day, all of the harms that have been perpetrated upon Black people are wiped out.” —Kenniss Henry
• “Each harm area needs its own specific remedy—whether it’s segregation, slavery, or redlining. There are so many different things that can be uncovered in each community. I hope for transformative justice.” —Rob Thomas

Deep Narratives

Justice: Justice frequently serves as a theme in progressive social movement communications. The concept of justice is generally referred to in the assessment of social institutions and basic social structures but there is no single philosophical consensus as to what we mean as a society when we say “justice.”146 

Across the reparations and broader racial justice movements, justice is generally used to describe the moral obligation an individual, institution, or system owes to another. There are immediate through lines between justice movements (environmental, criminal, racial, economic, etc) and the movement for reparations that should be recognized and maintained throughout our organizing and storytelling.

How Do We Know If Our Stories Are Rooted In Justice? We hope and expect to see those involved in justice movements, particularly those interested in racial justice, include reparations for Black people on their policy agendas and uplift the narratives and stories outlined in the Narrative House. Across the stories and messages we communicate about reparations, justice has historically undergirded them by linking reparations as a morally correct objective.

Key components of stories rooted in justice may include: 

• Threads and underlying tones of the morality of repair and reparations
• Threads and underlying tones of responsibility and a duty to repair past harms
• Threads and underlying tones on fairness and ensuring all people begin life from the same starting point
• An underlying concern of societal wrongs and what is owed to Black people

Accountability: Accountability and justice are often used within the same dialogues, particularly in conversations about harm and punishment. In simple terms, accountability can be understood as the extent to which an individual is answerable to another (e.g., a supervisor, a mother, etc.). According to abolitionist Mariame Kaba, most people who subscribe to an abolitionist vision have come to understand accountability to be “an active process through which people have to make a decision that they recognize the harms that are occurring, they want to try to redress them, and they’re thinking about the harms through the lens of what’s been done to others but also what’s been done to them.”¹⁸

As described in Liberation Ventures’ repair framework, “accountability invites us to claim full ownership of the harm that has been excavated and named, take responsibility for it, and commit to changing our behavior to ensure non-recurrence.”¹⁹ Across the racial justice movement, mention of accountability usually refers to holding governments and their institutions accountable for the harm they’ve caused, participated in, or were negligent in preventing. According to Kaba, accountability takes into account a sense of responsibility to oneself and can only truly come from within. Telling stories about the government’s role in initiating and sustaining harm may push it to be accountable in addressing that harm—but the action of accountability must come from the person or entity that has done wrong.

‍How Do We Know If Our Stories Are Rooted in Accountability? Stories are rooted in accountability when they include: transparency, fairness, and specific examples of abuse of power. They explore attainable steps that the party responsible for harm must take to right their wrong. There’s also a specific, accurate, and direct calling out of responsible parties. 

Key components of stories rooted in accountability may include:

• Threads and underlying tones about transparency
• Threads and underlying tones about fairness being trampled on
• An attention to how power was abused or misused
• Concrete steps that the party responsible for harm must take to step into an accountable position

Healing: “Healing racialized trauma begins with your body,” according to Resmaa Menakem.²⁰ Whether we acknowledge it or not, the racialized trauma experienced by Black people across the country lives in every Black body. We are connected by the wound of slavery and colonization, Jim Crow, mass incarceration, police brutality, medical harm and poor healthcare, environmental abuses, etc. Reparations are a solution to healing that wound. As has been repeated throughout this report, the healing and repair goes beyond money. True healing must include the body—physically, emotionally, and psychologically.

How Do We Know If Our Stories Are Rooted in Healing? Across our storytelling on reparations, we hope to see the healing power of reparations, not only for Black people but for the entire nation, as a common thread. Harmful and aggravated deep narratives seek to divide and engage in zero-sum storytelling and situate an “us versus them” mentality. Stories rooted in healing seek to unite people and recognize the legacy of racialized trauma and how it shows up in our minds, bodies, and words. Healing stories center on Black people as a whole and recognize that the fate of our liberation is not bound to the Eurocentric concepts of value. 

Key components of stories rooted in healing may include:

• Threads and underlying tones about inner healing
• Threads and underlying tones about interpersonal healing
• Threads and underlying tones about cultural and societal healing
• Threads and underlying tones about empathy (a lack of it or increasing it)
• Metaphors linking white supremacy to sickness or disease

Wholeness: Across the reparations movement, wholeness is often referred to as a state of being that reparations can deliver us back to. Wholeness refers to the “quality of being or feeling complete, and not divided or damaged.”²¹ Mindfulness and wellness fields describe wholeness as a framework that rests on purpose, balance, congruence, and sustainability. Other research has set forth dimensions of wholeness including physical, emotional, social, spiritual, and intellectual. Spiritually, wholeness is a state of being perfectly well in both body and soul. Similar to healing, this deep narrative speaks to the entire being of Black people and the imperative that reparations transform the way Black people are seen across the globe. In addition, it speaks to the potential for this nation to live up to its founding ideals.

How Do We Know If Our Stories Are Rooted in Wholeness? Stories of wholeness must include human rights frameworks, messages, and understandings. Key components of stories rooted in wholeness include but are not limited to: threads of interconnection between people and systems; threads and underlying tones about happiness and wellness (emotional, physical, social, spiritual, etc.); uplifting of the importance of stronger interpersonal relationships; reframing of our relationship to labor and productivity; uplifting of basic material needs in life. The image conjured when thinking about wholeness is often a circle but perhaps an infinity loop is a better way to picture it in this context. The work of reparations should be understood as a journey that we must continue and build on to make Black people whole. 

• Threads and underlying tones of interconnection between people and systems
• Threads and underlying tones about happiness and wellness (emotional, physical, social, spiritual, etc.)
• An uplifting of the importance of stronger interpersonal relationships
• A reframing of our relationship to labor and productivity
• An attention and uplifting of basic material needs in life

Truth: According to Dr. David Ragland and Dr. Melinda Salazar, reparations are a “spiritual practice, not just a transaction, and go hand-in-hand with truth-telling. They are a relational healing practice from spiritual, moral, and material harm.”²² A large property of truth is language and the stories we tell as a society over and over. With the rise of disinformation and intentional anti-history campaigns seeking to dismantle and ban essential studies like critical race theory, it will be imperative for the movement to counter this and ensure that the true founding story of this nation is told.

How Do We Know If Our Stories Are Rooted in Truth? Stories rooted in truth depict a radical form of truth-telling that speaks truth to power, centers Black history and thought, and seeks to tell the objective truth about Black life and the need for repair. The founding narratives of the United States were based on lies and myths that painted Black people as subhuman and Indigenous terrain as newly found land. At the core of our storytelling is uprooting and transforming these myths with the truth of what this country is and who it has historically sought to serve. 

Key components of stories rooted in truth may include: 

• Threads and underlying tones about interrogation and reckoning
• Threads and underlying tones about societal responsibility
• Threads and underlying tones about sincerity and integrity
• Attention to the role that racial violence and anti-Blackness plays in society today