Thanks for asking this all-important question.
As you noted, figuring out how to do reparations is very complicated. It will be necessary to listen to all parties, and come up with something that's fair, workable, and generally acceptable. I have some ideas, many other people have ideas also.
A good start would be passing HB40, as discussed in the linked article. This would bring the US Congress to the table, people who actually have power in the system and are accountable to all. HB40 would start the discussion, bringing in representatives of the impacted communities as well as people from fields such as health care, business, education, city planning, etc. The best minds and the people with actual power could listen to the people's needs, and come up with ways of doing Reparations what would work. We don't have to know right now what those solutions would be; for now, we just need to agree to come together and work something out.
The biggest obstacle, as I see it, is simply getting the idea of Reparations out there and on the table. There is a lot of resistance, because many people think Reparations would mean taking more money out of struggling White folks' pockets and putting it in struggling Black folks' pockets. This is the usual narrative that's pushed to get people to dismiss the idea outright.
As I see it, racism is systemic, so Reparations would be systemic also. I'm thinking of block grants to predominantly Black communities for business startups, neighborhood clinics, community gardens, culturally sensitive school startups, whatever the people of that community say they need. These grants would be administered by established leaders within those communities.
This could be funded by a reasonable capital gains tax, on par with the income tax that ordinary working and middle class people pay. The capital gains tax would have a high floor -- the average homeowner or family farmer would not see any tax increases. And it would have no ceiling -- those who profit most from the system would have to pay back into the system so that the workers who support them could receive a fairer return on their labor in terms of improved community resources.
In particular, the richest corporations -- many of which now pay very little taxes -- would have to return a fair portion of their wealth to the communities that built their wealth, rather than letting it stagnate in numbered bank accounts overseas. That's my idea, just one idea among many.
Funds could also be re-directed from the military industrial complex and the prison industry. This would take money currently being used to increase people's suffering, and invest it in community resources that would enhance quality of life, with an overall decrease in crime in the bargain. This is a popular idea that many people and organizations are pushing. This is the real meaning in the call to "defund the police": not to abolish the task of civil peacekeeping and leave nothing in its place; but to look at the root causes of crime and re-direct public resources from punative acts to acts which relieve the root causes of crime.
Reparations would be the over-arching theme of all of these measures. Reparations would address the root of many of the problems stemming from the legacy of slavery and affecting Black people -- and all of our society -- to this day. But first, we got to get the idea of Reparations on the table.
Unfortunately, many White people don't take Black pain seriously until other White people call attention to it. But when White people add our voices, other White people listen. A classic example of this is the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, which awakened the conscience of the nation and sparked the Civil War to end slavery.
White participation in BLM protests has amplified the issues so that now we have some legislation in the works to outlaw chokeholds, change police training methods, and a few other gains. This is a start, but only a start. We need radical changes, steaming from Reparations.
There are tons of songs out there by Black people expressing Black pain, but most are in the rap and hip-hop genre and White people don't listen to songs like that. The song I have in mind would have a folk-gospel sound and a strong rock beat, recalling the familiar music of the civil rights and anti-war protests of the previous generation. Thus, it would tap into the consciousness which successfully brought about the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the Fair Housing Act.
We did not talk about privileges back then; we called for civil rights, and fought for and gained civil rights. The work was not complete, and has been eroded in the intervening years. So we still got a lot of work to do. I feel that the current movement is alienating public support by talking about privileges rather than rights. So the song speaks of restoring rights, because it's the right thing to do.
Thanks again for asking this question, and thanks if you read all this. Want to jam with me on Zoom?
