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By: Allan Tellis, Anand Edward Sokhey

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As part of a history of systemic white supremacist practices in the United States, Black Americans have faced numerous forms of political marginalization. Racialized, dehumanizing practices were, of course, once rampant and codified into law in the United States. Academic circles and public-facing activists have long sought to 1) draw attention to the long-term consequences of these historical injustices, and 2) promote active efforts toward reconciliation. For example, intellectuals like Harris (1993), Fanon (1963), and West (1993) have described how institutionalized racial oppression chronically devalues and dehumanizes Black people. Such arguments, decades in the making, have at long last started to be reflected in more mainstream dis-course; this can be seen in popular culture, coverage, and discussion of things like the 1619 Project, and fights over the meaning and teaching of critical race theory (see also Stephens and Martí in this volume). There have been few concrete efforts to directly address the long-term consequences of slavery. After the Civil Rights Act of 1964, there was support for efforts to end overtly racist practices, and advocacy for more equi-table social services. But such actions have not translated into a further willingness to compensate descendants of slavery for the harm they have suffered (Torpey and Burkett 2010). The idea of reparations for slavery emerges regularly in public commentary, but it is generally dismissed as an impossi-bility. 2 Indeed, mainstream political and academic discourse might best be

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