Leaders from Monroe County’s Black community discussed the possibility of reparations for historic racial injustices during Tuesday’s State of the Black Community Address.
The Bloomington Black Strategic Alliance and Monroe County Black Democratic Caucus held the fifth annual event over Zoom. Members of the caucus’s Reparations Committee spent the fall of 2021 researching the county’s history of racial injustices and presented some of their findings during the event.
“Thus far, our research is preliminary,” said professor Valerie Grim, director of undergraduate studies for the Indiana University Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies. “It's being presented here tonight as a conversation to initiate a dialogue concerning whether there are experiences and encounters in Bloomington (and) Monroe County that meet a reparation standard.”
The discussion touched on educational issues facing Monroe County’s Black community, including MCCSC’s decision to downplay an IU O’Neill School Report on segregation in MCCSC schools.
“Redrawing the catchment (areas) or the (school) zones is the simplest way to produce educational equity,” committee member Kevin Jenkins said.
Panelists also discussed Monroe County’s history of racially restrictive housing covenants and how that impacts the area’s Black families today.
READ MORE: Monroe County’s racial covenant project nears mapping stage
According to committee member Ashley Pirani, just 1 percent of Bloomington’s Black population owns a home. She said areas of Bloomington that had racially restrictive covenants have average home values well over the city average, while neighborhoods with historically higher populations of Black residents have houses that usually sell below city average.
As for what reparations would look like, the committee hadn’t gotten that far.
Black Caucus president emeritus William Hosea recalled a conversation he had last year with former Evanston, Illinois, alderwoman Robin Rue Simmons about how that city enacted its reparations policy. Evanston is putting tax money from recreational marijuana sales into a fund to help certain Black residents buy houses.
Hosea admitted the political landscape in Indiana is much different than that of Illinois, but liked the idea.
“They started out just like we are right here, just having the conversation. And they eventually were able to persuade the city government (to adopt a reparations program),” Hosea said.
