By Carl McRoy

Reparations – a musical survey

No more shall they in bondage toil,

Let my people go;

Let them come out with Egypt’s spoil,

Let my people go.

• Negro Spiritual, “Go Down, Moses”

We have given our sweat and all our tears

We stumbled through this life for more than 300 years

We’ve been separated from the land which we knew

Stripped of our culture, people you know it’s true

• The Staples Singers, “When Will We Be Paid?”

Piece of the pick

We picked a piece

Of land we deservin’ now

Reparation, a piece of the nation

• Public Enemy, “By the Time I Get to Arizona”

Millions in slave ships landed,

Whipped and chained and branded.

300 years of free labor,

We aint askin’ for no favors!

• Sounds of Blackness, “Time for Reparations”

You have to pay for the shackles and chains

And pay for this washing of the brain

• Capleton, “That Day Will Come”

Pay what they owe

Reap what they sow

Debt passed to you, it’s coming true

Reparations are due

• Geoffrey Short, “Reparations”

Reparations – a prophetic mandate

From the spirituals to gospel to soul to rap, rock, and reggae, Black theopoets have been calling for reparations. Their prophetic audacity isn’t indebted to Chico, Groucho, Karl, or any other Marxes. Their artistic indignation is traceable through applying scriptural principles to the centuries-long Black hellacaust.

As Go Down, Moses pointed out, Exodus 3:21-22 says God exacted reparations from the Egyptians for the coerced, unpaid labor they extracted from the Hebrews. The Hebrews, in turn, were to make prompt payment to laborers by sunset each day, “otherwise, they will complain to the LORD about you, and you will be condemned for your sin” (Deut. 24:14-15, God’s Word).

Disregarding practical godliness by defrauding workers and consumers was a frequent theme of prophetic blues. Economic exploitation earned ‘doom and gloom’ oracles from people like Jeremiah and Malachi, just as much as idolatry or violation of sexual taboos.

“How horrible it will be for the person who builds his house dishonestly and his upper rooms through injustice. He makes his neighbors work for nothing and doesn’t pay them for their work.” Jeremiah 22:13, God’s Word

“I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against the perjurers, and against those who oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and who deprive the foreigner of justice, and don’t fear me,” says YAHWEH of Armies.” Malachi 3:5, World English Bible

Principles of reparations – New Testament

Singing about fair wages, the concept of corporate responsibility, and judgment on later generations for not righting the wrongs of their ancestors wasn’t just an Old Testament principle. James 5:1-4 warns the rich that hoarded wealth gained by denying the timely payment of livable wages to workers will testify against them on Judgment Day.

Zacchaeus, the wee little man of the children’s song, acted on this before James wrote about it. As an accountant, “reconciliation” and “redemption” were words with material, not abstract, meaning. He knew repentance for him would involve reparations for those he had extorted his wealth from (Luke 19:8-9).

Jesus himself lamented that compound interest was accruing on the collective guilt that one generation of leaders was borrowing from another. Consider these curses in the following verses:

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, and say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets’. . .

“You are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers’ guilt. . .

“that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation”

(Matt. 23:29-36, NKJV).

In other words, many of those making the biggest pretense of honoring martyred prophets are often the spiritual offspring of their oppressors. From “A” to “Z,” the blood of the innocent still cries out. Although none in the audience were alive at the time of Cain or Joash, Jesus said they were of the same spirit, shared their guilt, and are in jeopardy of suffering the same fate with interest (Gen. 4:8-15; 2 Chron. 24:20-22). This sentiment reverberates through Geoffrey Short’s “Reparations”:

“Sins don’t die when the sinner does/You’re the same sinner your grandfather was.”

Of course, this isn’t the way things have to be. A U-Turn is possible.

Reparations Blues in Revelation

Revelation, referred to by some as the fifth gospel, is full of blue notes about Babylon’s demise. Political and economic leaders around the globe piled up obscene riches through fornication with Babylon’s global system that pronounces blessings on militarism, materialism, and racism. In the end, they’ll all be singing the Babylonian blues when God repays them double for the trouble they’ve caused others:

“Her sins are piled as high as heaven, and God has remembered her crimes. Do to her what she has done. Give her twice as much as she gave. Serve her a drink in her own cup twice as large as the drink she served others”

“The kings of the earth who had sex with her and lived in luxury with her will cry and mourn over her when they see the smoke rise from her raging fire. . .

“The merchants of the earth cry and mourn over her, because no one buys their cargo anymore” (Rev. 18:5-6, 9, 11, God’s Word).

God sees. God remembers. God repays those who don’t repent and repair. Those who sing the blues now will have a change of tune later (Luke 6:20-26). Just as “every child deserves to learn,” and “every man [person] deserve a turn,” so “Babylon deserve to burn” (Damian Marley & Nas, “Tribes at War”).

By Carl McRoy