Posted By Nicki Leone,
Monday, February 20, 2023
Updated: Saturday, February 18, 2023
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 "If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out that's not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven't even pulled the knife out much less heal the wound. They won't even admit the knife is there." - Malcolm X
Author Photo Credit: Marion Trikosko/Library of Congress | Quote: Television interview, March 1964
Learn
The National Black Food and Justice Alliance, along with growing numbers of regional and local groups, including white “accomplices,” are calling for reparations of land and resources to Black and Indigenous people to account for decades of extracted wealth. For more on the history of, and some of the numbers associated with, the economic damage in the African American community, see this infographic.
In the last several years, the US Government has settled a few lawsuits brought by American Indian tribes for mismanaging natural resources and other tribal assets. This has been a very slow process and many recognize that this has not accounted fully for the economic damage done in those communities. Clearly there is much more work to be done.
There is also a growing chorus of voices, across race and ethnicity, who are saying that reparations must not simply be transactional, they must be transformative in process, relationship and outcome. See this proposal to repair Racial Wealth Disparity.
We invite you to look through the resource links above, as well as this guide from Coming to the Table that includes a variety of ways to engage in the work of reparations.
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Reflect
What comes up for you as you read these resources and solutions related to reparations? How are you already, or how might you be, engaged in reparations through your bookselling work, studies or community activity? Are reparations possible or enough? If not, what more or what else?
Dig Deeper
Explore other links on the Challenge Resource Page. See how other Challenge participants are doing, and let them know how you are doing on the Challenge Bulletin Board
SIBA thanks its generous sponsors, who have made the 21-Day Racial Equity Challenge possible:
 
 Many of the quotes used in the Challenge are excerpted from Words of Change: Anti-Racism by permission of Sasquatch Books. Copyright 2020 By Kenyra Rankin. All rights reserved.
Although SIBA has modified when appropriate for a bookseller audience, the majority of prompts and resources come directly from the 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge created by Food Solutions New England (FSNE), a regional collaborative network organized to support the emergence and continued viability of a New England food system that is a resilient driver of healthy food for all, racial equity, sustainable farming and fishing, and thriving communities. We are so grateful for their extraordinary work creating this program and making it available to other organizations.
Feedback? We welcome your thoughts.
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