Stone Flower
Stone Flower is an album by Antonio Carlos Jobim, and is technically not on my to do list. However, it is on my Watch later youtube playlist. I have many hour-plus long videos and albums on that playlist, and I wanted to start out with something chill to listen to while reading this article.
I enjoy the instrumentation of this album, it's playful without being overbearing. The vocalisations make me bob my head along with the beat. Plus it makes great background music for concentration.
The three other music playlists from my Watch later list that I listened to today are Lo-fi for Ghosts (Only) 2, a playlist of songs i want in a dark academia show, and the Later Alligator Original Soundtrack by 2 Mello, if you'd like to listen along. (It's a very long and dense article so it needed a lot of music.) The dark academia playlist wasn't condusive to reading, but everything else made for great focus sound.
Sidenote: Later Alligator is a game that I desperately wanted to like that unfortunately fell very flat in the actual gameplay department.
The Case for Reparations
"But for all our exceptional ones, for every Barack and Michelle Obama, for every Ethel Weatherspoon or Clyde Ross, for every black survivor, there are so many thousands gone."
This is the second oldest bookmark in my entire 1,000+ collection. Now I better understand why it's been there so long: it took me nearly 2 hours to read through.
The Case for Reparations is a 2014 Atlantic article by Ta-Nehisi Coates. As a personal disclaimer, I am already a stalwart believer in reparations for Black Americans. The primary reason I wanted to read this is that I wanted more context and more language to talk about why I want that. This certainly delivered when it comes to the historical context that led to where we are today.
"In substituting a broad class struggle for an anti-racist struggle, progressives hope to assemble a coalition by changing the subject."
One part I really appreciated about this read is that it spoke frankly about how, in order to change everything, we must change the racist systems that disenfranchise and oppress Black folks, as those are what underpin all the ills of American society. I'm not speaking metaphorically when I say that slavery is America's original sin, and this article rightly points out that we have not reckoned with it in any real way.
(For furthur action on that front, check out the Movement for Black Lives and the Poor People's Campaign.)
Talking about this gets me worked up on a spiritual level. It's so unjust, so despicable, so horrific... and we live in it every day. It's hard for me to talk about in any constructive way from how emotional it makes me to even think about it. We have to work towards reparations, because it is the right thing to do. We have a moral imperative. We have to.
"What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal."
To me, the weirdest part of this article by far was its wet cough ending. It was strangely structurally weak for an article that is otherwise built to deeply compel the reader. The final section is a dry recounting of a 2010 legal battle involving banks who were screwing over Black would-be-homeowners. This would make perfect sense elsewhere in the article - there is a great deal of time spent speaking about redlining and housing - but its placement as the final note fell flat.
That aside, I absolutely recommend this reading this article deeply and thoroughly, whether you are unfamiliar with the concept of reparations, are interested in the history of systemic racism in America, or if you dream of what this country must aspire to in the future.