Donations to black-led food and land organizations shift from charitable giving to true reparations
Transferring wealth to Black-led groups is a particularly potent form of reparations with immediate benefits to communities of color.
Last December, nonprofit executive director Malik Yakini received an unexpected call. The caller, a woman who resides in California, said she wanted to direct a sizeble portion of her inheritance to his organization, the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network.
This type of windfall is indeed rare, but it was the caller’s motivation revealed over several conversations with Yakini that was really unusual.
She felt there was “some lack of justice in how the money was acquired” and that she could “contribute to greater justice” by transferring wealth to groups engaged in Black, land-related projects, Yakini recalls. “She sees her work in making these donations as specifically a type of individual reparations.”