Joel Edward Goza dismantles the deep-seated myths that perpetuate white supremacy—and makes the case that reparations are necessary to heal America’s racial wounds and live up to our democratic ideals.
In Rebirth of a Nation, Joel Edward Goza makes the case that reparations are necessary to realize racial justice and restore our democracy. In a narrative-driven historical survey, Goza exposes lesser-known aspects of our racist past, drawing a clear line from slavery to Jim Crow to the destruction of Black lives today. But Rebirth of a Nation is not merely about accountability. It is also about hope. Goza shows that by embracing a process of reparations and the wisdom of the Black Freedom Movement, we can place the United States on a path of healing.
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Praise for Rebirth of a Nation
“I thank God for Joel, and I celebrate this book as an important intellectual contribution to the work of repairing this nation’s breaches. May the Spirit renew your mind as you read it, and may it help grow a movement for a Third Reconstruction in our time.”
—William J. Barber II, from the foreword
“Rebirth of a Nation charts the story of how the United States consistently has failed to become a true democracy, both in terms of its policy and ideological development. It also points forcefully toward the crucial steps that must be taken to reverse that failure and produce a racially fair and just society.”
—William A. Darity Jr., coauthor of From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century
“Rebirth of a Nation makes a powerful case for historical reckoning in America. Goza’s faith in, and bearing witness to the beauty of, Black resistance to systemic oppression reminds us that the soul of this nation can and must be redeemed. Everyone should read this book.”
—Khalil Gibran Muhammad, author of The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America
“Rebirth of a Nation is simultaneously thought-provoking, somber, enraging, yet surprisingly hopeful. Goza powerfully and convincingly calls for reparations as a key pathway from our historical and current state of systemic racial inequality and injustice. The book envisions an American rebirth as a viable democracy no longer wracked by the legacies of slavery, Jim Crow, colorblind racism, and the hatred unleashed after 2016.”
—Carol Anderson, author of White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide
Excerpt from the Preface
Reparations offers an opportunity to salvage our history and pull an antiracist future from a remarkably racist past. Implementing that opportunity depends on the ability to reimagine how different America’s story could and should be. For this reimagining, Rebirth of a Nation uses as guides through each racial era the wisdom and witness of Black activists, writers, and intellectuals of the Black Freedom Movement who continually wooed America toward an interracial and egalitarian democracy. The Black historian Vincent Harding envisioned this tradition as a river traveling through time and space. “The river of black struggle is people,” Harding wrote, “but it is also the hope, the movement, the transformative power that humans create and that creates them, us, and makes them, us, new persons.”1Vincent Harding, There Is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1981), xix.
As white supremacy evolved and re-created itself, so did the Black Freedom Movement. Never one-dimensional or monolithic, the river always consists of currents and crosscurrents. The tactics of Frederick Douglass were not the tactics of Ida B. Wells; Martin Luther King Jr.’s strategy differed from Stokely Carmichael’s; and today, William Barber II’s work differs from Stacey Abrams’s. Yet, the revolutionary work that unites Douglass, Wells, King, Carmichael, Barber, and Abrams is the shared mission to make Black lives matter through the fight to create an interracial and egalitarian democracy.
Black activists, writers, and intellectuals have revealed white supremacy as much more than a war against Black America. Black people have consistently painted white supremacy as an insanity that wars against America’s soul and every tenet of democracy, human dignity, and equality—an insanity void of compassion for the needs most Americans hold in common.
By rejecting white supremacy, it has been Black activists, writers, and researchers who have challenged America to see an expansive and poignant spectrum of political possibilities. The Black Freedom Movement sees through America’s self-deception to the radical possibilities within American democracy simply because Black activists, writers, and researchers know that Black people are merely and yet wholly human. That one truth uncovers the lies that limit our life together. The world has yet to experience an egalitarian, interracial, antiracist democracy. And yet it is precisely this radical vision that many Black communities have sought to nurture and empower throughout our nation’s life together.
As we listen to our guides, we may come to recognize that our racial nightmare continues not because we lack practical ways to address America’s racial crisis but because we have continually rejected Black wisdom. In the days of slavery, we rejected the wisdom of the enslaved. In the days of segregation, we rejected the wisdom of the community Jim Crow sought to lynch. Today, to reject America’s need for reparations and a national rebirth is not only to reject the wisdom of today’s Black Freedom Movement but also to reject the collective wisdom of Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Callie House, Ida B. Wells, W. E. B. Du Bois, Queen Mother Moore, Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael, and John Lewis. This is the line through which the river of Black America’s struggle flows toward the work of reparations.
Throughout our history, resistance to racial justice and Black wisdom has depended on deceptive framing, racial logics, historical amnesia, and superficial thinking. What those committed to resisting Black justice could never afford is a serious public conversation about America’s racial history and a vulnerable public consideration of pragmatic public policies to begin reversing the way white America’s indifference perpetuates Black America’s suffering. And this is particularly true regarding the rejection of reparations. As Guy Emerson Mount writes, “America seems intent on a reparations policy driven [by] a popular Simpsons meme: ‘We’ve tried nothing, and we’re all out of ideas.’”2Guy Emerson Mount, “Can Reparations Save American Politics?,” Black Perspectives, June 27, 2017.
But reparations is not a utopian dream. It is practical, pragmatic, and long-game politics to begin healing our nation from hundreds of years of our traumatic racial history. Reparations is about resurrecting liberty, justice, and equality in a land where these democratic possibilities were killed long before they were ever born. It is the work to harmonize our life together with the demands of human decency, dignity, and democracy. Repentance, repayment, and repair: this is the work of reparations. Reimagining our past and future: this is the work of reparations. Providing a path to an antiracist and interracial democracy: this is the work of reparations. Reparations is about healing our racial wounds and a rare opportunity for our nation to begin anew.
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Joel Edward Goza
Joel Edward Goza is a writer, speaker, and community advocate. He is professor of ethics at the HBCU Simmons College and teaches in Kentucky prisons. Before focusing on writing and teaching, Joel worked in urban redevelopment and community activism for over a decade in Houston’s Fifth Ward. He is also the author of America’s Unholy Ghosts: The Racist Roots of Our Faith and Politics, and contributes to The Hill, Salon, and Religion News Service.