Reparations must fund systemic change, not just individual cash payments.

Evidence

When most people hear the word reparations, they think of individual cash payments. That was the form of reparations in the four cases in Part I. However, I argued to the focus group that reparations should include investments in the black community in addition to individual cash payments. After all, the harm done was and is community based, even if devastating to each victim. Reparations should fund community-based and systemic-focused solutions. Our current system for building wealth is designed for stripping black wealth, so a cash infusion to individual black Americans without transforming that system would not end well for black wealth building. The multiple systems for white wealth building described in Part II need to be dismantled, so that all Americans, including black Americans, have an equal opportunity to excel. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 495

Categorization

• DEFINE: Central definitional move: reparations as invested community remedy rather than cash payout — the accounting-not-charity architecture.
• ADDENDUM: Directly extends the saturated-system harm logic — system designed to strip black wealth needs dismantling, echoing ‘On Sacrifice’ article’s structural analysis.