Is healthy debate a thing of the past? You know, when people can disagree without being disagreeable, respect one another and work toward a solution that might involve compromise.
You’d be forgiven for giving up on the concept or thinking it never existed, especially as discussions of what books should or should not be on school library shelves turn into school board shouting matches with teachers subject to interrogation or relegated to the sidelines. And don’t even try to have a civil chat on where COVID-19 may have originated or what could be the most effective treatment. That’s the best way to start a fight while ignoring the next pandemic that could be right around the corner.
That’s why it was interesting to talk with the directors of “The Big Payback,” which premiered on PBS in January. Erika Alexander and Whitney Dow didn’t exactly choose an easy topic as the subject of their documentary. The two are traveling across the country, with recent stops at historically Black colleges and universities in North Carolina, to foster debate and perhaps understanding of reparations, a topic that could charitably be called controversial and one that’s been making recent headlines.
The film spotlights the push by Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, for HR 40, which would establish the “Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans.” The bill, named after the post-Civil War broken promise of “40 acres and a mule” to the formerly enslaved, itself has a long history: It was first proposed in 1989 by then-Democratic Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, who died in 2019.
In the film, the congresswoman’s fight on the federal level is paired with the ultimately successful effort of Robin Rue Simmons, a former alderwoman in Evanston, Ill., whose community advocacy targeted the very real racial discrimination in housing laws and policies — history that determined current disparities in her city, history that could be documented with facts and figures. That the solution eventually reached was criticized by some for its narrow focus, for being too much or too little or much too late, is also the point.
It was, however, a start for Evanston, and it happened only because of healthy debate.
