Quote of the Day

What I mean by the constructive view of reparations is the idea that we do need the people who have gotten rich off the spoils of yesterday’s injustice, yesterday’s apartheid, yesterday’s laying of the groundwork for today’s capitalism; and there needs to be redistribution from the large corporations that have gotten all of that wealth to the rest of the people throughout the world.

But the point of that redistribution isn’t just so we can shuffle around cells on an Excel spreadsheet. I think we should also be building a different kind of world that doesn’t structurally run on racism and other kinds of oppression and capitalism. And the construction of [this] constructive view is the point of building that world. That world would have a much different energy system. It would produce things in a different way. It would manage resources in a different and more democratic way. And I think those are the kinds of changes we have to think about building, rather than only thinking about redistributing money or only thinking about tearing down the structures that we have now.

– Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò
Excerpted from “Elite Capture: Philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò
on How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics”
Democracy Now!
January 18, 2023

Related Off-site Links:
The Constructive Politics of Climate Reparations: A Conversation with Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò – Climate Museum.org (November 27, 2022).
How Rich People Stole Identity Politics – The American Prospect (January 9, 2023).
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò Reconsiders “Centering the Marginalized” – Josiah R. Daniels (Sojourners (September 29, 2022).
Olúfémi O. Táíwò’s Theory of Everything – John Thomason (Grist (June 21, 2022).