Kansas City’s history of racial division and injustice is painful and often appalling.
But the city now has an opportunity through the Mayor’s Commission on Reparations to show other cities — and maybe the nation itself — how to begin repairing the vast damage inflicted on Black citizens by discriminatory, foolish, destructive, and indefensible past actions taken under city auspices.
Our national, regional, and local histories are so soaked in the corrosive, dehumanizing concept of white supremacy that without a thoughtful, fair, and effective program of reparations, there’s little chance that Kansas City — 160 years after the Civil War — will ever create a cohesive interracial community committed to human respect and opportunity…