african-american studies at the university of illinois chicago and author of making black lives matter and jared ball professor of communication and afrikaans studies at morgan state university and the author of the myth and propaganda of black buying power i want to thank you both for joining me in the arena barbara i want to start with you what does it mean when we say reparations and i know that's a broad question people have different ideas about what that means we can you explain a little bit and your estimation of how what reparations is a what it should be and how it would work. yeah i mean i think that's the area of of debate and struggle ray there are a number of models for reparations all of them limited in problematic if you will we think of reparations as a repair as redress for past harm and past grievance so the reason i think the reparations demand is a useful one in in the constellation of tactics that we might use in the black freedom movement is that it really does at the on the bottom line indict racial capitalism which was built on the backs of black people with stolen land and st