Moten and Harney are in favor of the concept of reparations as part of a project of overturning an antiblack social order – it assumes their k of reparations as “repaying the unpayable debt”

FRED: I defer to what Stefano said. I don’t have that much to say about it. There’s a very important, and let’s call it righteous strain, of Afro-American and Afro-Diasporic studies that we could place under the rubric of debt collection. And it’s basically like, “we did this and we did that, and you continue not to acknowledge it. You continue to mis-name it. You continue to violently misunderstand it. And I’m going to correct the record and collect this debt.” And there’s a political component to it, too. Maybe that’s partly what the logic of reparations is about. Or even the “I have a Dream’ speech, he’s like ‘we came here today to cash a check. A promise was given. We came to collect.” Tat’s what King said. So, I don’t disavow that rhetoric or even that project. And, in many ways, I’m a beneficiary of that project, in ways that are totally undeniable and I don’t want to deny. I also think that that project is not the project of black radicalism – which is not about debt collection or reparation. It’s about a complete overturning – again, as Fanon would say, and others have said. If that’s your concern, if that’s your project, the mechanisms of debt collection become less urgent. Or they become something that one is concerned about, but in a different way. Like, “I will note the debt, and I will note the brutal and venal and vicious way in which the debt is unacknowledged.” When we talk about debt, to talk about the unpayability of debt is not to fail to acknowledge the debt. But, certain mugs just refuse even to acknowledge the debt. And I think a whole lot of what people want when they want reparations is in fact an acknowledgment, and they want an acknowledgement of the debt because it constitutes something like a form of recognition, and that becomes very problematic because the form of recognition that they want is within an already existing system. They want to be recognized by sovereignty as sovereign, in a certain sense. So, basically, I can read a big old book on the history of Western Marxism, and I can be alternatively pissed of about the way that its author can write that history without writing about CLR James. I’m alternatively pissed of, bemused, feel pity for his ignorant ass, whatever. You start to feel pity for his ignorant butt, but then you also understand the deep structural connections between ignorance and arrogance. And you can’t feel sorry for an ignorant motherfucker if he’s also an arrogant motherfucker, so then you get mad again. You stay mad, actually. But this is not a personal injury. You have to step to it in a different way. So, basically, I’m with Stefano on this, which is that I feel like I want to be part of another project. Which is to say I’m not acceding to the fact; it’s not like I’m just trying to turn my eye from it. I don’t want to accept in silence without protest all the different forms of inequality and exploitation that emerge as a function of the theft and of the failure to acknowledge the debt. It’s not just that I’m pissed of that Willie Dixon never got paid the way he was supposed to get paid for all them songs that Plant and Jimmy Page stole, but also that I want him or his locked-up grandson to get the damn money. I’m not sitting here saying, “I’m above them getting the money.” I don’t believe that what has happened in general is reparable, but if the United States finally decided to write me a check, I would cash the check and put it in the bank or go buy something stupid with it, a Rolls Royce or a Bentley, something that will really make George Stephanopoulos mad. I would accept the check, and be pissed of that it ain’t as much as it should be. But I also know that what it is that is supposed to be repaired is irreparable. It can’t be repaired. The only thing we can do is tear this shit down completely and build something new.