In an interview with Digital Trends, directors ErikaAlexander and WhitneyDow discuss reparations in America in their new PBS documentary TheBigPayback.
When Erika Alexander and Whitney Dow first set out to creat a prjct about reparations, they expected to make a thesis film about the debate surrounding H.R. 40, a 30-year-old Congressional bill that would establish a commission to study slavery and consider reparations for Black Americans. Plans shifted upon meeting Alderman Robin Rue Simmons and learning of her pursuit to pass the first government-funded reparations program in Evanston, Illinois.
It’s repairing the relationship between Black and White Americans. It also means repairing White people. As a White person, I believe you’re living in a state of cognitive dissonance where you are trying to manage this story that you’ve told about yourself, which has some holes in it. It’s really hard to keep holding that in play, so I think that part of the repair is also for the White community to repair itself.Alexander: Joy Reid.
Alexander: H.R. 40 is a study bill that’s in Congress. It was first introduced by Congressman John Conyers [D-Michigan] as a bill to study reparations and their effects. And to make recommendations …Alexander: For appropriate remedies. By the way, that was going to be the name of this film, Appropriate Remedies. It was that or The Big Payback. Whitney wanted Appropriate Remedies, and I wanted The Big Payback.
John Conyers would submit this bill for 30 years. The committee would refuse to even take it up for debate, let alone a vote. Representative Jackson Lee managed to not only get it voted out of committee but also has close to 200, if not over 200, co-sponsors on the bill. It’s just a question of whether the leadership will bring it to the floor. We’ll see if [Republican House Speaker] Kevin McCarthy wants to bring this to the floor.
No one should be that afraid or calculate that it might harm them the most if they did it. It’s already harming not only Black people but all sorts of people. Poor people and all these other people have been harmed by policies that they put in to stop or deny Black people, but it ended up denying poor Whites and everyone else, so it needs to be handled.
What stood out about Alderman Simmons during this process? When did you know you made the right decision to shift the film toward her work? I thought that type of honesty should be — and I think Whitney did as well — rewarded with us always being honest with her. We had a really great dialogue going back and forth as filmmakers to a woman who was becoming, like Michelle Obama would say, “living out loud,” under a lot of pressure, allowing us to watch her.
Imagine a poker game where people have been cheating. You’ve been playing against someone who has been cheating for like 400 years, and you catch them cheating. They go, “Oh, yeah. You’re right. I’m sorry. That was so bad. I was cheating. I admit I was cheating. Cheating is terrible. I’m never going to cheat again. But now, you can’t cheat, either. You all have to play by the rules, and I’m keeping all the chips.
In Evanston, it happened to be around redlining real estate. If you went to Jackson, Mississippi, it might be something different. If you go to San Diego, California, it’s something different. What I like about this story is communities saying, to answer that earlier question you asked, “Yeah. I wasn’t involved in slavery, but this echo of legacy passed through every community in this country.
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