Nikole Hannah-Jones Explains It All: Reparations, Rage, and How we Have Hope

What does reparations actually mean? And why is it important to talk about right now?

In this special live episode of Undistracted , Brittany Packnett Cunningham sits down with someone perfectly positioned to answer those questions: Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 Project creator and New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones. Together, they get into why the economic practice of slavery requires an economic solution (yes, reparations is broader, but “frankly, I’m most interested in cash,” says Hannah-Jones); how reparations for Black Americans is different (and isn’t) from Germany’s reparations to Holocaust survivors; and why, most of all, our history shows that we have to have hope.

Plus, in the group chat, Brittany hears from Liberation Ventures’ co-founder and CEO Aria Florant and author and activist Preston Mitchum, for a conversation about their own personal relationships to reparations, and how imagining a different future is itself an act of resistance. We want to thank Liberation Ventures for their support of this podcast.

You can support their work by following @LiberationVenture, joining the #WeekOfRepair hashtag and/or signing up for their newsletter at: And we’d like to thank these key reparations activist groups for joining the live event audience: The Braxton Institute, The Black-Eyed Susans for Repair, Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, Why We Can’t Wait Coalition, DC Justice Lab, Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center and Get Free.