Why does reparations eligibility require a distinct lineage, not just shared racial identity? Yvette Carnell, co-founder of the ADOS movement (American Descendants of Slavery), joined host Briahna Joy Gray on the Bad Faith Podcast to make the case for ADOS reparations as a specific, tort-based claim rooted in a documented historical harm and contribution, not a broader diaspora-wide demand.
Why ADOS Draws a Line
Carnell argued that reparations eligibility must be defined by two linked factors: the specific harm a group suffered and the specific unpaid contribution that group made to building the country. “Slaves built the country,” she said. “If you were not here as a slave, you were not a part of that contribution. You were also not a part of the harm.”
She distinguished this from a broader “Black agenda” that ADOS also supports, including anti-discrimination legislation covering housing and employment discrimination that affects all Black people in America regardless of lineage. Reparations specifically, she said, remains “our cornerstone,” but the movement’s full platform extends well beyond it.
Reparations as Inheritance, Not a Handout
Carnell framed reparations through an inheritance analogy rather than a request for new wealth. She compared the racialized wealth gap to inherited debt, arguing descendants of enslaved people inherited generational poverty the same way others inherit wealth from parents or grandparents, without having personally “worked for” either outcome.
She pointed to Aetna, which formally apologized in 2000 for selling life insurance policies to slaveholders in the 1850s that paid out if an enslaved person died, as an example of a still-existing corporation that profited directly from slavery and could theoretically bear tort-based liability today.
How Other Reparations Precedents Compare
Gray and Carnell discussed why reparations paid to Japanese Americans for internment, and later to Holocaust survivors, drew far less political backlash than proposals for Black reparations. Carnell argued the difference isn’t really about how much time has passed, since the U.S. also paid reparations to Guam residents in 2016, when President Obama signed the Guam World War II Loyalty Recognition Act, decades after the harm occurred.
She pointed to the recent death of Viola Fletcher, one of the last known survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, who passed away in November 2025 at age 111 without receiving restitution, as evidence that timing isn’t the real obstacle. “It’s not about the thing that they’re saying it’s about,” Carnell said. “It is about them never wanting to make us whole.”
A Critique That Spans Both Parties
Carnell criticized establishment Democrats and leftist organizers alike for what she called maintaining “a certain kind of racialized cast,” arguing both camps ask Black voters to accept incremental gains without direct engagement on reparations. She referenced Rep. Jim Clyburn’s comments blaming lower Black voter turnout for Kamala Harris’s 2024 election loss as an example of a pattern where Black voters are held responsible for outcomes without being offered specific policy commitments in return.
Gray and Carnell also discussed potential political alignment between ADOS and parties further left, like the Green Party, given shared support for reparations and single-payer healthcare, even as both acknowledged tension around whether reparations should remain a discrete, lineage-based demand or fold into broader economic justice platforms.
5 Key Takeaways
- ADOS reparations rest on a dual test. Eligibility requires both a documented historical harm and an unpaid contribution specific to American slavery, not shared racial identity alone.
- Reparations is one part of a broader Black agenda. ADOS separately supports anti-discrimination legislation that applies to all Black people in America, regardless of lineage.
- Corporate entities like Aetna remain theoretically liable. Aetna’s documented 1850s slave-insurance policies illustrate the tort-based argument for corporate reparations liability.
- Timing isn’t the real obstacle to reparations. Guam and Holocaust-era reparations were paid decades after the harm occurred, undercutting the argument that too much time has passed for Black reparations.
- Carnell criticizes both parties equally. She argues Democrats and leftist organizers alike ask for Black political loyalty without committing to reparations specifically.
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