On today’s edition of Bring It On!, hosts, Clarence Boone and Liz Mitchell, spend the hour with Ashley Pirani, who is a candidate for County Council District #3. In February, leaders from Monroe County’s Black community discussed the possibility of reparations for historic racial injustices during the annual State of the Black Community Address.

The Bloomington Black Strategic Alliance and Monroe County Black Democratic Caucus held the fifth annual event over Zoom. Members of the  caucus’s Reparations Committee spent the fall of 2021 researching the county’s history of racial injustices and presented some of their findings during the event.

IU professor Valerie Grim, Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Indiana University Department of African American and African Diaspora  Studies, shared that while the research was in its preliminary stages, the February discussion was intend to initiate a dialogue concerning whether  there are experiences and encounters in Bloomington and Monroe County that meet a reparation standard.

According to committee member Ashley Pirani, just 1 percent of Bloomington’s Black population owns a home. She said areas of Bloomington that had racially restrictive covenants have average home values well over the city average, while neighborhoods with historically higher populations of Black residents have houses that usually sell below city average. As for what reparations would look like, the committee hadn’t gotten that far.

Ashley Pirani, who is a candidate for County Council District #3, discusses what this all means in more detail.

Credits: