I don’t know the answer. That’s a problem. Embrace Boston’s Harm Report is an important step forward in the discussion on reparations. Although some cities have overcome barriers to issuing reparations, and there are historical precedents in the US, it is still hard to overcome the barriers. Tying current disparities to their historical roots makes it easier for people to see the need to make changes if not reparation payments.

The Harm report takes Dianne Wilkerson’s Contemporations concept a step further, although the two have very different implementation remedies. The approach of the Harm report is more like background support for a policy document on disparities in the Black community. Which makes me wonder, “What is Boston’s Black agenda?” And who would fund it?

Many Blacks have noticed that the state will now spend $1 billion for goods and services to support newly arrived immigrants. Which is fine, but what about those who already live here? One could argue that a similar amount should be spent on the existing Black and brown residents of the Commonwealth who have experienced documented disparities.  If we had a Black agenda, we could have argued for some of the American Rescue Plan Act money, and the city and state have had record surpluses, some of which could have been used to fund the Black agenda.

Boston has been considered a “majority-minority” city since 2000. The Black community along with their white and Jewish allies, both individuals and corporations, could do anything. We could vote anyone in or out of office, pass any legislation, or advocate for any budget item. The funding of a Black agenda might be as close as we get to receiving reparations.

In January of 2023, nearly three years after George Floyd’s murder, McKinsey & Co. found that $340 billion had been publicly announced by companies to support racial equity.

I would be interested in knowing how much of that was from companies doing business in Massachusetts, what they committed to spending money on, and if they kept their commitments.  Wouldn’t you like to see The Boston Foundation or BECMA  or another group publish a scorecard? Without any accountability, most of those commitments are hard to track. According to McKinsey, some companies made public statements in support of racial justice, but didn’t follow up with monetary commitments. Some companies just counted what they were already doing. Without accountability or transparency, we will never know what they did, and how much they gave. The money would have been easier to follow if we knew what part of Boston’s Black agenda, they were funding.

When I looked at the list of areas covered by the Harm report, I noticed they did not include a section on the environment, energy, and climate, injustices of the past, and how they are impacting communities of color today. This surprised me given The Boston Green Ribbon Commission and Embrace Boston’s Our Shared History Report which covers some of the history on environmental issues.

I noticed that the Harm Report did not include any of the findings or strategies from Dr. Atyia Martin’s “Resilient Boston: An Equitable and Connected City.” Nor did they seem to include The Boston Health Commission’s “Health of Boston Report 2023.”

During COVID, the news media kept referring to infamous The Tuskegee Syphilis Study, to explain why Blacks might be distrusting of the healthcare system. What they didn’t include was the countless unethical human experiments in this country that included vulnerable populations such as ethnic minorities, the poor, soldiers, and prisoners, as documented in the book “Acres of Skin: Human Experiments at Holmesburg Prison,” the historical segregation of hospitals in the North and that Blacks still experience disparity in treatment.

In the section on Culture & Symbols, they could have written more on the fact that people want diversity in the arts, but they don’t provide the necessary funding to make sure that happens, nor do they address the public policy issues. I provide some examples in my Op-ed “Addressing Bias in Boston’s Creative Economy.”

If we take the Harm Report and add in findings and reports from other studies, we will have the foundation for a Black Boston agenda. With participation from the various groups, NAACP, Urban League, BECMA, and The Black and Latino Caucus, among others, we could and must develop an agenda for the Black community in Boston. There appears to be plenty of money to fund it if it is a civic and government priority.

Ed Gaskin is Executive Director of Greater Grove Hall Main Streets and founder of Sunday Celebrations.