‘Reparations Happy Hour’ Invites White People to Pay for Drinks

In Portland, Ore., organizers of the “Reparations Happy Hour” invited black, brown and indigenous people to a bar and handed them $10 bills as they arrived, a small but symbolic gift mostly funded by white people who were asked not to attend.

Brown Hope, a local activist organization, wanted the event, which was held on Monday, to be a space for people of color in a mostly white city to meet one another, discuss policy issues and plan potential action.

While it was far from the full-scale reparations sought by some as penance for the horrors of slavery and continuing racial injustice, Cameron Whitten, the 27-year-old activist who organized the event, said there was one similarity: It made attendees feel as if their pain were valued and understood.

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Mr. Whitten said he hoped the event, in addition to building community, would call attention to reparations, the concept that black people should be financially compensated for the generations of trauma that preceded them.

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In 2014, the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates made a case for reparations in The Atlantic, and The New York Times has published a variety of viewpoints on the topic.

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Ron Daniels, the president of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century, a group that supports reparations, said they would be necessary for America to “fully heal itself.” Any efforts to bring attention to the idea, including a happy hour bearing that name in Portland, could help people organize around the issue, he said.

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Anticipating some criticism, he noted that it was not meant to diminish the seriousness of reparations. Should anyone question why white people were not invited, he said, “They show up by donating to make sure the event happens.” More than 100 people, not all of them white, donated, he said.

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