The news from the AU is impossible to ignore: at its 38th Summit and through new slides, the African Union has declared 2025 the “Year of Reparations: Justice for Africans & People of African Descent.”
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On its face, the language sounds like solidarity, but for Black Americans, and especially the descendant-community that drives organizations like AR1870, alarm bells are going off.
Why? Because the grassroots knows this: we already carry three clear, separate reparations claims, to the United States federal government (1776 to today), to the British Empire/U.K. (1619 to 1776), and to the African-region states and institutions that captured and sold those that arrived here. And none of those claims are due to be sidelined, diluted, or subsumed under a sweeping designation that lumps Black Americans into a “sixth region” of the African diaspora without full autonomy, accountability, or benefit to our community.
That concern isn’t theoretical, it’s already mobilizing action. Across Black American social-media circles, petitions to boycott the African Union are rapidly circulating, reflecting a growing refusal to be absorbed into institutions that neither represent nor answer to the descendant community. Many view the AU’s “sixth region” proposal as a political maneuver to insert itself into our affairs and gain proximity to the more than $2 trillion in Black American spending power, a move seen by many as opportunistic, not reparative.
The unease deepens when examining the AU’s choice of language. Its use of the phrase “people of African descent” is not accidental, and it’s the very same wording that has thrown the New York Reparations Task Force into turmoil, where activists are challenging race-based framing that erases lineage specificity. That identical language is now echoing from Addis Ababa to Albany, and the descendant community sees the danger: it shifts reparations from a legal claim of descendants to a cultural identity anyone can claim.
We understand that the AU, by declaring a solidarity agenda with “people of African descent,” also opens the door to framing the diaspora as a resource pool: the more than $2 trillion in Black-American purchasing power becomes not just a market, but a quarry. The question isn’t whether the AU can talk about reparations, the question is: Who controls the narrative and the funds? Who sets the priorities? Black American descendants must remain the ones writing the agenda, owning the strategy, and safeguarding the outcome.
Furthermore, many African-region states tied into the AU have historical responsibility for the slave trade, and in some places today they still profit from the tourism of slave castles, commodifying the horrors and suffering of that trade caused. If those same states or institutions now present themselves as our partners, without a full reckoning and structural commitment, the descendant-community will rightly see this as a money-grab thinly veiled in pan-African rhetoric.
AR1870 therefore issues a clear warning: we will not accept being treated as the “sixth region” of some continent-wide structure that ignores the specificity of our relationship with the U.S. state, our distinct lineage-based claim, and our governance mechanisms. Any institution or initiative tied to the AU must be voluntary, transparent, democratic, and fully accountable to Black American descendants — not simply marketed as diaspora integration.
We call on descendant-community organizations, faith-based groups, reparations coalitions, and policy-makers to reaffirm: our reparations claim is sovereign and cannot be co-opted. We demand that any AU-aligned project respect our self-determination, guarantee direct community benefit, exclude extractive models, and remain subordinate to the leadership of Black American descendants who have been on the front lines of building this movement.
In 2025 — the year that Africa has proclaimed as the “Year of Reparations” — Black American descendants should ask: Does this serve us — or does it serve someone else?
We choose to serve ourselves.
American Renewal 1870
Guarding the Promise of Reparative Justice
