The term “reparationist” currently lacks an official dictionary definition, but as the global movement for reparations gains momentum, this may soon change, offering remedies for the enduring harms of slavery and anti-Black discrimination but also allowing individuals to identify themselves with this centuries-old movement.

Can reparationist be a distinct identity, akin to feminist or abolitionist, a label worn with pride by progressive individuals showcasing their belief in reparative compensation for Black people? It turns out that, although the reparationist identity has not entered mainstream consciousness, people active in the movement have been calling themselves reparationists for years.

For Jumoke Ifetayo, the path to becoming a reparationist started at an early age. Influenced by his mother, Ifetayo began wearing traditional African clothes to school in Atlanta to reclaim a sense of his cultural heritage. “My mother started to wear traditional African clothing in the ’70s, and when I graduated from 7th grade, we had an honors ceremony, and my high school counselor asked me to wear a suit, and I said, ‘yes ma’am’ and showed [up in] a four-piece African suit,” Ifetayo says. Since then, he has continued to don traditional African clothing and served as a member of the National Coalition for Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA), one of the oldest national organizations dedicated to securing reparations for Black people in the United States.

In research about traits of pluralists, the Pop Culture Collaborative (PCC), a philanthropic intermediary working to transform the narrative landscape in the U.S., conducted research about traits of pluralists that suggests that people who identified as pluralists shared a set of core life events. A pluralist, in the context of political and social theory, is someone who believes that power should be distributed across a diverse group of people. According to Bridgit Antoinette Evans, the organization’s CEO, this research helped PCC see that “a pluralist identity formation may have a journey that starts early in life.” Evans points out that, as people move through these core life events, behavior or identity sets itself.

The path to becoming a reparationist may also similarly be sparked by a meaningful event that leads people down a path toward working to repair and liberate Black Americans in response to the harms of the transatlantic slave trade and its stain on society.

Identity has long played a role in activist strategies and has become more prominent in modern-day racial and social justice spaces. Social identity theory was first developed in the 1970s by two psychologists named Henri Tajfel and John Turner, seeking to explore how individuals categorize themselves into social groups. Their theory posited that people derive part of their identity from their membership in social groups (such as nationality, ethnicity, gender, religion, etc.) and that this categorization influences social perception and behavior.

Read the full article about identity reparations by Trevor Smith at YES!Magazine .