Inheritance

by THE EDITORS
in Spring 2026

Neville Barbour II, “Mami Potomac,” 2025

An inheritance generated from the acquisitive logics of our capitalist present can allow you to live ignorant of all the pain and violence it caused. And even when one becomes aware, philanthropy represents no break. We will not inherit reparations from a philanthropic project that matches the scale of the loss. 

True reparative processes are recognition also that there are other ways to pass things down. Indeed, other things to pass down, other ways to keep us safe and protected. Families without wealth, passed down material possessions, like heirlooms. A piece, a remnant, a reminder of who you are and must be. Anthropologists have long discovered that even enslaved Africans in the diaspora–the very antithesis of the wealth-hoarding class–still passed down material things. What they gave us is less important than what it was for. How we receive it will unlock its blessings. 

Among those inheritances are the immaterial. The ability to recall and remember something accumulated through life experience that cannot be locked away in a trust. What we will into existence transcends the power of attorney. How to love, how to be, how to sing. What we are and must be in light of all these hows. This is the only inheritance that will matter. 

For this spring’s issue, the editors of A Gathering Together, invite you to consider these questions of how.