Reparations again - This time let's get it right and get it done

By Gloria Dulan-Wilson
Hello All:
I originally posted this article in April, 2010 in response to an article posted by Henry Louis Gates that appeared in the New York Times.
That was nearly 10 years ago.  Reparations becomes a perennial issue that they trot out to divert attention from the fact that it's only a discussion with no intention for implementation.  It is now being kicked around as a political football to curry favor with Black voters by those who are currently bidding for the role of president.  Of course, regardless who gets elected, it's then submerged to the backdrop again; or devolves into all kinds of bickering and debates and differences over the best way to compensate us for the heinous treatment we've endured and continue to endure over the past four centuries.
The original study and focus that took place in Congress in 1989 has been sitting, gathering dust for 30 years.  There was a recent hearing in Congress, with brothers Danny Glover and Ta'Nahisi Coates being part of those who testify in support of it. Of course, the shining star was Economist/Educator/Activist Julianne Malveaux, taking center stage in making sure Black people and Congress were full apprised about what it really is, and what needs to be done. However, the upshot of the whole that is that if they do nothing, it becomes just another "fact finding" committee.
Reparations in the US is nothing new. In fact, whenever American made war on a country, causing devastation and destruction, they would then turn around and help them rebuild and restructure. Interestingly enough, when the Jews survived the German Holocaust, they were given reparations and their own land almost immediately – even though we never made a war against them. Perhaps this was the result of American guilt at not having acted upon the prevention of their victimization immediately.  That support has continued ongoing and unabated for nearly 75 years, and has rendered them a wealthy, powerful country.
At  a recently held National Action Network Conference, in April 2019, after all but three of the presidential candidates regaled the participants about their worthiness as the next president, and pledged that they would consider some form of reparations. Yet, in the recently held debates on national television, only one candidate – Marianne Williamson – has made it the center of her campaign.
At the same National Action Network Confernce, Congressman James E. Clyburn (D- S Carolina) addressed the audience and reminded them of the fact that just studying reparations was not sufficient. He stated, "The study has already been done; why would it be necessary to do another one?" He was definitely on track. Study means vascillation and rumination over the same information they already have. Of course, Congressman Clyburn addressed a crowd there for the evening Gospel Fest – most of those who needed to hear it were no longer there.  The cameras had already gone home, and the audience was more interested in the gospel concert than the future of their lives vis a vis receiving just compensation for all the sacrifices they and their ancestors (We and Our Ancestors) have endured, and continue to do so right up to this very moment.
This of course before we had the predator in chief in the white house and now see how really serious things can be when all our rights are being assaulted and undermined on every level. There is so much we can do – but we must first decide and then act. We cannot allow any one to ever again subjugate us to subservient levels

THIS IS THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE - WITH A FEW MODIFICATIONS - FROM 2010
By Gloria Dulan-Wilson
April 14, 2010

Hello All:

The following is in response to an article emailed to me by a Ms. Burnette that was copied from a New York Times Article featuring Henry Louis Gates. The article appears below. My comments are first. Read the article below first in order to understand where I'm coming from. Thanks, GDW

I grow tired of the "blame the victim" missages (yes, I said "missages", not messages -- because they are miss-leading info) that we get from our erudite, but not always on target brother. Frankly, I like Prof. Gates. But, as far as I'm concerned, he is not the end-all/be-all when it comes to African/American issues. He definitely has a place and a role, but I think we must be vigilant when it starts to sound more like what the whites are saying than the whites.

I do not like the “blame the victim trend of thought” we seem to be following lately. It's especially onerous when the circumstances of the victim is couched in modern mis-interpretations, deliberately overlooking the victim's lack of sophistication, or understanding of the underlying motivations of a group of predators so skilled in the decimation of whole civilizations for their own rapacious pleasure, which is what the invading europeans who hit Africa like the bubonic plague were.

If Africans "had a hand in the slave trade," it was due to their lack of understanding of the ramifications of the situation. And the invading whites were highly skilled, and widely known in other, more sophisiticated circles for taking advantage of the innocence, good will and ignorance of indigenous people, and used it against them in so many instances.

Like the American Indians in the US, or the indigenous people "discovered" by Columbus, when a tribe vanquished another tribe, they were first subjugated to ignominious tasks and humiliation by the conquering tribe. Generally, however, they later intermarried into the conquering tribe, and they all became one. That was the tradition in Africa, in the Caribbean; in Japan; in China; Saudi Arabia, and so many other FIRST WORLD CULTURES. It was how things were done. Even in the Bible enemies were "sold" into slavery. Some were sent to Rome, Spain, Greece, etc. But when it came to modern slavery, most of the African tribes active in the euro slave trade were not ever aware of the heinous, hideous, nefarious, evil, sinister, debasing, denigrating (can't say enough bad things about it -- because, truth be told, we are still subjected to the same underlying racism) that whites -- German, French, BRITISH, American (a/k/a British), Spanish, Portuguese and  Danish, subjected us to via the trans-Atlantic Slave trade, and chattel slavery.

And don't you dare ever, ever, try to say that Black people had a material hand in the resulting 400 years we endured once we were stolen from the Motherland (read Stolen Legacy).

So now, do they owe us? YES!!!!! BIG TIME!!!
And they know it. They've know it since 1865. They've been trying to duck that responsibility for quite some time. That's partly why Lincoln was assassinated – the main reason was that he freed the slaves; their meal ticket and whipping boys. That's how after Andrew Johnson became president -- he was a southerner from Tennessee that stood for the status quo – did not hesitate in rolling back what Lincoln had done. But later, Rutherford B. Hayes actually sealed the deal in dismantling Lincoln's benevolence.

Fast forward to now, and there is a debate as to whether or not they should do for us what they did for the Japanese and some of the other entities they try to curry favor with.    They owe us and they owe Africa - big time. The egregious "theft of service" and human capital happened both during and after the Civil War. And the Rape of Africa continues -- in case you haven't noticed – this time at the hands of the Chinese.  At the same time African Americans are still undergoing the very real remnants of Racism -- from substandard housing, ecological racism, substandard education; to the lack of job opportunities, racial profiling, prison industrial military programs, etc., garbage TV and media target the lowest level of disinformation. We are targeted for destruction by buying into what is placed before us by tainted hands.

Yet they can't figure out how to repay us. They have to do a “study” - to do “research.” I even had a red neck (yes, I said it – and the shoe definitely fit, chawing tobacco and all), ask me, “How do you know who is Black? What about the mulattoes?” I was two seconds off taking a shoe upside his head. How dare he call us mulattoes. But then, I had to think about it. They have been counting, dividing, categorizing us for at least 250 years. We were their meal ticket. They had to know everything about us. So they came up with terminology to describe who we were based on our skin tone, hair grade, size, pigmentation, strength. When they advertised us for sale, they had to describe us, whether we had a docile nature or if we were breeders, or if our men were bucks, or studs. We were their money.
But now, they can't figure out how much they owe us, or who they should pay it to, and under what circumstances, and how far back to they need to go to level the books. But, I submit, if they can figure out how to wage wars over nothing, how to stack us on top of each other and carry us across the ocean and have enough of us survive so that we can work a plantation, they most certainly can figure out how to repay us for those 400 years of unpaid labor and mental and physical cruelty.
It's quite simple. If they can construct two mega million dollar baseball stadiums in a city that had material complicity in the evisceration of Main Street, while their Wall Street robberymen get away with murder; they can definitely figure out a way to make sure that we receive our full reparations.

In fact, I'll make it simple:
 1)Give each and every African American who is now living in the U.S. (what is it,  32+ million of us?) $2.5 million tax free dollars each and one 4 bedroom/2 bathroom house on a quarter acre of land, with two cars. The reparation repayment period can begin now and go over a 15 year period. The $2.5 million dollars are not only tax free, but is placed in an interest bearing account, and paid out over a period of 10 years, instead of receiving it in a lump sum, so that it's not gobbled up or squandered.
2) Each individual will receive their funds upon completing a post-traumatic slave debriefing, and specific level of education/training for those who have not finished school; all must take six weeks financial literacy so they can manage their funds and be wise stewards over their money.
3) Provide free, quality education or training programs that levels the playing field. This would include those parents and high school drop outs who need to go back and upgrade their education.
NOTE: The tax free angle keeps it from being gobbled up by the system; and the financial education means we learn how to manage our money and make sure we use it wisely and invest it intelligently; and keep modern day carpet baggers and con artists from cheating us out of our money.
NOTE: Four bedrooms, two bath rooms and 2 cars replaces the 40 acres and a mule. Notice I said each person, not each family. The individual must be of legal age to be eligible (18 years and over).
NOTE: Individuals who are active, or were active in Civil Rights or Black Power between 1954 and 1975 receive a Black Power Bonus of $1 million dollars for each year they put their lives on the line in the service of the Black community. Black families where that activist was murdered or martered white police/racist whites/ etc. will receive a bonus for each loved one they lost.
ADDITIONALLY: Each Black man, woman and child should have post-traumatic counseling and psychotherapy – by competent BLACK psychiatrists to help them get over the residual trauma we continue to suffer from consciously and subconsciously.

It's just that simple. We don't need algorithms; we don't need actuarial scientists; it ain't rocket science folks. And if we stop the stupid war with Iraq, we would most definitely have the money to do that, underwrite the new health laws, as well as put together an educational system that truly EDUCATES all Americans.

But it's too easy to try to shuffle along and put the blame on the victim; while the victim in turn continues to duck and dodge the issue; and the white slave traders' progeny continues to profit from our misery.

I, for one am tired of hearing this. Read Tom Burrell's book “Brainwashed.” That might clarify the amount of propaganda we are subjected to on an ongoing basis. Read Joy Degruy's Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome; how about from **Slavery to Freedom by John Hope Franklin, and Up From Slavery by Lerone Bennet? Study J.A. Rogers "World's Great Men of Color," WEB duBois (anything and everything he writes is golden); Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson.  Better yet, read  "The Philosophies and Opinions of Marcus Garvey," the original by Marcus Garvey (not the watered down version). We need to re-educate ourselves. We need to stop allowing them to slide out from under their very real culpability, past and present, that still pervades this country.

African Americans need to wake up and inform themselves.  Pull out all those old, original books that were honestly written by Black men and women who lives were on the line, but made it their business to tell the truth.

I don't ever remember there being any signs, placards, books or ads written by Africans in any African language or dialect inviting whites in to come to Africa and buy human Black slaves to take back to America or England to torture, rape, castrate, and hang; do you?   I don't remember there ever being any such friendship between the chiefs and the white maurauders -- the chiefs were as likely to be killed as the people they ruled. Don't remember there ever been any floor plans designed by Africans whereby they diagrammed how to lay their people end to end on top of each other so that more of them could fit in the vessel, so in case one of them didn't make it, they could be thrown overboard and still have enough cargo to realize a profit.   Do you?  If you come across any documentation of the sort, I would certainly like to see it.  The slave trade may have used hapless African tribesmen to help do their dirty work, but it was totally and soley initiated and implemented by whites.  

And stop trying to make President Obama the scapegoat in this issue. Yes, he has a role to play, but you're not going to dump all this on his shoulders without him having the full weight of the information before him as well. The President is a very intelligent brother. His sense of history runs a lot deeper than a few clippings in a publication that has spent most of its time trying to vilify him and his efforts. Additionally, this takes all of us reading from the same page, so to speak to make it work for all of us.

Frankly, I think it's time to either start Saturday Schools or Sunday Sessions, where we as a people across the nation begin to reacquaint ourselves, our history, our cross cultural similarities (i.e. where did all those boats that shipped us from Africa land, and how are we similar and how are we different).

We need to begin reconnecting our fragmented history now. If we start now, we can have a compendium of ECLECTIC BLACK HISTORY that will debunk the lies and begin the system of communication to get us reunited --Africans/African-American/African-Jamaicans/African-Trinidadians/African-Haitians/African-Caribbeans/African-Brazilians/African-Venezuelans/African-Guyanese/African-Martiniquans/African-St. Lucians/African-Asians, and on and on and on.

There is a healing needed. We have to do it from the inside out. Of course we deserve reparations. We deserve apologies. We deserve all of that and more. But we also have to look at the fact that as a result of the horrors we've endured, we've been the subject of our own self-hatred. As such, we have to forgive ourselves and each other and begin to work together to heal ourselves.

I appreciate Dr. Gates tracing of our various ancestral lines. I think we do need to know where we emanated from. But, given the fact that we were forcefully "crossbred" during our enslavement, it really doesn't matter in the long run. If we decide on a particular tribe we want to affiliate with in Africa, we should be able to be welcomed into that family source. They can't prove us wrong. If we use what we know to help Africa get back on her feet, we should be welcome regardless of what the tribal underpinnings are (of course I know that many of our brothers and sisters there are a long way away from such considerations; but perhaps this is one of the other focal points we need to be looking at). Neither of us can afford to continue wallowing in our ignorance, allowing others to make pronouncements and decisions for us.

It really does all begin with us. We have to make the first steps. We have to make sure that we are as knowledgeable about who we are as anyone who sets out to define us (white or Black). And if it does not move us forward as a people, we have the responsibility to keep digging. Or decide to redefine ourselves in such a way that it has the maximum benefit for us as ECLECTICALLY BLACK PEOPLE of the World. But we most definitely and assuredly deserve reparations, and no flimsy rationalization of some African involvement in the Transatlantic Slave Trade mitigates the debt owe us by the miscreants who started it. They benefitted, now we deserve compensation.
NOW THAT YOU KNOW
WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?
Stay Blessed &
ECLECTICALLY BLACK
Gloria Dulan-Wilson

BY THE WAY, THIS IS NOT A SPECTATOR SPORT - YOUR RESPONSE, RECOMMENDATIONS ARE NEEDED AND WELCOMED - 


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