Startin' Stuff Week
I'm not exactly sure if I can do this for a week… there's so much to react to that starting stuff seems a little redundant sometimes. But I know one topic I can throw out there that can easily be stretched into a week of shit and flames.
Reparations.
There, I said it. Wanna make something of it?
The thought of writing something on reparations came to me while reading idols of the marketplace this morning:
Honestly, I couldn't care less whether a U.S. President, Democrat or Republican, aplogizes for slavery. We all know that it was a crime against humanity. We all should know that this nation stands at the apex of power due in large part to the unpaid labor of many of my ancestors. But no apology will return to Africans and Africans in America what was taken from them. No apology will erase the torture heaped on black men and the degradation of black women. No apology will recover the lost opportunities or stifled ambition of people who were denied the basic fundamentals of the Bill of Rights and Constitution. No apology will bring better schools, create employment opportunites, or increase the life expectancy of many in the black community. It is certainly will not bestow honor and dignity on those who survived slavery and Jim Crow. They created their own dignity and did the best they could under circimstances that I could never imagine. Circumstances that existed as late as a generation ago. My fifty-five year old mother tells me of times when she and her siblings wanted to visit a local amusment park but could not since it was not the "colored day."
The opponents of reparations for Black Americans insist that all the damage was done by slavery, and done so long ago that reparations to affected partied are impossible. Disregarding for the moment that
I am a party affected by slavery, Walter wrote a key sentance in that quote above: "Circumstances that existed as late as a generation ago."
It's not just slavery that caused damage that needs redress. It's the state laws that blocked voting rights. It's the funding policies that forced Black school districts (again, mandated by law) to use hand-me-down books given to them by white school districts after they were worn out or outdated. It's the federally mandated red-lining that practically forced down the property values of Black folks when they… finally… were allowed to buy homes under the GI bill.
And I'm only talking about government policies that directly impacted Black folks' Black people's ability to advance across the board. If, somehow, reparations could be gotten for the hostile environment that kept Black people in a fight-or-flight state 24/7, literally eating away at us physically, wearing down the repair mechanisms that would let us live as long as the majority, if the embarrassment of being followed in stores for no reason could be assessed, if that level of behaivior could be quantified, then I'd be standing next to the more radical reparations proponents demanding like 3.5 times the GNP.
As things stand, though, I'm not looking for a check. What I'm looking for is honor for Black folks. I'm looking for the treatment of Black folks to fully reflect out rights under the Constitution and Bill of Rights (which is why I am so hostile toward Bush and Ashcroft). I'm looking for Black people to have opportunity to match our ambitions. I'm looking for better schools, employment opportunities, health care.
I'm looking for a society that willfully damaged my people to willfully set about correcting that damage instead of willfully shirking the responsibility of fixing what their people broke.
Do this, and that is all the reparations I'll be looking for. Give us schools, and teachers, give us medicines we can afford, give us respect. If you have to give it to everyone else, fine, I have no beef with that. I'm saying that this must be done for Black people if the mainstream is not simply lying about their committment to the morality they espouse.
And if that is too much, I'll take a couple hundred grand, yeah. But truthfully, money is the least expensive offer no matter how big the check.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 7/14/2003 03:20:52 PM |
Posted by P6 at July 14, 2003 03:20 PM
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