The national movement to gain reparations for the descendents of enslaved Africans was a fast-rolling bandwagon until slowed by events of 9/11. Well, it’s accelerating again. In truth, it’s been picking up momentum since Hurricane Katrina blew the cover off this nation’s well-camouflaged race/class divide. The distress revealed in that storm’s wake moved even President George Bush to urge redress… return to article
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Reader Comments (23)Page 1 of 1 pagesRecently Mr. Silis Muhammad, the Chairman of All For Reparations And Emancipation, delivered the following statement to the 12th Session of the U.N. Working Group On Minorities in Geneva:
“Greetings Mr. Chairman, Members of the Working Group on Minorities.
My name is Silis Muhammad. For well over nine years we have traveled to Geneva. For nine years we have spoken to you about the Afrodescendant people. We know that we are a nation of people: history, all the wise scientists, and you, in your hearts, will bear witness that we, Afrodescendants, are an ancient people who descended from Abraham. We were scattered through slavery, stripped of our original language, culture and religion, living today, suffering the lingering effects of slavery.
The first time we spoke at the UN, to the Working Group on Minorities, concerning our human rights, you began seeking to find a way for us to fit into the definition of the ICCPR, for we mimic the mother tongue, culture and religion of our slave-masters’ children, having been robbed of our own. The Working Group on Minorities received a wisely worded mandate from the Sub-Commission, to consider the ‘lingering effects of slavery.’ Over the years the Working Group did consider the lingering effects of slavery and you have the results today. Leaders of Afrodescendants, about 250 million of us, met in La Ceiba, Honduras in 2001, and again in Chincha Peru in 2005, under the protection of the UN, in the sight of Nations, and affirmed our commitment to one another. This was done in the presence of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
We want formal UN recognition of our self-chosen name, Afrodescendants. We want restoration to the human families of the Earth. For the sake of simple justice, and to correct a grave error, O United Nations, hear our prayer! In error, the UN granted recogntion, restoration and reparations 60 years ago to a scattered people who claimed to be the seed of Abraham, the victims of 400 years of slavery. The result of that grave UN error is ongoing war and terror for the entire world today.
We, Afrodescendants, are the scattered orphan children, descended from 400 years of plantation slavery. Our recognition by the UN would not bring war and terror. It would, instead, correct a grave wrong and bring the truth to a suffering world. It has been our prayer that the Sub-Commission and the Working Group on Minorities would be our symbolic ‘dry land,’ allowing us, the slave descendants, to cross our symbolic ‘red sea.’
The good works of the Working Group on Minorities and the Sub-Commission cannot go unnoticed unless the Human Rights Department fails 250 million souls altogether. We call upon the United Nations to do the right thing, for the sake of peace, and for the sake of all Nations of the Earth. The pathway of the slave-descendants’ collective human rights, recognition and restoration must be protected and assured.”The above statement by Mr. Silis Muhammad is submitted by Malik Al-Arkam. For the best in-depth coverage of our Reparations Movement please read each issue of Muhammad Speaks newspaper and visit www.AllForReparations.org.
Posted by mathrise on Aug 22, 2006 at 10:49 AM This is a loser. People everywhere could come up with some claim of reparations due to them for the raw deal their accestors got.
I suggest you read, “Enough” by Juan Williams and get on with life in the real world.
Posted by whattheheck on Aug 22, 2006 at 12:15 PM Don’t worry, WTF. No one’s gonna confiscate your property.
Posted by Major Major on Aug 22, 2006 at 4:40 PM An official apology from the government, acknowledging the evil effects of the slave trade upon millions of African-descended people as well as the whole of American culture, might be entirely appropriate, but how meaningful is an apology, really? The risk is that it would stand by itself and become little more than a gesture, i.e. possessing little substance beyond the words themselves.
Admittedly, many might find such a gesture highly meaningful in a way that I do not. For that reason alone, it is worth doing. But reparations are another matter.
I’ve expressed my misgivings about reparations before. Who, exactly, would be eligible to receive reparations? Should it be based upon some percentage of African ancestry in one’s bloodlines? Would wealthy or middle-class Af-Ams receive reparations too? What would be the cut-off point between “deserving” and “not deserving”, and how would disputed deserts be resolved? Who, exactly, would pay, and in what form? Would it be in the form of government programs assigned only to benefit those of African descent (presuming they “make the cut” of eligibility)? Would it be in the form of cash? Either way, from where would it come? A new tax? Government bond sales? Mass printing of notes? Electronic credits? I’ve asked questions like these quite a few times and received no real answers, almost as though the actual practicalities of the issue have no place in the discussion of it.
I hope I don’t have to conclude that because I’m a paleface, my questions aren’t taken seriously. That would be ignorant and, more to the point, mean. Had about enough meanness in connection with skin color already, have we not?
If there was an authentic effort to redress modern grievances based on the generations-long crime of slavery and segregation laws, I think it would best take the form of social investment in schools and neighborhood businesses, halting the easy access to firearms, and implementing rehab programs for addicts as part of reforming drugs policy. Economic opportunity, schooled minds, and reduced burden of violence and racially imbalanced incarceration rates might be worth something; they could be worth a lot.These wouldn’t be directed exclusively at African-Americans, but they would benefit poor or marginalized people most and might therefore benefit the category of African-descent people (if you prefer to think of people as being categorized) to a greater proportion because they are more often poor or marginalized.
Obviously measures like these would not erase past injustices, but they might allow today’s people some kind of stepping off point away from the endless grind of alienation and bitterness (which, in my experience, plenty of Af-Ams have already stepped away from, without reparations). At the very least, those who have a little gumption and the will to use an opportunity properly could benefit. We can’t do anything for people of the past, but we can and should make it possible for today’s generation to not be hobbled by that ugly past. It seems to me that it would be in everyone’s interest, whether brown or pink of skin, and would certainly be more logical and practical than strictly race-based giveaways, which will only infuriate those who aren’t on the “deserving” list and in any case are unworkable when it comes down to the actual doing of it.
Maybe then we can begin the long task of unhooking from the racialist paradigm, which hobbles everyone, even those of us who don’t believe in it any more. Now that’s a bandwagon I’d love to see people jumping on! If only.
Posted by Kuya on Aug 23, 2006 at 2:17 AM “This is a loser. People everywhere could come up with some claim of reparations due to them for the raw deal their accestors got.
I suggest you read, Enough by Juan Williams and get on with life in the real world.
Posted by whattheheck on Aug 22, 2006 at 12:15 PM”
This is another “House Negro” comment justify imperialism, sexism, and genocide. First question-What about the Native persons of this continent? I do not remember those being toosed aside from England being undesirables to recylce that crap over here and using religion to do it. Juan, John McWother,Armstrong,Ward,Condi, and Colin love to speak well of their masters while they shine their boots with their butts. This country was built, like England,Holland,Belgium, and Spain on Free and exploited labor. The US never wants to admit to the crime, it sort of conflicts with that american dream stuff. Heck, the only reason they let white women vote because giving those former slaves the right to vote conflicted with the propaganda of “darkies, monkeys, ect” whom were perceived to have a lower standing than dogs. So look into the mirror if you support racism. I’m glad Harriett Tubman did not take your view and say-"Damn I have a geat job, I should tell eveyone to stay and enjoy the free housing, whip -lashing, castration, breaking up of families and sexual violence from my slave master, oops, I mean pasionate love making for his sexual benefit!”
Posted by chicagocaesar on Aug 23, 2006 at 3:53 AM Whatever the advantages of reparations for slavery, it seems politically unlikely to be implemented due to the standard objections people have along the lines of “it was so long ago.” For that reason I have always wondered what the result would be if some reparations advocates focused instead on the much more recent redlining by the FHA and other federal government agencies during the building of the automobile suburbs (in the first half of the twentieth century). The government-backed mortgage programs, along with the highway programs that built the suburbs, gave millions of American white families access to wealth in the form of home equity; but blacks were blatantly and explicitly excluded from many of those benefits at the same time as the highways were plowed through their urban neighborhoods (the question of whether or not black property-owners received adequate compensation during the highway construction could also be raised).
The advantages of this approach are many. First of all, it wasn’t as long ago, and many of the direct victims are still alive (along with many more of their children and grandchildren), so the “so-and-so-benefitted-from-having-the-right-distant-ancestors” retort would be neutralized. Second of all, laws like the Fourteenth Amendment were already on the books at the time the discriminatory housing laws were enforced, meaning that the laws were illegal and unconstitutional even under the standards of the day; I’m not a lawyer but I suspect that would help the case gain traction. And third, even if it failed, it would have a huge educational impact on the people who saw the case on TV. Most of the (white) people don’t even know about the racial history of home equity or the suburban expansion, although most of them ARE aware of how important home equity, homeownership-based tax benefits, and so forth are to their own financial situations. To be educated that in the recent historical past, blacks were systematically denied access to a significant form of *modern* wealth that may have been used directly to fund white viewers’ own college educations, loans they may have received from their parents, etc., might be a real eye-opening experience for people who assume that all the major financial rip-offs of Blacks and Indians occurred in the misty long-ago times of horses and buggies and blacksmiths and stevedores. The fact that such a case would use modern language ("mortgage," “home equity,” “home demolition for interstate freeway construction”, “subdivision") would drive home the fact that racist distribution of wealth is a modern problem.
Heck, it could even lead to a larger discussion about who is a “welfare-dependent” and who is “self-made” (yes, Virginia, 30-year home mortgages were not common before the government got involved in backing up loans, so few people could afford homes; yes, the government made suburbia possible by building and maintaining the freeways, and suburban sewers and water supplies, which are not only an example of Big Government but, actually, one of the biggest public works in the history of the world; etc.)
Dave
Posted by davelwhite on Aug 23, 2006 at 4:49 AM Dave,
You are apparently the only one who understood my comment when I said, This is a loser.
Pushing for this is a waste of time and energy. It will NOT HAPPEN!
You may as well demand the Vikings pay back for all their raping, pillaging and plundering.
Some comments do make me wonder though. Why is it nearly any black person who has done better than a lot of other people (of whatever color) is put down as a traitor or a lackey?
This also appears in Great Britain where generations of working people have been out of work. If someone tries to get an education or make some other attempt at a better life he is often denounced.
No one can get very far ahead while looking backwards.
Posted by whattheheck on Aug 23, 2006 at 8:51 AM Mr. Muwakkil:
Excellent commentary, as always.
It really doesn’t matter what white Americans think regarding reparations, the issue is between governments that sponsored and supported slavery/Jim Crow, their clients, the corporate economy that was the primary beneficiary of stolen Black capital vs. the progeny of those it was stolen from.
The federal government refuses to establish the commission that passage of Rep. Conyers bill would initiate because it first calls for a study of the effects of slavery/Jim Crow on current day Black Americans and would then recommend remedies if deemed necessay. If congress commissioned this study the U S government would in effect be acknowledging its culpability in and responsibility for supporting the system that produced the results the study would reveal. By blocking this legislation congress is exercising its right to not incriminate itself,ie… pleading the fifth, and because of its fiduciary relationship with the corporate economy.
As such, the marketplace in which the corporate economy invested this stolen Black capital is where the remedy sits. The repair of or making whole the progeny of American slaves has to be capitalized by the primary benefactor of the stolen Black capital, the marketplace it created. Therefore, government should extract corporate revenues (not profits) to finance the repair of and making whole progeny of American slaves since those revenues are derived from market transactions via corporate investment of stolen Black capital in production and infrastructure assets. Since corporations are taxed at a very low rate currently, recouping and distributing the stolen Black capital, the seed money of the corporate economy, to its rightful beneficiaries would not affect individual white Americans to any appreciable degree.
Posted by theloneous on Aug 23, 2006 at 10:58 AM My father worked in the coal mines for fifty years. Our family bought what they could from the Company Store at inflated prices and usurious interest rates because they were extended credit and couldn’t afford to survive otherwise. So my father worked like a dog shoveling tons of coal every day for no take home pay. My family lived in a drafty three room shack the coal company built in a shanty town.
But I got educated, got a good job, and made my own life for myself.
But hey, if we’re passing stuff around to progeny because of the abuse of their ancestors by corporate America, hell, I want some of them damn reparations too. But sorry, no white folk allowed. You ain’t no progeny of a slave, wonder-bread, so get the hell outta here with yo’ pasty white ass.
In my humble opinion, the best thing the progeny of the American slaves can do is make sure they get an education, not have children out of wedlock, stay away fron drugs, from weapons, and from gangs. An African-American with skills can write their own ticket today.
Posted by trippin on Aug 23, 2006 at 1:52 PM Many victims of concentration camps received (and will continue to receive) reparations from European corporations which collaborated with European fascists to profit from their slave labor and the confiscation of their property, presumably with the whole-hearted sympathy and approval of those of you who currently object to exactly the same remedial procedures to be applied to the victims of American slavery and institutional discrimination. The difference, obviously, is that the victims were white, and the corporate criminals were European.
Posted by Major Major on Aug 23, 2006 at 4:49 PM My pasty white wonder bread ass doesn’t much care for racial slurs. They suck when directed toward my darker skinned cousins, or my lighter skinned ones, or me. They suck in general.
Posted by Kuya on Aug 23, 2006 at 7:14 PM Try again, Kuya. Nothing in my post can be even remotely contrived as a racial slur, unless you believe that the racist contrast of proposed reparations between the black and white victims of corporate fascism is a racial slur. It’s much easier to criticize the more recent descendants of foreign fascists for their crimes against foreign victims.
Posted by Major Major on Aug 23, 2006 at 8:20 PM Actually, MM, I was responding to the slurs in trippin’s post. I’ll identify by name next time.
Posted by Kuya on Aug 24, 2006 at 1:28 AM Having said that, trippin, your last paragraph makes good sense to me. It’s a pity if you will not see “white” people as anything other than alien. Understandable it may be, but a sore pity it still is.
Posted by Kuya on Aug 24, 2006 at 1:30 AM Do you disagree with me, MM or trippin or whoever, that reparations with a specific “race” as the recipients is an unworkable plan? I say it is because, over and above the practical problems I noted in my earlier post, I think that nothing we do will truly make up for slavery or its quasi-extension via Jim Crow laws. What erases the suffering and indignity endured by millions? Doesn’t everything really fall short?
Everything does. Except. Speaking with people as though they were worthy of respect. Instilling a sense of potential and capability in kids minds. Working to erode habits of thought that perpetually underestimate entire categories of people. Making sure laws are well-thought-out in their inception and fairly enforced once theyre passed. Pushing compassion and camaraderie instead of prejudicial foolishness. Cutting the legs off the need to settle old scores by reaching out to people as a good neighbor.
Why are those things considered weak?
So hopefully to clarify, I think that Americans of all complexions should invest their sometimes under-utilized intellects into learning the straight up reality about what enslavement and its segregationist aftermath were really all about, to the greatest possible extent. This would include learning about and acknowledging the ignoble, destructive effects that long episode has had on the evolution of American culture, not to leave out our current bitter obsession with all things racial.
It’s been a f’n centuries long horrorshow, and it isn’t done yet. We are not a better people for having let it endure.
“Making up for” that vast, industrial-strength crime is impossible (in my opinion), because of the length of time, number of victims, and severity of dehumanization it entailed. The blood is on the nation’s symbolic hands, and it’s not going to wash off easily.
However, once we face the fact that millions of human beings were smashed and ground down, enchained and sold like livestock, once a society faces up to its grotesque past instead of euphemizing it (once it finally grows the balls to do so), then what? Today’s Americans should do what they can, in the here-and-now, to ensure that today’s people, including but not limited to the slaves’ descendants, can have a chance at a life of decency, self-respect, and (dare I mention) material prosperity. And that means an investment not only of intellect, but of wealth. Creating a climate in which schools, local businesses, and families can carry on without the constant threat of violence and gangsterism won’t negate the country’s history of racist brutality. Nothing like that is going to happen. But investing in a fairer, more decent, less idiotically racist society is something we can do, and should have been doing all along.
And some people (African-descended and other races whove got the shitty end of the historical stick) may never be able to overcome their anger and distrust against Caucasian-dominated society or Caucasian-descended people, having endured and watched their loved ones endure that brutality. What can one say? Long standing and constantly reinforced indignation doesn’t just drop off overnight, especially if it’s justifiable.
But here we are right now. And right now, Im making suggestions that I think (hope) have an outside chance of improving the lot of a huge number of people, among whom would include plenty of victims, of history, of racism, of neglect, choose your poison. Is that a wrong motivation?
What the hell can a guy do, other than try to leave the bloody mess better than he found it? I tell you, one of the worst parts of this damned skin color thing is the entrenched bitterness it has caused. Sometimes I wonder if some people can hear anything at all over the angry throb inside their heads. Definitely lends itself to unreason.
Posted by Kuya on Aug 24, 2006 at 2:12 AM Frankly, I don’t see why dickheads like trippin should be excluded from the benefits of reparations for the crimes committed against him and his family, by corporate criminals who perpetuate misery for their own money-grubbing sado-masochistic delusions of power and profit, and I say that despite his pasty-assed whitebread racist attitudes. In fact, his racism is one of the byproducts of the exploitation. My point was that reparations for white folks have been demonstrably met with an almost universal approbation by a generally white population, while reparations for the rest have not.
Sorry about the misunderstanding.
Posted by Major Major on Aug 24, 2006 at 5:18 PM No problema refs “slurs”, MM.
I still have a difficult time seeing how reparations could be implemented in actuality, other than the broad unlinked-to-specific-"race" approach I’ve described, which of course wouldn’t be reparations at all. The overvaluation of palefaces relative to the rest (most) of humanity is something I can’t dispute.
Posted by Kuya on Aug 24, 2006 at 8:23 PM WTH....Redhorse here........I am disappointed in your lack of insight....but not surprized...we’ve had this dicussion in the past....WTH believes that afrikans from amerikan via slavery , should be happy too be in amerika and not that terrible place that is the continent of Afrika… Enjoying the rhetorical “ freedom “ that this country propogandizes about but has yet to live up too…
trippin.....your family may not have had much...but in the US , what most europeans don,t realize is that their white skin privilege , combined with a sound work ethic can get you the world....with education , the skies the limit....
Not so in black amerika....integrity , hard work and education have effectively been neutralized by the institutions created by the racist mentality so profitable in amerikas social structure...Racism is more than whites not liking or respecting afrikan people....it is an institution that has manipulated , and propogandized this issue for big profit…
Capitalism and Slavery is an excellent book on the subject , written by the late Eric Williams former prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago 1961 to 1981...Mr. Williams was also a former professor of political and social science at Howard University before becoming involved in politics......
The enormous profits made from slavery...are the reasons the US is such a powerful nation today....no non-afrikan people , living in amerika , and believing in this nations mantra would enjoy the so-called freedoms that they profess without the intensive labor of the afrikan slave trade....The original reparations bill has passed well over one hundred years ago...if the US had honored that initial reparations contract it wouldn’t be an issue today....but with no honor among thieves...Amerika is a dead beat nation....
Now this nation has paid reparations to the japanese people interned during WW 2...the Jewish people got reparations from Germany...because amerika force those payments...but the original reparations judgement for former afrikan slaves has never been recognized....How come ?
Posted by Redhorse on Aug 24, 2006 at 9:09 PM This was court ordered....who among us can thumb their nose at a court ordered judgement for payment...you,ll most likely end up with a lien against your property...or jail....
The fact that the original plantiffs are all dead is part of the Gov’t plan...that,s why the money belongs to their decendants....
Think about the fact trippin...that you were able to get an education...a education that affirmed your right to exist no matter how poor or illiterate your background...this was against the law for afrikan slaves...this nation past laws...against reading and writing for afrikan people....
What are the long term effects of such policy...? How does anyone...especially a large contigency of people recover from the effects ?Compounded interest on that payment , brings the amount to approximately 180,000 US dollars per decendant.....
Much of the wealth of this nation is inherited....if not stolen....
Why not the Redhorse and others of afrikan decent....one is sure that when the time comes trippin...I’m positive you would want your children and their children to inherit the fruits of your labor....no...?
Hey look at it like this...maybe you have a case for your father....Justice is a humane right that has to be fought for....
Posted by Redhorse on Aug 24, 2006 at 9:38 PM Now...education is the key...but that cost money too......
Davelwhite...your post is excellent...redlining on mortgage loans is one more indignity suffered by people of afrikan decent...but the issues you raise are inclusive in the whole debate concerning the effects of slavery , racism vs reparations...not exclusive....
Posted by Redhorse on Aug 24, 2006 at 9:44 PM Bigger picture reparations.
Some of the premises for reparatioins are solid, but as others have commented, identifying those deserving would be a huge and daunting task; sourcing the funds for a proper payout would end up impacting huge numbers of taxpayers who are not at fault. Further, cash in the hands of thousands of “victims” is actually not very likely to help them overcome the inherited hardships they experience. In a book I’m writing I suggest a bigger picture look at the concept and execution of reparations .. I call it Total Global Reparations.
At this time when the gap between rich and poor is greater than ever in human history, and when the effects of exploitation are more evident than ever .. from environmental crisis to human rights debacles .. I suggest we make a calculation and move toward a different approach.
Is it unreasonable to imagine that the total accumulated wealth in the world .. stashed in Swiss accounts, held in investments that perpetuate or worsen the situation, passed from elite parents to spoiled children .. is equivalent to the total damage done to the environment and to the human cost of massive economic injustice? The costs of the accumulation of this wealth are experienced directly today in the forms of environmental damage and poverty.
Rather than approach reparations piecemeal, we need a global movement that regulates and taxes and when appropriate siezes (mandates reinvestment of) that wealth and applies it globally to environmental restoration and to establishing basic human rights for all the planet’s residence: end to poverty, water and sanitation, public health, etc.
Martin Luther King Jr. said aloud that there will not be true justice in the US or the world until there is a “radical redistribution of economic ... power.” A month later he was shot dead with the complicity of the US government.
Neo-Con pundits accuse the “radical left Democrats” of wanting to “redistribute the wealth of the world.” Let’s at least hold up our end of that accusation. How did the wealth of the world get “distributed” in the first place? Are the major problems the planet faces not related to the accumulated wealth and the political influence it has bought?
Posted by earnesteliot on Aug 25, 2006 at 12:26 PM earnesteliot....My initial response is that , first....whatever costs involved in implimentation of reparations should be covered by the economic institutions guilty of the abuses....Secondly....this is restitution for wages not payed , compounded over many years....What folks do with their paychecks...is there business , and nobody elses....
Now...having read and considered your post...Redhorse would have to agree that this is a much better perspective....
Yes...let us hold up our end of the deal with the neo-cons and figure out a way to redistribute the wealth and change the core structure of the world community for the better of all...including the rich and disaffected…
Very good , sir...very good indeed....
Posted by Redhorse on Aug 25, 2006 at 2:43 PM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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