Danny Glover: Nations Must 'Apologize' For Slavery With Reparations

Published Date : 2016-04-27 14:55:15

Georgetown and the Sin of Slavery

Published Date : 2016-04-27 14:37:23

Credit Monica Ramos

The reparations movement, which calls for compensating the descendants of generations of enslaved Americans going back 250 years, has failed to gain traction in this country for a variety of reasons.

Most Americans see slavery as an artifact of the distant past that has no bearing on the nation’s present. And even people who are sympathetic to the reparations idea — and who acknowledge the continued imprint of slavery on society — have often argued that there is no way to distinguish descendants who have provable claims to compensation from those who do not, partly because enslaved people usually went unnamed in the United States census, which rendered them faceless in the historical record.

Bankers, merchants and manufacturers all profited from the slave trade, as did companies that insured slaving ships and their cargo. And more than a dozen universities have acknowledged ties to slavery. Even so, some will find ways to paper over the role that slavery played in their founding and early history.

Such denials are impossible in the harrowing history of slavery at Georgetown University that Rachel Swarns recounted recently in The Times. In 1838, the Jesuits running the college that became Georgetown sold 272 African-American men, women and children into a hellish life on sugar plantations in the South to finance the college’s continued operation. On that fact, there is no dispute.

The sale by the Jesuits stands out for its sheer size and the directness of its relationship to the existence and fortunes of one of the country’s top Catholic universities. The names of the people who were taken from the Jesuit plantations in Maryland and shipped to New Orleans are known. The fact that some of their descendants have already been found makes this a particularly salient case in the emerging effort to confront one of history’s worst crimes against humanity.

Georgetown is morally obligated to adopt restorative measures, which should clearly include a scholarship fund for the descendants of those who were sold to save the institution.

Many people may be startled to learn that the Jesuits were among the largest slaveholders in the nation. But as the historian Craig Steven Wilder notes in the forthcoming book “Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development,” the Catholic Church was fully involved with slavery in the colonial period. Professor Wilder writes that income from slave plantations gave Catholics the resources to resist colonial-era persecution, allowed the church to survive through the American Revolution and underwrote the church’s expansion.

Visitors to the Jesuit plantations, including an Irish priest who visited Maryland in 1820, documented the violence against the enslaved. Some urged the church to get rid of its slaves. But as Professor Wilder writes, “Rather than retreating from slaveholding, the bishops built their church by tracking the westward expansion of plantation slavery” after the Louisiana Purchase.

At Georgetown, slavery and scholarship were inextricably linked. The college relied on its plantations to help pay for its operations. When the school fell into trouble, the sale of the African-American men, women and children staved off its ruin.

The black Georgetown families might have been lost to history had the Jesuits not recorded their names. With that information in hand, a nonprofit group called the Georgetown Memory Project has begun tracking down living descendants of these families. The statistical model used by the project estimates that there are 12,000 to 15,000 living descendants of the original 272 enslaved people.

Following student protests last fall, the university removed from two campus buildings the names of the two priests who arranged the sale. In addition, a university working group made up of students, alumni, professors and others are studying ways for the university to acknowledge, memorialize and make amends for this history.

According to Richard Cellini, the Georgetown alumnus who established the memory project, some of the descendants wept openly when they were told of family histories that had been a mystery to them. As Catholics, some have experienced crises of faith since learning of the brutality of the 19th-century priests. None of the descendants he has spoken with have mentioned money or reparations for themselves, Mr. Cellini said.

The descendants want their ancestors recognized in a durable way. Some would like to see a permanent memorial on campus that honors the enslaved families, one descendant said, as “real people with real names.” Georgetown can begin by welcoming the descendants into the university family and listening to their suggestions.

National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America

Published Date : 2016-04-10 15:43:29

The Socialist Case for Reparations

Published Date : 2016-03-02 15:03:24

A 1930 unemployment rally at local Communist Party headquarters in Washington, DC. Library of Congress

In a series of recent articles in the Atlantic, columnist and author Ta-Nehisi Coates criticized US presidential candidate and self-described socialist Bernie Sanders for not supporting reparations. Cedric Johnson responded with an open letter that challenged Coates’s worldview, and suggested that Coates is operating as part of a black managerial elite whose calls for reparations and critiques of redistributive social programs are really about carving out their piece of the American capitalist pie.

There is a lot at stake in this debate — much more than whether Bernie Sanders cares about black people or whether we should support him as a candidate. The more important issue is how the Left views the relationship between racist oppression and the exploitation of the working class. And in this respect, Sanders, Coates, and Johnson all get it wrong.

I think socialists should absolutely support the call for reparations for people of African descent in the United States (and elsewhere). Sanders was wrong to dismiss the issue, and Coates erroneously concluded from Sanders’s position that socialists necessarily adopt a reductionist, “class first” politics. Coates’s error was then confounded by Johnson’s argument, which counterposed the call for reparations to the fight for social-democratic redistributive policies — as if the two couldn’t, or shouldn’t, be part of the same struggle.

Socialists should favor reparations for black people as part of a broader movement to redistribute wealth and power to all people who are oppressed and exploited under capitalism.

Black people have been robbed specifically and continuously in this country. As Coates points out, systematic racist plunder is not something that only happened four hundred years ago. It’s the whole story of the twentieth century — and, despite the election of the first black president, it’s marked the twenty-first century, too. The subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 was the single greatest destroyer of black people’s wealth in US history. The banks got paid, and black people (disproportionately) got robbed. On this much, I assume, Coates, Johnson, and Sanders agree.

Other people in this country were — and continue to be — robbed as well: the indigenous people of North America whose land and lives were stolen; the Chinese immigrants whose broken backs built railroads; the European immigrants who suffocated in mines; and many others. Throughout US history, when these workers rose up and fought for dignity, better pay, safer conditions, and fewer hours, they were met with organized violence, terror, and even murder. Every great fortune was built with blood.

While the ideology of “white supremacy” was necessary to justify this systematic plunder, it served to mask all exploitation and oppression. Racism was not created for its own sake. It’s long been wielded to divide the laboring population.

Coates points to large disparities in wealth and other indices of white and black life, arguing: “This is not a class divide, but a racist divide.” But in setting these categories against each other, he fails to appreciate their profound entanglement. If there weren’t large gaps between white people and black people — e.g., material and wealth disparities — racism would not be effective. Racism explains these differences, but the ideology of race also prevents us from noticing that most people’s net worth is falling.

Coates, however, concludes that racial identification is more powerful than class identity. “In America,” he writes, “solidarity among laborers is not the only kind of solidarity,” and furthermore, “it isn’t even the most potent kind.” Coates is correct, of course, that working-class solidarity is not usually the “most potent” kind of solidarity. If that were true, capitalism would be in big trouble. If racism has been essential to disrupting class solidarity, it isn’t permanent, unchanging, or uncontested.

Because racism is central to the operation of capitalism, antiracism must be central to any movement that hopes to challenge it. As Coates rightly notes, racism has systematically hampered even strong left movements trying to win reform in the United States. Therefore, the specific legacy of racism in the US must be addressed if we are to have any hope of winning the kinds of progressive legislation Bernie Sanders is proposing.

Black people, Johnson correctly points out, have historically been at the core of efforts to secure such a program. The American Communist Party’s flawed-but-heroic attempts to meld these issues is probably the best example of a mass movement in the US guided by the idea that fighting racism is central to fighting for socialism.

Likewise, instead of counterposing these agendas, we should fuse them. We need to push for wealth redistribution on a vast scale and insist that such an effort attack the legacy of racism. Doing one without the other is a recipe for disaster.

We can even go a step further. As Marx argued, all profit is theft — if workers were paid the full value of their labor, there would be no profit. Reparations therefore must be targeted at the class of people who benefit from this theft.

Walmart is a clear example. The largest private employer in the country (and, as it happens, the largest employer of black people in the US), the company pays its full-time workers so little that many qualify for public assistance. Through the decades, Walmart’s owners have piled up billions by exploiting low-wage labor. It’s the Walton family who should pay reparations — not Walmart’s white workers, who are scraping by on public assistance.

Indeed, understanding the class nature of our society is essential to thinking through the reparations issue. Most discussions about reparations are emphatically not about taxing every white person in order to cut a check to every black person. However, there are entities — banks, insurance companies, and the federal government — that have accumulated vast sums through the systematic exploitation of black people over many years. These organizations, corporations, universities, and, in some cases, individuals, are sitting on piles of cash and should pay up.

It’s also worth remembering that nowadays, some of the people sitting on top of these fortunes (or helping manage them) are black. There is a small but growing class of black elites who will never support reparations — or any politics of genuine wealth redistribution — because it is not in their material interest to do so.

That’s why Johnson is wrong to characterize the call for reparations as emanating from the black elite. This group is too well integrated into American capitalism for that to be the case. Walmart, for example, is also a corporate sponsor of the Congressional Black Caucus. The largest employer of black people, in other words, also pays off the black politicians — so don’t expect the CBC to jump into the fight for higher wages and wealth redistribution any time soon.

The bottom line is, the very concept of reparations for people of African descent is dangerous to the American ruling class. Grappling with the real legacy of white supremacy would explode the lies America tells about itself (from “meritocracy” myths to “culture of poverty” arguments). And, equally important, a serious debate over reparations would raise dangerous questions about where wealth comes from and about who is owed what in this country.

Socialists should argue that black people are owed quite a bit — and that other people are owed too. If black people should receive remuneration because they were robbed, shouldn’t banks and major corporations be responsible for compensating everyone they’ve abused and exploited? If the source of all profit is labor, then isn’t the entire American working class being shortchanged?

The kind of redistribution Bernie Sanders is talking about falls far short of what Marx advocated: the genuine democratic control over our working lives. It also falls short of what is needed to truly end poverty in the US. But Sanders’s proposals do threaten America’s elite, because they would shift the balance of power toward labor and away from capital.

If there was no such thing as health care bills or college tuition, and if every job paid at least $15 an hour, working-class people in general — and black people, in particular — would be in a much stronger position to speak up, organize, and fight for everything that we are collectively owed.

Coates is wrong that Sanders’s program represents the same kind of “rising tide lifts all boats” approach that Obama adopted. Obama has been a neoliberal president from the beginning; his policies have shifted the balance of power in favor of capital. For example, Obama’s support for privatizing public education and crippling teachers unions has had a disproportionately negative impact on black teachers, and has been a harbinger of further attacks on one of the last bastions of black people’s wealth — public sector unions.

Bernie Sanders, in contrast, is bringing the word “socialism” back into the mainstream and raising the idea that America needs a more equitable distribution of wealth. Those are good things. Unfortunately, he is doing so inside a party whose goals are the complete opposite. Whether or not he prevails, I hope a new generation of people rediscovers the socialist tradition. We desperately need a mass socialist party in this country. But the Democrats are never going to be that party — we’ll have to build our own.

The reparations discussion is reemerging now because a new movement of black people fighting state-sponsored violence is taking shape nationwide. This new movement is already rediscovering the brilliant work of black socialists like W. E. B. Du Bois, C. L. R. James, Angela Davis, and many others. They teach us that the struggle against racism and the struggle against capitalism are inseparable — and that we will never defeat one without tearing down the other.

‘Not a backward call for handouts’

Published Date : 2016-02-02 16:24:38

Sir Hilary Beckles presents model for reparations at Oxford University

The Express Tribune: Reparations rather than aid 

Published Date : 2016-01-08 21:14:25

By Syed Mohammad Ali

The writer holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne and is the author of Development, Poverty and Power in Pakistan, available from Routledge

Conspiracy theorists who are always finger-pointing at the West for all maladies afflicting the developing world can be readily brushed aside for presenting simplistic world views or failing to recognise domestic failings within countries, which have been declared independent sovereign states for several decades. However, it is equally unfair to ignore colonial legacy and the persistent negative implications of this damaging legacy, which continue to manifest themselves today in the form of glaring deprivations and disparities across most so-called developing countries.

Yet, the mainstream rhetoric of international development agencies hardly acknowledges the problem of colonialism, and instead seems to suggest that developing countries are poor because of their own internal problems, while Western countries are prosperous due to hard work and adherence to the right values and policies. This liner approach to development suggests that developing countries need to make more effort to catch up with developed countries, which can thus project themselves as providing generous support in the form of technical and financial aid to help poorer and less developed nations improve their lot.

History though has quite a different tale to tell. The European encounter with the developing world was hardly responsible for bringing civilisation to the as-yet uncivilised world. A UK-based anthropologist, in a recent article in The Guardian, has convincingly argued that Europe didn’t develop the colonies, and that it was the colonies instead, which developed Europe. Consider, for instance, how Europeans subjected indigenous populations from across their colonies to work in mines and on plantations. Europeans extracted an estimated 222 million hours of forced labour from African slaves between 1619 and 1865 alone. Valued at the current US minimum wage, with a modest rate of interest, that’s worth $97 trillion, which is more than the entire global GDP.

By the early 1800s, a total of 100 million kg of silver was extracted from South America and pumped into the European economy, providing a significant proportion of the capital for the industrial revolution. Colonial rule over India undermined traditional subsistence practices to make way for cash crops for export to Europe. Under British rule, up to 29 million Indians died of famine during the last few decades of the 19^th century.

To transform India into a captive market for British goods, India’s impressive indigenous industries were destroyed. Before the British arrived, India commanded 27 per cent of the world economy, and by the time they left, India’s share had gone down to merely three per cent. A similar fate was in store for China after the Opium Wars, when Britain forced it to open its borders to British goods on unequal terms.

These snippets from historical research reveal the highly manipulative nature of colonialism. Subsequent scholarship by dependency theorists, or even post-colonial thinkers, argues that we still reside in an evolving economic system that has been designed over hundreds of years to enrich a small portion of humanity at the expense of the vast majority. Through this historical lens, the narrative and rhetoric employed by international development agencies seems rather superficial, if not outright ridiculous. Yet, acknowledging the colonial legacy could open up difficult questions about the need for reparations made to colonised countries to compensate them for centuries of subjugation and exploitation.

This reparations argument is based on the assertion that poverty in the global south is not a natural phenomenon, but has been actively created. Right now, over a dozen Caribbean nations are in the process of suing Britain for slavery reparations. What will become of this legal battle remains to be seen. It would be difficult to put a price on the suffering wrought by colonialism, and there is perhaps not enough money in the world to compensate for the damage it inflicted.

However, even paying a symbolic amount of reparations to the colonised world would at least help alter the existing perception of international aid being provided to poor developing countries as an act of magnanimity rather than an obligation of their former colonial rulers. Even more significantly, recognising the damage caused by colonialism may enable a rethink of ongoing colonial and imperial aspirations, repackaged as they are, in the form of structural economic reforms for developing countries, which align them into lower rungs of global production hierarchies, while compelling them to continue allocating a major proportion of their national incomes for servicing foreign debts.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 8^th, 2016.

Enough of aid – let’s talk reparations

Published Date : 2015-11-30 09:11:23

By Jason Hickel

Colonialism is one of those things you’re not supposed to discuss in polite company – at least not north of the Mediterranean. Most people feel uncomfortable about it, and would rather pretend it didn’t happen.

In fact, that appears to be the official position. In the mainstream narrative of international development peddled by institutions from the World Bank to the UK’s Department of International Development, the history of colonialism is routinely erased. According to the official story, developing countries are poor because of their own internal problems, while western countries are rich because they worked hard, and upheld the right values and policies. And because the west happens to be further ahead, its countries generously reach out across the chasm to give “aid” to the rest – just a little something to help them along.

If colonialism is ever acknowledged, it’s to say that it was not a crime, but rather a benefit to the colonised – a leg up the development ladder.

But the historical record tells a very different story, and that opens up difficult questions about another topic that Europeans prefer to avoid: reparations. No matter how much they try, however, this topic resurfaces over and over again. Recently, after a debate at the Oxford Union, Indian MP Shashi Tharoor’s powerful case for reparations went viral, attracting more than 3 million views on YouTube. Clearly the issue is hitting a nerve.

The reparations debate is threatening because it completely upends the usual narrative of development. It suggests that poverty in the global south is not a natural phenomenon, but has been actively created. And it casts western countries in the role not of benefactors, but of plunderers.

When it comes to the colonial legacy, some of the facts are almost too shocking to comprehend. When Europeans arrived in what is now Latin America in 1492, the region may have been inhabited by between 50 million and 100 million indigenous people. By the mid 1600s, their population was slashed to about 3.5 million. The vast majority succumbed to foreign disease and many were slaughtered, died of slavery or starved to death after being kicked off their land. It was like the holocaust seven times over.

What were the Europeans after? Silver was a big part of it. Between 1503 and 1660, 16m kilograms of silver were shipped to Europe, amounting to three times the total European reserves of the metal. By the early 1800s, a total of 100m kg of silver had been drained from the veins of Latin America and pumped into the European economy, providing much of the capital for the industrial revolution. To get a sense for the scale of this wealth, consider this thought experiment: if 100m kg of silver was invested in 1800 at 5% interest – the historical average – it would amount to £110trn ($165trn) today. An unimaginable sum.

Europeans slaked their need for labour in the colonies – in the mines and on the plantations – not only by enslaving indigenous Americans but also by shipping slaves across the Atlantic from Africa. Up to 15 million of them. In the North American colonies alone, Europeans extracted an estimated 222,505,049 hours of forced labour from African slaves between 1619 and 1865. Valued at the US minimum wage, with a modest rate of interest, that’s worth $97trn – more than the entire global GDP.

Right now, 14 Caribbean nations are in the process of suing Britain for slavery reparations. They point out that when Britain abolished slavery in 1834 it compensated not the slaves but rather the owners of slaves, to the tune of £20m, the equivalent of £200bn today. Perhaps they will demand reparations equivalent to this figure, but it is conservative: it reflects only the price of the slaves, and tells us nothing of the total value they produced during their lifetimes, nor of the trauma they endured, nor of the hundreds of thousands of slaves who worked and died during the centuries before 1834.

These numbers tell only a small part of the story, but they do help us imagine the scale of the value that flowed from the Americas and Africa into European coffers after 1492.

Then there is India. When the British seized control of India, they completely reorganised the agricultural system, destroying traditional subsistence practices to make way for cash crops for export to Europe. As a result of British interventions, up to 29 million Indians died of famine during the last few decades of the 19^th century in what historian Mike Davis calls the “late Victorian holocaust”. Laid head to foot, their corpses would stretch the length of England 85 times over. And this happened while India was exporting an unprecedented amount of food, up to 10m tonnes per year.

British colonisers also set out to transform India into a captive market for British goods. To do that, they had to destroy India’s impressive indigenous industries. Before the British arrived, India commanded 27% of the world economy, according to economist Angus Maddison. By the time they left, India’s share had been cut to just 3%. The same thing happened to China. After the Opium Wars, when Britain invaded China and forced open its borders to British goods on unequal terms, China’s share of the world economy dwindled from 35% to an all-time low of 7%.

Meanwhile, Europeans increased their share of global GDP from 20% to 60% during the colonial period. Europe didn’t develop the colonies. The colonies developed Europe.

And we haven’t even begun to touch the scramble for Africa. In the Congo, to cite just one brief example, as historian Adam Hochschild recounts in his haunting book King Leopold’s Ghost, Belgium’s lust for ivory and rubber killed some 10 million Congolese – roughly half the country’s population. The wealth gleaned from that plunder was siphoned back to Belgium to fund beautiful stately architecture and impressive public works, including arches and parks and railway stations – all the markers of development that adorn Brussels today, the bejewelled headquarters of the European Union.

We could go on. It is tempting to see this as just a list of crimes, but it is much more than that. These snippets hint at the contours of a world economic system that was designed over hundreds of years to enrich a small portion of humanity at the expense of the vast majority.

This history makes the narrative of international development seem a bit absurd, and even outright false. Frankie Boyle got it right: “Even our charity is essentially patronising. Give a man a fish and he can eat for a day. Give him a fishing rod and he can feed himself. Alternatively, don’t poison the fishing waters, abduct his great-grandparents into slavery, then turn up 400 years later on your gap year talking a lot of shite about fish.”

We can’t put a price on the suffering wrought by colonialism. And there is not enough money in the world to compensate for the damage it inflicted. We can, however, stop talking about charity, and instead acknowledge the debt that the west owes to the rest of the world. Even more importantly, we can work to quash the colonial instinct whenever it rears its ugly head, as it is doing right now in the form of land grabs, illicit financial extraction, and unfair trade deals.

Shashi Tharoor argued for a reparations payment of only £1 – a token acknowledgement of historical fact. That might not do much to assuage the continued suffering of those whose countries have been ravaged by the colonial encounter. But at least it would set the story straight, and put us on a path towards rebalancing the global economy.

Retracing Slavery's Trail of Tears

Published Date : 2015-10-29 08:16:54

Retracing Slavery’s Trail of Tears
America’s forgotten migration – the journeys of a million African-Americans from the tobacco South to the cotton South

A coffle of slaves being marched from Virginia west into Tennessee, c. 1850.

 
By August, Armfield had more than 300 ready for the march. Around the 20th of that month the caravan began to assemble in front of the company’s offices in Alexandria, at 1315 Duke Street.

In the library at Yale I did a bit more unearthing and found a travelogue by a man named Ethan Andrews, who happened to pass through Alexandria a year later and witness the organizing of an Armfield coffle. His book was not much read—it had a due-date notice from 50 years ago—but in it Andrews described the scene as Armfield directed the loading for an enormous journey.

“Four or five tents were spread, and the large wagons, which were to accompany the expedition, were stationed” where they could be piled high with “provisions and other necessaries.” New clothes were loaded in bundles. “Each negro is furnished with two entire suits from the shop,” Andrews noted, “which he does not wear upon the road.” Instead, these clothes were saved for the end of the trip so each slave could dress well for sale. There was a pair of carriages for the whites.

In 1834, Armfield sat on his horse in front of the procession, armed with a gun and a whip. Other white men, similarly armed, were arrayed behind him. They were guarding 200 men and boys lined up in twos, their wrists handcuffed together, a chain running the length of 100 pairs of hands. Behind the men were the women and girls, another hundred. They were not handcuffed, although they may have been tied with rope. Some carried small children. After the women came the big wagons—six or seven in all. These carried food, plus children too small to walk ten hours a day. Later the same wagons hauled those who had collapsed and could not be roused with a whip.

Then the coffle, like a giant serpent, uncoiled onto Duke Street and marched west, out of town and into a momentous event, a blanked-out saga, an unremembered epic. I think of it as the Slave Trail of Tears.

**********

The Slave Trail of Tears is the great missing migration—a thousand-mile-long river of people, all of them black, reaching from Virginia to Louisiana. During the 50 years before the Civil War, about a million enslaved people moved from the Upper South—Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky—to the Deep South—Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama. They were made to go, deported, you could say, having been sold.

This forced resettlement was 20 times larger than Andrew Jackson’s “Indian removal” campaigns of the 1830s, which gave rise to the original Trail of Tears as it drove tribes of Native Americans out of Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama. It was bigger than the immigration of Jews into the United States during the 19th century, when some 500,000 arrived from Russia and Eastern Europe. It was bigger than the wagon-train migration to the West, beloved of American lore. This movement lasted longer and grabbed up more people than any other migration in North America before 1900.

The drama of a million individuals going so far from their homes changed the country. It gave the Deep South a character it retains to this day; and it changed the slaves themselves, traumatizing uncountable families.

But until recently, the Slave Trail was buried in memory. The story of the masses who trekked a thousand miles, from the tobacco South to the cotton South, sometimes vanished in an economic tale, one about the invention of the cotton gin and the rise of “King Cotton.” It sometimes sank into a political story, something to do with the Louisiana Purchase and the “first Southwest”—the young states of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas.

Historians know about the Slave Trail. During the last ten years, a number of them—Edward Baptist, Steven Deyle, Robert Gudmestad, Walter Johnson, Joshua Rothman, Calvin Schermerhorn, Michael Tadman and others—have been writing the million-person-migration back into view.

Some museum curators know about it, too. Last fall and this past spring, the Library of Virginia, in Richmond, and the Historic New Orleans Collection, in Louisiana, working separately, put together large exhibitions about the domestic slave trade. Both institutions broke attendance records.
 
Richmond was a hub for exporting slaves southward. In 1857 alone, says historian Maurie McInnis, sales came to more than $440 million in today’s dollars. (Wayne Lawrence)

Relatives of President James Madison put up the stone mansion at Belle Grove during the 1790s, and it lives on as a fine house museum run by a historian, Kristen Laise. A walk through the house, a look at the kitchen where all the work was done, a walk through the slave cemetery, a rundown of the people who lived and died here, white and black—thanks to Laise, Belle Grove is not a house museum that shorts the stories of slaves.

Recently, Laise tells me, she stumbled on evidence that in the 1820s a large number of people went up for sale at Belle Grove. She pulls out an October 1824 newspaper ad, placed by Isaac Hite, master of Belle Grove (and brother-in-law to President Madison). “I shall proceed to sell sixty slaves, of various ages, in families,” Hite said. Hite expressed regret that he had to charge interest if buyers insisted on using credit. The nicest families in the Shenandoah tipped people into the pipeline south.

I pull in at various towns and ask around. In Winchester, the Winchester-

Frederick County Visitor Center. In Edinburg, a history bookshop. In Staunton, the Visitor Center. In Roanoke, at a tourist information outlet called Virginia’s Blue Ridge.

Do you know anything about the chain gangs that streamed southwest through these parts?

No. Never heard of it. You say it was 150 years ago?

Well, more like 175.

Don’t know what you’re talking about.

People do know, however, about Civil War battles. The bloodletting here has a kind of glamour. A few people launch into stories about the brave Confederates. A few bring up their own ethnic lore.

Well, Germans and Scots-Irish settled the Shenandoah, that’s who was here.

A woman at a tourist store clarified. My oh my, the Scots-Irish—they were like made of brass.

**********

One night in September 1834, a traveler stumbled into the Armfield coffle’s camp. “Numerous fires were gleaming through the forest: it was the bivouac of the gang,” wrote the traveler, George Featherstonhaugh. “The female slaves were warming themselves. The children were asleep in some tents; and the males, in chains, were lying on the ground, in groups of about a dozen each.” Meanwhile, “the white men…were standing about with whips in their hands.”

Featherstonhaugh, a geologist on a surveying tour for the federal government, described the slave trader as a raw man in nice clothes. John Armfield wore a big white hat and striped pants. He had a long dark coat and wore a mustache-less beard. The surveyor talked to him for a few hours and saw him as “sordid, illiterate and vulgar.” Armfield, it seems, had overpowering bad breath, because he loved raw onions.

Early the next morning, the gang readied again for the march. “A singular spectacle,” Featherstonhaugh wrote. He counted nine wagons and carriages and some 200 men “manacled and chained to each other,” lining up in double file. “I had never seen so revolting a sight before,” he said. As the gang fell in, Armfield and his men made jokes, “standing near, laughing and smoking cigars.”

On September 6, the gang was marching 50 miles southwest of Roanoke. They came to the New River, a big flow about 400 feet across, and to a dock known as Ingles Ferry. Armfield did not want to pay for passage, not with his hundreds. So one of his men picked a shallow place and tested it by sending over a wagon and four horses. Armfield then ordered the men in irons to get in the water.

This was dangerous. If any man lost his footing, everyone could be washed downstream, yanked one after another by the chain. Armfield watched and smoked. Men and boys sold, on average, for about $700. Multiply that by 200. That comes to $140,000, or about $3.5 million today. Slaves were routinely insured—plenty of companies did that sort of business, with policies guarding against “damage.” But collecting on such “damage” would be inconvenient.

The men made it across. Next came wagons with the young children and those who could no longer walk. Last came the women and girls. Armfield crossed them on flatboats.

1840: Enslaved Africans in Richmond waiting for the train to take them deeper into the South for even more horrors.

A typical slave pen somewhere in Virginia where the enslaved were put to wait to be “sold down the river”.

The auction Block at the St Louis Hotel in New Orleans around the 1840s.

Developing the exhibit, Greenwald and her team created a database of names of the enslaved who were shipped from the Eastern states to New Orleans. William Waller and his gang, and other hundreds of thousands arriving by foot, did not leave traces in government records. But people who arrived by ship did.

“We studied hundreds of shipping manifests and compiled data on 70,000 individuals. Of course, that is only some.”

In 1820, the number of ships carrying slaves from Eastern ports into New Orleans was 604. In 1827, it was 1,359. In 1835, it was 4,723. Each carried 5 to 50 slaves.

The auction advertisements at the end of the Slave Trail always said, “Virginia and Maryland Negroes.”

“The words ‘Virginia Negroes’ signaled a kind of brand,” Greenwald says. “It meant compliant, gentle and not broken by overwork.

“One thing that is hard to document but impossible to ignore is the ‘fancy trade.’ New Orleans had a niche market. The ‘fancy trade’ meant women sold as forcible sex partners. They were women of mixed race, invariably. So-called mulatresses.”

Isaac Franklin was all over this market. In 1833, he wrote the office back in Virginia about “fancy girls” he had on hand, and about one in particular whom he wanted. “I sold your fancy girl Alice for $800,” Franklin wrote to Rice Ballard, a partner then in Richmond. “There is great demand for fancy maids, [but] I was disappointed in not finding your Charlottes­ville maid that you promised me.” Franklin told the Virginia office to send the “Charlottesville maid” right away by ship. “Will you send her out or shall I charge you $1,100 for her?”

To maximize her price, Franklin might have sold the “Charlottesville maid” at one of the public auctions in the city. “And the auction setting of choice was a place called the St. Louis Hotel,” Greenwald says, “a block from here.”

**********

The St. Louis Hotel is one of several places that can be identified as once-upon-a-time slave-trading sites. Next door to it was another, the New Orleans Exchange. The exchange’s granite facade can be still found on Chartres Street near the corner of St. Louis Street. On the lintel above the door you can see in faded paint its old sign, which reads, “___ CHANGE.” The St. Louis Hotel was razed in 1916, but it was in the hotel that the Slave Trail ended in the most spectacular scenes.

At the center of the hotel was a rotunda 100 feet in diameter—“over which rises a dome as lofty as a church spire,” a reporter for the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel wrote. “The floor is a marble mosaic. One half the circumference of the rotunda is occupied by the bar of the hotel,” and the other half by entrances to the vaulted room. There were two auction stands, each five feet above the floor, on either side of the rotunda. And beneath the dome, with sunlight shafting down through windows in the apse, both auction stands did business simultaneously, in French and in English.

“The auctioneer was a handsome young man, devoting himself exclusively to the sale of young mulatto women,” the reporter wrote of a sale in 1855. “On the block was one of the most beautiful young women I ever saw. She was about sixteen, dressed in a cheap striped woolen gown, and bareheaded.”

Her name was Hermina. “She was sold for $1250 to one of the most lecherous-looking old brutes I ever set eyes on,” the reporter noted. That is the equivalent of $35,000 today.

Here, too, in the St. Louis Hotel’s beautiful vaulted room, families at the end of the Slave Trail were divided. The same reporter described “a noble-looking woman with a bright-eyed seven-year-old.” When mother and boy stepped onto the platform, however, no bids came for them, and the auctioneer decided on the spur of the moment to put the boy on sale separately. He was sold to a man from Mississippi, his mother to a man from Texas. The mother begged her new master to “buy little Jimmie too,” but he refused, and the child was dragged away. “She burst forth in the most frantic wails that ever despair gave utterance to.”

**********

William Waller’s depression lifted after he left New Orleans and returned to Mississippi. “I have sold out all my negroes to one man for eight thousand dollars!” he told his wife. Then came second thoughts, and more self-pity: “I have not obtained as much as I expected, but I try and be satisfied.”

James Ware, the slave dealer Waller had met in Natchez, had come through on the sales, and he offered Waller an itemized statement. “The whole amount of sales for the twenty”—the entire group that had come with him from Virginia—“is $12,675.” (About $400,000 now.) The journey ended, the business done, Waller headed home. It was March 13, 1848.

“I am now waiting for a safe boat to set out for you,” he wrote. “Perhaps in an hour I may be on the river.”

On April 1, Waller reached home. His wife and children greeted him. Also, an elderly black woman named Charity, whom he and Sarah had kept at home, knowing that no one would offer money for her. The slave cabins were vacant.

**********

The first polite questions appeared in newspapers in the summer of 1865, right after the Civil War and Emancipation. Former slaves—there were four million—asked by word of mouth, but that went nowhere, and so they put announcements in the papers, trying to find mothers and sisters, children and husbands swept away from them by the Slave Trail.

Hannah Cole was one of them, maybe the first. On June 24, 1865, two months after the truce at Appomattox, in a Philadelphia newspaper called the Christian Recorder, she posted this:

Information Wanted. Can anyone inform me of the whereabouts of John Person, the son of Hannah Person, of Alexandria, Va., who belonged to Alexander Sancter? I have not seen him for ten years. I was sold to Joseph Bruin, who took me to New Orleans. My name was then Hannah Person, it is now Hannah Cole. This is the only child I have and I desire to find him much.

It was not an easy matter to place an ad. It took two days’ wages if you earned 50 cents a day, what “freedpeople”—a new word—were starting to get for work. It meant hiring someone who could write. Literacy had been against the law for slaves, so few of the four million knew how to write.

But the idea grew.

The editors of the Southwestern Christian Advocate published their paper in New Orleans, but it went out to Methodist preachers in Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas and Louisiana. The paper started a column called “Lost Friends,” a page on which people called out for family that had disappeared on the Slave Trail. One lost friend wrote:

Mr. Editor—I was bred and born in Virginia, but am unable to name the county, for I was so young that I don’t recollect it; but I remember I lived twelve miles from a town called Danville….I was sold to a speculator whose name was Wm. Ferrill and was brought to Mobile, Alabama at the age of 10 years. To my recollection my father’s name was Joseph, and my mother’s Milly, my brother’s Anthony, and my sister’s Maria….My name was Annie Ferrill, but my owners changed my name.

The black churches picked it up. Every Sunday, preachers around the South looked out at congregations and read announcements from “Lost Friends” and columns like it. A message from a woman who had been snatched from her mother when she was a girl might reach hundreds of thousands.

I wish to inquire for my relatives, whom I left in Virginia about 25 years ago. My mother’s name was Matilda; she lived near Wilton, Va., and belonged to a Mr. Percifield. I was sold with a younger sister—Bettie. My name was Mary, and I was nine years old when sold to a trader named Walker, who carried us to North Carolina. Bettie was sold to a man named Reed, and I was sold and carried to New Orleans and from there to Texas. I had a brother, Sam, and a sister, Annie, who were left with mother. If they are alive, I will be glad to hear from them. Address me at Morales, Jackson Co., Texas.—Mary Haynes.”

Year after year the notices spread—hundreds, and then thousands. They continued in black newspapers until World War I, fully 50 years after Emancipation.

For almost everyone, the break was permanent, the grief everlasting. But the historian Heather Williams has unearthed a handful of reunions. One in particular gives the flavor.

Robert Glenn was sold at age 8 from his mother and father in North Carolina and spent the rest of his childhood in Kentucky. After Emancipation, now a “freedman” of about 20, Glenn remembered the name of his hometown—Roxboro. He knew how rare this was, so he decided to go back to his birthplace and look for his parents.

“I made a vow that I was going to North Carolina and see my mother if she was still living. I had plenty of money for the trip,” he said. After a few days Glenn turned up in Roxboro. And there, in an accident hardly repeated by any of the million on the Slave Trail of Tears, he found his mother.

“I shook my mother’s hand and held it a little too long, and she suspicioned something,” Glenn said. She had seen him last when he was 8, and did not recognize him. The expectation of so many slaves was that their families would be annihilated, and so it became important to be able to forget.

“Then she came to me and said, ‘Ain’t you my child?’” Glenn recalled. “‘Tell me, ain’t you my child whom I left on the road near Mr. Moore’s before the war?’ I broke down and began to cry. I did not know before I came home whether my parents were dead or alive.” And now, “mother nor father did not know me.”

N'COBRA-Chicago Statement On The Pope's Visit and the Roman Catholic Church

Published Date : 2015-09-30 16:39:22

N”COBRA-Chicago’s Press Conference Address on the Omissions by the Pope on His Visit to America

Good Evening. N’COBRA, the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, Chicago Chapter would like to thank everyone for coming out this evening. We are here to address the Omissions from the Pope’s messages during his visit to the US in relationship to people of African descent. In addition, we are calling on all people of African descent, with a special invitation to Black Catholics, and the Catholic community in general, to stand with us. Our efforts here are to continue a conversation – to continue honest dialog, with aims at righting historical wrongs committed by the Roman Catholic Church against Africans and people of African descent – wrongs that continue to negatively impact us globally on a daily basis.

We are not here to cast in dispersion, confront or attack the Catholic Church, Pope Francis, or the Catholic community in US, Chicago, or world-wide –Black, white, Hispanic or other. We are here to tell the truth and, again, call for action that would assist in the repair of African peoplehood globally.

Let us begin by indicating that we were pleased that Pope Francis evoked the memory and spirit of our great ancestor, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr during one of his addresses. And I quote Pope Francis, “To use a telling phrase of the Reverend Martin Luther King, we can say that we have defaulted on a promissory note and now is the time to honor it.”

In invoking Dr. King’s spirit, with this particular statement, Pope Francis has opened the door to the discussion on reparations. As we know, Dr. King made this statement in the context of calling for reparations or reparatory justice in America.

Since this door was cracked by Pope Francis, we would like to open it fully so we can see the depth of the Church’s role in the injury of African people and the fullness of Its obligation to join in our repair.

First the injury.

Historical record will affirm that Roman Catholic Church:

1. Ordered the destruction of African nations, the genocide of Native nations and the enslavement of Africans and their descendants

Beginning in 1411 and 1430 Pope Martin V issued two papal bulls said to have created and established the international slave trade. Ordering the Portuguese to go into Africa ignoring all laws of sovereignty and divine rights and invade, plunder and reduce its inhabitants to perpetual slavery. His successor, Pope Eugene IV, ratified his orders in 1438, extending to Spain the same mission in what would become the Americas.

In 1452, Pope Nicholas V wrote in a separate edict for Spain ordering and granting

“free and ample faculty to invade, search out, expunge, vanquish and subdue all pagans and enemies of Christ whosoever placed, and their persons to reduce to perpetual slavery, and all their kingdoms, possessions and goods to apply and appropriate, …

In 1458, his successor, Pope Calixtus III, continued this grant to Spain and Portugal.

Papal Bulls of 1492 and 1493 authorized the Monarchs to “Invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue” all and appropriate and “goods whatsoever held and possessed by them and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery.”

Finally 1537, Pope Paul III abolished the enslavement of indigenous peoples in the Americas, denying the humanity of Africans and setting in motion the brutal enslavement of Africans and people of African descent that continued for more than 350 years after.

1. Inaugurated the racial hatred and racial structuring of the world that has Africans and African descendants on the bottom of humanity in the areas of the recognition of the value of their humanity and the safety and respect of their persons and property. Prior to the orders of the Church mentioned above, Africans and people of African descent where held in high esteem, and in many cases the highest place of esteem and respect globally among humanity.

For instance, when the first Europeans entered Africa -Egypt, the Greek historian Herodotus – who described them physically as having woolly hair and burnt skin, also described them as gods and the Greeks as children in caparison. The Romans held the Ethiopians in high regards and enjoyed diplomatic relations as equals.

In the East, we know that the first Chinese dynasty was founded by African descendants. Also, statuary all over the Orient shows that Buddha, himself, was of African descent. And in Japan, it was commonly asserted that in order to be a true Samurai, you had to have part African blood.

Throughout Eastern Europe prior to the Church’s orders, the Black Madonna and Child were venerated in nearly every cathedral for hundreds of years. Even in what is now called the Americas, Afrikans were held in high esteem, as the temples and colossal heads of the Olmecs, the first American civilization, attests.

It was only after the Church’s official orders and the actions of those who received them, did Africans begin to suffer from this global abuse of denigration of our unique historical character; and

1. The Roman Catholic Church has, and is still, benefiting the most from those crimes against African humanity. To quote a internet sites,

“The Catholic Church is the biggest financial power, wealth accumulator and property owner in existence. She is a greater possessor of material riches than any other single institution, corporation, bank, giant trust, government or state of the whole globe”

And

“[The Church’s wealth] in the US alone is greater than that of the five wealthiest giant corporations of the country. When to that is added all the real estate, property and stocks and shares abroad, the staggering accumulation of the wealth of the Catholic Church becomes so formidable as to defy any rational assessment.”

Now, the Church’s obligation.

With the Church’s history described above, in addition to Its global position, and at a time when Black life is being extinguished in America in epidemic numbers, it is of grave importance that Pope Francis specifically address this history and the need for America and American Catholics and their institutions to focus their attention and resources on these conditions of African descendants.

Therefore, we calling all religious and spiritual people to stand with us as we call upon Pope Francis and the Roman Catholic Church to

1. Offer an official apology of these actions by the Church that has led to the continued devastation of African life and limitation of their life chances in America and globally.
2. Full recognition of the role It has played in shaping a global racial consciousness that discriminates against, marginalizes and oppresses Africans and people of African descent 24/7/365 no matter where we exist on the planet.
3. Immediate and full use of its global resources to assist reparatory justice organs in reversing this anti-African global racial consciousness and its effects;
4. Immediate and full use of Its geo-political influence in calling on America and all Western countries to move swiftly and without reserve in acknowledging, observing, and fulfilling the mission of the International Decade of People of African Descent 2015-2024, declared by the United Nations.

N’COBRA thank all for coming out and urge you all to contact the Archdiocese in Chicago to share your views on this important issue of reparatory justice and demand a continuation of this conversation that Pope Francis has begun.

How the Legacy of Slavery Affects the Mental Health of Black Americans Today

Published Date : 2015-07-29 13:22:06

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Preview YouTube video Odetta – Glory, Glory – Gospel

The history of British slave ownership has been buried: now its scale can be revealed

Published Date : 2015-07-13 07:18:11

A print shows African captives being taken on board a slave ship. Photograph: Print Collector/Getty

Ta-Nehisi Coates Makes the Case For Reparations

Published Date : 2015-07-07 17:17:09

ByBetsy Kaplan

VIEW SLIDESHOW 1 of36

How Activists Won Reparations for the Survivors of Chicago Police Department Torture 

Published Date : 2015-07-07 14:03:23

By Flint Taylor

Beckles Describes Launch of Trinidad & Tobago's Reparations Commission as a ‘Seminal Moment’  

Published Date : 2015-07-01 00:24:04

(Left to right) Aiyegro Ome, chair of the TTNCR; Rodger Samuel, Minister of National Diversity & Social Integration; Winston Dookeran, Foreign Minister; Prof. Hilary Beckles.

The University of the West Indies, Vice-Chancellery. Tuesday, June 30, 2015 –  “We now need to say to the British Government development is a shared responsibility…you have a role to play in this process, come back to the table and repair the damage you have done”. Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, Vice-Chancellor of The University of the West Indies (The UWI), was speaking in his role as chairman of the CARICOM Reparations Commission, at the launch of the Trinidad and Tobago National Commission on Reparations (TTNCR) on June 13, 2015.

The audience at the Daaga Auditorium on The UWI St Augustine Campus included the Diplomatic Corps, government officials, First Peoples representatives, local Rastafarians, civil society representatives and the news media. The establishment of TTNCR, on February 6, 2014, conformed to a mandate from CARICOM that each member state form its own national committee on reparations.

Professor Sir Hilary Beckles described the formal launch as a “seminal moment” in the history of civil rights and social consciousness in the country and noted that Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister, the Honourable Kamla Persad-Bissessar, had spoken in support of the reparatory justice process when she served as chair of CARICOM. The National Committee, he said, has much work to do in building upon the historic efforts of past organisations to bring justice to the victims of native genocide, chattel enslavement, and deceptive indentureship.

He accepted the chairmanship of the regional Commission so as to support governments in building the case and managing the huge 21^st century diplomatic challenge, in a process that is advanced and carried out in an orderly and respectful manner. He stressed the need for Caribbean solidarity, noting that all Caribbean governments in the last 50 years have been cleaning up the mess left behind by the imperial governments. “This mess cleaning has led to heavy expenditure in social policy, creating huge fiscal deficits in most instances. Colonial powers should be sharing the burden and partnering in our heroic efforts to create sustainable nations out of the rubble of colonialism”, he stated.

Critically, he continued, reparatory justice has received very bad press over the years, driven largely by arguments coming out of Europe. The argument, for example, that native genocide, chattel slavery, and deceptive indentureship all occurred a long time ago, and cannot therefore be litigated, has won support in sections of the press and society. For this reason, he said, his leadership of the Regional Commission has focused on building the bridge between the movements for reparatory justice and sustainable development.

He stated, “I have sought to reject the notion that reparations is about cash handouts, and human mendicancy. Rather, that it is about public health, education, poverty eradication, institutional and cultural racism, debt relief, and support for the repatriation of those Africans who wish to return to Africa, and support for development programs for First Nation peoples. The cost of these development programs should be supported by European nations within the context of a reformed development paradigm”.

Professor Sir Hilary Beckles noted that reparatory justice is not confrontational but “must reflect a genuine interest in reconciliation, truth and justice. The region wants to put this terrible history behind it, but brushing crimes under the carpet will not serve to enhance the region’s self-respect and international perceptions of our dignity as young nations. Heads of governments have acknowledged that reparatory justice for citizens is a case that will test the resolve and vision of the finest tradition of Caribbean diplomacy”. Professor Sir Hilary Beckles acknowledged that two such experts who have keen insights and experience in matters of international diplomacy are Trinidad and Tobago’s Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Dookeran and former CARICOM Secretary-General Sir Edwin Carrington.

The highlight of Professor Sir Hilary Beckles’ presentation was that evidentiary basis of the case against European slave-owning nations has been established. “Europe has a case to answer”, he said. “This much is known in the capitals of Europe; the only matter to be discussed at this time is how, where, and when the case should be answered”.  He detailed the 10 point operational plan, prepared by the Regional Reparations Committee as part of the Caribbean Reparatory Justice Programme. “The case is now in the hands of CARICOM governments. Civil society has done its work over the past century, and the matter is now with CARICOM to decide on the way forward”.

Venezuela's Maduro Backs CARICOM Proposal for Slavery Reparations 

Published Date : 2015-06-26 23:17:34

By Lucas Koerner

Philadelphia, June 24, 2015 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has declared that his government would support an initiative by the Community of the Caribbean (CARICOM) to demand reparations from European countries for their role in colonial slavery.

“We have supported the proposal by the Community of the Caribbean that Europe has to compensate Africa and America,” the socialist leader affirmed on Tuesday during his weekly television program.

The ten-point CARICOM program for reparatory justice, which was first announced in 2013 after a decade of discussions, includes calls for a full unqualified apology from European nations, a repatriation program for those who wish to return to Africa, as well as debt cancellation.

The proposal has been strongly backed by the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and coincides with similar initiatives by Bolivia and Peru as well as Ta-Nehisi Coates’ reopening of the reparations debate in the US.

In slamming European responsibility for the colonial wounds of slavery, Maduro also took the opportunity to denounce the European Union’s recently authorized military operation to shut down the flow of African migrants across the Mediterranean following the drowning of 800 migrants off the Italian coast in April.

“Pope Francis, raise your voice to stop this European Union military operation against the African people,” the head of state urged, decrying the plan as “savagery”.

Announced on Friday, the military operation will reportedly target the boats belonging to alleged people smugglers, but will also feature operations in Libyan territorial waters and possibly inside Libya itself.

Facing the Truth: The Case for Reparations

Published Date : 2015-06-10 20:13:20

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm9DJuTrO8Q

THE PRINCIPLES AND PRAXIS OF REPARATIONS

Published Date : 2015-06-09 05:29:14

Not only do we now have a CARICOM Reparations Commission representing 15 national governments and nation-states of the Caribbean, but we have also witnessed the recent establishment of such important Black civil-society institutions as the National African-American Reparations Commission and the European Commission For Reparations, and we are aware that similar Brazilian, Canadian and continental African initiatives are currently in various stages of preparation.

Furthermore, these important developments have taken place against the background of the commencement, on 1^st January 2015, of the United Nations International Decade For People of African Descent– a specially designated ten year period during which the critical issues facing people of African descent are to take center-stage and to engage the full attention of the international community.

In light of these historic happenings, there can be no better time than the present for conscious Black, African or African-descended brothers and sisters to get on board the Reparations Movement!

I therefore wish to encourage and foster such a development by outlining what I consider to be the ten fundamental principles of Reparations (or of the Reparations Movement), and by also dispensing practical advice as to how an interested brother or sister who has joined together with other like-minded persons to establish a local, community-based Reparations organization can use such an organization to actualize these fundamental principles.

1. VALIDATION OF OUR HUMANITY

The first and most basic principle of the Reparations Movement is that the very demand for Reparations constitutes– in itself– an indispensable validation by us of our own precious humanity!

You see, if we fail to demand that the present-day representatives and beneficiaries of those persons, institutions and nations that committed the most horrible crimes imaginable against our ancestors be held accountable and made to pay restitution, we would be implicitly sending a message to ourselves and to the world at large that we do not consider our ancestors (or ourselves) to be sacred beings imbued with inalienable rights and deserving of respect and justice!

And so, the mere act of demanding Reparations is important, and is a critical component of the process, that we must engage in as individuals and as a collective, of repairing ourselves!

But clearly, any such validation of our humanity will have to begin with a knowledge of who we were as a people BEFORE the criminal European impositions of slavery and colonialism. Thus, the first and most basic activity of the local, community-based Reparations organization must be “study”: the members of the Reparations organization should make it a priority to engage in a study of our pre-slavery, pre-colonial African civilization, as well as a study of our history of European (and Arab) orchestrated enslavement and its effects on our civilization.

2. COMPLETION OF THE EMANCIPATION PROCESS

Of course, the point must be made that the racist oppression of black or African people did not end with the formal abolition of slavery! Indeed, after the abolition of slavery n the 19^th century our historical oppressors deliberately entrapped our ancestors in economic, political and social arrangements that were designed to handicap them and to serve the interests of the former en-slavers– arrangements that have persisted (in modified form) down to the present day.

The struggle for Reparations must therefore be– among other things– a struggle to expose and put an end to such arrangements and to complete the Emancipation process! This is the second fundamental principle of the Reparations Movement.

It goes without saying therefore that the local community based Reparations organization will be required to make a study of our post-slavery history (with a view to identifying the many ways in which our historical oppressors unlawfully enmeshed and entrapped post-slavery generations), as well as a study of the present-day existence of such debilitating and oppressive arrangements.

But such studies should be seen as necessary preludes to and preparation for action! Indeed, having properly educated and informed itself, the Reparations organization should undertake a continuous campaign of public exposure of such racist present-day arrangements; should advance public demands that they be terminated; and should undertake public protests, boycotts and other forms of individual and collective action to bring about the termination of such still existing racist arrangements.

3. COMPENSATION MUST BE PROPORTIONATE TO THE CRIME

The demand for compensation from the present-day representatives of those who inflicted horrendous crimes on our ancestors and who damaged and disabled succeeding generations must consist of a demand for the transfer of material resources in an amount proportionate to the enormity of the crimes and their deleterious effects— resources to enable us to counter the economic and social imbalances derived from those centuries of criminality.

It will be very important therefore for the members of the Reparations organization to collectively discuss, work out, and document ideas for appropriate Reparations initiatives, payments and programmes that are capable of achieving such an objective.

4. REPARATIONS MUST PRODUCE THE JUST SOCIETY

The fourth fundamental principle of the Reparations Movement is that the campaign for Reparations or for Reparative Justice must be designed to produce the “just society”, in that the demand for Reparations must be formulated as a demand for a fundamental transformation of the currently existing inequitable and exploitative economic and power relations that exist in the international arena and in our domestic societies.

And here again, it will be incumbent on the members of the local, community-based Reparations organization to collectively discuss, work out and document ideas for appropriate payments and programmes that are imbued with the potential to achieve this very ambitious (but critical) goal.

5. WE MUST EXERCISE AUTONOMY THROUGHOUT THE PROCESS

It is extremely important that in the midst of the presentation of our demand for the payment of compensation ( in financial and material resources as well as in developmental programmes) from the present-day representatives and beneficiaries of our historical oppressors, we make it absolutely clear to all and sundry that even though we value the concept of collaboration with our historical debtors in addressing the tragic effects of the crimes of the past, that the strategies and tasks to be implemented for our psychological repair and for our economic and social empowerment are our own responsibility and will be conceptualized, directed and controlled by us!

This is the fifth fundamental principle of Reparations, and the members of the Reparations organization must insist that it be adhered to!

6. WE MUST REPAIR OURSELVES

A critical component of the campaign for Reparations must be our own inwardly directed struggle for psychological, cultural and spiritual self-repair. Thus, the members of the Reparations organization must – as individuals and as a collective – seek to identify all of the ways in which we have been and continue to be negatively affected by false notions of white supremacy and black inferiority, and rigorously attack them and eradicate the negative effects that impact on our psyches!

7. SELF-REPAIR WILL GENERATE MASS SUPPORT FOR REPARATIONS

The effort to “prosecute” and hold accountable the present-day representatives and beneficiaries of our historical oppressors will require the widespread participation of our people: and the attainment of such widespread popular participation will, in turn, be dependent on the inwardly directed struggle for self-repair and its capacity to persuade a critical mass of our people to re-evaluate themselves and their history; to perceive the gravity of the injustice; to feel the tragic historical loss we have suffered; and to be sufficiently motivated to get involved or otherwise support the campaign for Reparations.

The community – based Reparations organization must therefore engage in an outreach programme to the members of our community that is designed not only to educate them about the relevant history, but to also help them to emotionally connect with that history and the tragic loss and injustice suffered.

One of the ways in which the Reparations organization should approach this critical task is to set out to make our historical loss visible and tangible and to accord it national respect, by establishing and commemorating at the highest national level an annual “African Holocaust or Maafa Day“, as well as by creating a major public monument that memorializes our ancestors, their suffering and their heroic martyrdom.

Another relevant strategy would be to develop a Reparations research and public education initiative that takes the form of the periodic staging of a “People’s Tribunal On Reparations” – the setting up of a people’s court in which the national governments and institutions that enslaved our ancestors are publicly put on trial.

8. REPARATIONS MUST BE A BROAD MOVEMENT

The campaign for Reparations must be designed, on the one hand, to bring on board with us all of our natural allies in Africa and the Diaspora, Latin America and Asia and to enlist the tremendous weight of world opinion on our side, and, on the other hand, to isolate and publicly hold up to international embarrassment and ridicule all those entities that perversely and unreasonably seek to deny and resist the manifest justice and righteousness of our claim.

The Reparations organization should therefore set about to bring allies on board by reaching out to and educating organizations and individuals of other ethnic backgrounds about our Reparations cause, particularly those belonging to non-European ethnic groups.

The organization and its members should also systematically set out to publicly confront, embarrass and isolate organizations, public office holders, and even Governmental administrations that deprecate and deny our Reparations claim.

9. OUR PEOPLE MUST BE INTIMATELY INVOLVED

The masses of our people must be intimately involved in the campaign for Reparations: they must be permitted enough time and opportunity to thoroughly discuss and understand the issue; their right to have the final and decisive say on the concrete details of the Reparations claim must be respected; and they must have a say – through representatives specifically selected by them – as to how the compensatory resources are utilized.

The Reparations organization should therefore systematically appeal to and challenge all of the relevant local and national organizations (and their members – particularly their black members) to put support for Reparations on their agenda and to include it in their programmes and Manifestos – political parties, trade unions, youth organizations, churches, women’s organizations, educational institutions, local government administrations, and the list goes on.

There must also be no compromise on the requirement that the “trustees” of any Reparations Fund that emerges out of the Reparations Campaign must include trusted representatives of the people directly selected by the people themselves!

10. NETWORK AND ESTABLISH A NEW INTERNATIONAL LEGAL STRUCTURE

The community based Reparations organization must be linked into both a national network and an international network that are preparing and engaging in legal, diplomatic and political strategies at the national and international levels to achieve Reparations.

And since the Reparations claim that is being advanced on behalf of the sons and daughters of Africa and the Diaspora is of a magnitude and complexity hitherto unknown to the currently existing international court system, it will require the setting up of a special new International Tribunal specifically designed to deal with and do justice to a Reparations claim of this historical importance and magnitude.

The local, community-based Reparations organization must therefore give full and committed support to this critical international component of the Reparations Campaign!

Onwards to the achievement of Reparations in this United Nations International Decade For People of African Descent!

DAVID A. COMISSIONG

President

Clement Payne Movement

Financial reparations: a moral debt

Published Date : 2015-05-26 17:35:19

By Lwando Xaso

Johannesburg – ‘It is for those of us who have the means, to contribute to the efforts to repair the damage wrought by the past. It is for those who have suffered losses of different kinds and magnitudes to be afforded reparation, proceeding from the premise that freedom and dignity are the real prize that our sacrifices were meant to attain.”

Those are the words of former president Nelson Mandela upon receiving the much-anticipated report by the TRC affirming the need for reparations in order to fix what had been broken.

Reparations are the action of making amends for a wrong one has done, by providing payment or other assistance to those who have been wronged.

Reparations is an easy concept to understand, a basic tenet of life that what is broken must be fixed, what is stolen must be returned and what is owed must be paid back. These are unassailable principles.

Many South Africans have a legitimate claim to reparations having suffered and continue to suffer from the devastating effects of apartheid.

A cycle of poverty in black communities is largely attributable to apartheid policies, whether it was the removal of black families from their profitable land, or the exploitation of black labour which worked the mines and land upon which the prosperity of this country is founded or the destruction of the black family structure through various sadistic methods that has had far-reaching economic consequences.

It is reported that in 2011 about nine out of 10 (94.2 percent) poor people in South Africa were black Africans and 54 percent of black Africans were living under the upper-bound poverty line. These levels of poverty are significantly higher than the levels among the other population groups.

The average household expenditure in 2011 for households headed by black Africans was R55 920, which was about six times smaller than that for white-headed households at R314 524.

The US, which has avoided dealing with the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow laws, finds itself in a similar position with 39 percent of African-American children living in poverty compared to only 13 percent of white children.

The typical African-American household has $5 677 (R66 931) in wealth, while white households have $113 149 (R1.334m).

Ta-Nehisi Coates writes that “250 years of slavery, 90 years of Jim Crow, 60 years of separate but equal and 35 years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole”.

Neither will South Africa with over 300 years of colonisation and apartheid that have not been fully reckoned with.

If you believe that black poverty is self-inflicted or due to a lack of discipline or motivation or inherent to black existence then that revives the apartheid mentality. Black people are not any less capable, intelligent or enterprising than other races. What black people have managed to achieve despite considerable oppression and hardship is proof of that. However, the majority of black people are still caught in the tight grip of poverty which cannot be loosened just by vacuous solutions such as “just work harder” or “pull yourselves up by the bootstraps”. This is not a question of handouts but a question of a moral debt that is still owing.

Following World War II and Germany’s defeat there was no question that Germany had to be punished for all the atrocities it committed. Germany has paid out $47 billion on the basis of the 1965 Federal Restitution Law to persons, especially Jews, who had been persecuted during the Third Reich era on the basis of race, religion, origin or ideology.

In recent years Germany was still paying about $75m to 106 000 pensioners in Israel, the US and other countries.

Recipients include former forced labourers and concentration camp internees, as well as individuals deprived of rights or property under the Nazis.

The reparations programme for Japanese-American who were forcefully relocated and incarcerated by the US during World War II included a personalised letter from the US President to each victim along with a $20 000 cheque to 82 219 victims, far more than African-Americans can ever hope to receive.

No doubt this has contributed to the upliftment of the Japanese American community in the US.

There are a number of examples of financial reparation programmes implemented in the wake of mass atrocities. However there are inconsistencies because not all victims are created equal.

Which begs the questions: how has South Africa fared on this front?

The TRC’s final report stressed that reconciliation was not possible without reparations.

More importantly, the TRC recognised that in the South African context reparations were even more important to counterbalance the amnesty provisions for apartheid perpetrators.

The granting of amnesty denied victims the right to institute civil claims against perpetrators and, therefore, the government had to accept responsibility for reparations.

In the case of Azapo and Others v The President of the Republic of South Africa and Others, the Constitutional Court stated that South Africa’s transition should be understood on the basis that there is a need for understanding but not for vengeance, a need for reparation but not for retaliation, a need for ubuntu but not for victimisation.

The victims of apartheid have generally remained true to this bargain – they have, by and large, traded in vengeance and retaliation but where are the reparations for these concessions?

The TRC had recommended the payment of between R17 000 and R21 000 per year for six years to each “identified TRC victim” depending on their need. The amount recommended by the TRC was thus a total of between R102 000 and R126 000 per victim.

The government, however, did not implement these recommendations, but instead paid out a “once-off, full and final payment” of R30 000 for each individual.

While the budget recommended by the TRC to provide for reparation and rehabilitation measures amounted to some R3 billion, according to the government it allocated just over R1 billion with R550 million spent on the “once-off” payments, R260 million allocated towards health assistance, R110 million to housing needs, R500 million to community rehabilitation needs and R35 million to reburial costs.

According to the Khulumani Support Group through independent research into the appropriateness of the TRC recommendations, they determined that they were accurately targeted at the most urgent needs of victims.

The government, however, did not adopt the TRC recommendations and developed a minimalist approach to reparations for victims of gross human rights violations and tasked the Department of Justice with monitoring.

Furthering the notion that not all victims are created equal, only those who were found to be victims by the TRC would benefit from this programme. This is highly discriminatory considering that the victims of apartheid far surpass the limited number of roughly 22 000 determined by the TRC.

On November 7, 2014, regulations for educational assistance were gazetted and again this measure will unfortunately only benefit those “contemplated in the definition of ‘victim’ by the TRC”.

What does everyone else get? The constitution, affirmative action, BEE and social grants? These laws and policy reforms “can reasonably be justified in present-day terms alone – there is no need to call it ‘reparations’ or reference racialised historical injustice.

“Regardless of the past, reforming policies which perpetuate racial inequality is incumbent upon governments which avow a commitment to liberty and justice.”

Financial reparations, on a much larger and inclusionary scale, needs to be revisited and studied. We need to look at our country holistically and not just at those that had the privilege of being heard by the TRC.

There have been many proposals by groups such as Khulumani on how the issue of reparations can be addressed, such as Special Pension Reforms equivalent to the minimum wage over five years which would enable a household the kind of security to begin to invest in their own community-determined and directed economic activities.

More importantly, this issue needs to take centre stage in our political discourse. Acknowledgement of this outstanding debt is the first step. This is not the responsibility of the government alone, there are a number of private individuals and firms that are morally obligated to participate and contribute.

A lot of tensions exist today because many people feel short-changed, apartheid perpetrators walk free while money owed remains outstanding.

Next time we rush to pass judgment on people for the less than desirable circumstances they find themselves in, let’s not lose sight of the context and the history which defines our society today.

“It is as though we have run up a credit-card bill and, having pledged to charge no more, remain befuddled that the balance does not disappear. The effects of that balance, interest accruing daily, are all around us.”

* Xaso is a lawyer with an LLM in constitutional and administrative law from UCT and an LLM in international human rights law from the University of Notre Dame.

What Will the UN’s International Decade for People of African Descent Mean for Europe?

Published Date : 2015-05-13 08:51:41

May 11, 2015     by Debora Guidetti & Anna Defour

Could you share a few words about the UN International Decade for People of African Descent 2015–2024 and its relevance to Europe?

Across Europe, people of African descent are among the most socially vulnerable racial or ethnic groups. This is clearly shown in the most comprehensive survey on minority discrimination in Europe to date, the European Union Minority and Discrimination Survey (2009).

In November last year, the UN General Assembly adopted a program of activities for the International Decade for People of African Descent. It is meant to contribute to the full implementation of the 2001 Durban Declaration and Programme of Action [PDF]—the world’s most comprehensive human rights instrument against racism.

The Decade’s theme is recognition, justice, and development. It’s an opportunity to recognize how across the world people of African descent are particularly vulnerable to racism and marginalization. It is an opportunity to encourage states to implement comprehensive political measures to ensure human rights protections and equity for people of African descent. This includes rights to development, measures against poverty, and access to basic goods such as health care, education, housing, and employment.

Here in Sweden, where I live, people of African descent are the racial or ethnic group most subjected to hate crimes (especially violent hate crimes), have the lowest return from their education and the highest rates of unemployment, are most likely to live in low-income housing projects, and so on.

This situation is merely a continuation of many hundred years of European history. It is a history that has included notions of black people as racially inferior—sub-human even—and the exploitation of the natural resources and peoples of the African continent, most notably through the transatlantic enslavement, trafficking, and genocide of Africans.

The UN Decade offers a unique opportunity to repair the legacies of this history. It requires states to take concrete and practical steps through the adoption and effective implementation of national and international legal frameworks, policies, and programs to combat anti-black racism. It also calls on states to engage with people of African descent on appropriate and effective measures to halt and reverse the lasting consequences of slavery, the slave trade, and the transatlantic slave trade of captured African people.

What and who is the European Network of People of African Descent (ENPAD)?

ENPAD currently consists of 20 member organizations in nine European countries. Its three main working groups focus on grassroots mobilization, political advocacy, and communications. Among its goals is to raise public awareness of anti-black racism in Europe—for example, by organizing international public manifestations around the Dutch Zwarte Piet (Black Pete) tradition—and to advocate for national action plans against racial discrimination (according to UN guidelines [PDF]), as well as for an EU framework for people of African descent. The network, which hopes to meet twice per year throughout the Decade, gives members an opportunity to exchange best practices and launch various collaborative efforts.

What is the European Reparations Commission?

The European Reparations Commission (ERC) is one of the first initiatives to come out of ENPAD. In 2013, Caribbean heads of state established the CARICOM Reparations Commission (CRC) to promote reparatory justice for the deprivations of genocide, slavery, and legal segregation. Since then it has developed a 10-point action plan for reparations that includes formal apologies by the governments of Europe, indigenous peoples’ development programs, and debt cancellation.

Inspired by the CRC, and wanting to support its efforts from within Europe, a group of us in ENPAD decided to establish the ERC. The ERC is now a distinct entity, although still in close partnership with ENPAD.

With the help of the Open Society Foundations, a delegation from the ERC and ENPAD was able to attend a recent international summit on reparations in New York. During the summit we met with representatives of the CRC, the newly formed National African American Reparations Commission, and representatives of the #BlackLivesMatter movement to discuss cross-Atlantic collaborations.

Reparatory justice for the negative effects of colonialism and slavery may seem like a lofty goal. Is it achievable?

I would certainly hope so. Reparatory justice for the effects of colonialism and slavery is arguably our most pressing global justice issue. Much of what we call today “globalization” has been shaped by several hundred years of European colonialism. For example, this is largely true of the inequalities between the rich and poor, so-called developed and underdeveloped nations of the world. It is also true of the racial hierarchies that are still to be found, for instance, in Europe and former European settler colonies throughout the Americas.

And rather than compensating the enslaved with the ending of their enslavement, European states compensated the slave owners for the loss of their property and imposed the racial apartheid of colonial and Jim Crow laws. There has really never been any political effort by European states either to recognize the lingering effects of colonialism and slavery or to repair its legacies. Through initiatives launched by ENPAD and our work in the ERC, we are hoping to raise awareness among the public and political officials of the need for such repair, including political measures for people of African descent in Europe.

Tracking New York’s Roots in Slavery

Published Date : 2015-05-11 07:14:08

Records of slave trading in New York City. Credit New York Historical Society

Rev. Dr. Willie Wilson Speaks On "The Prison Labor System: 21st Century Slavery"

Published Date : 2015-04-25 10:28:11

Rev. Dr. Willie Wilson, Pastor, Union Temple Baptist Church in Washington DC, speaks to the DC Justice Collaborative on “The Prison Labor System: 21st Century Slavery.”

Chicago Is About to Offer the Nation’s First Reparations Program for Victims of Police Violence 

Published Date : 2015-04-24 10:54:16

By Zach Stafford

On November 2, 1983, Darrell Cannon found himself in the Chicago Police Department’s Area 2 headquarters with a shotgun barrel stuck in his mouth as a white officer yelled, “Blow that nigger’s head off!” The officer pulled the trigger, but no round was fired, so he pulled it again. But the shotgun wasn’t loaded; it was just one of the tactics that the three CPD officers present that day would use in trying to get a murder confession out of their suspect. Another was applying repeated electric shocks to his penis and testicles until he finally confessed to a murder that he didn’t commit. Cannon served a 24-year sentence and was exonerated after his release.

From 1972 to 1991, at least 110 African-American men experienced similar forms of torture at the hands of CPD commander Jon Burge and the detectives who reported to him. Like Cannon, many of these people were coerced into making false confessions; more than 20 are still in prison today for crimes they may not have committed.

Now, over 40 years after this torture began, the victims and their families may finally get justice for the CPD’s crimes: Chicago is poised to offer what appears to be the country’s first formal program of reparations for police violence.

A long, winding legal road led the city to its reparations proposal. Allegations of torture by the CPD began way back in 1982 but only gained official notice in 1987, as the state Supreme Court considered the appeal of Andrew Wilson, a convicted cop killer who received Burge’s shock treatments. Wilson, who was ultimately found guilty, later filed a civil suit over the torture. During the trial, Wilson’s attorneys at the People’s Law Office received anonymous letters in CPD envelopes naming more victims. The judge wouldn’t allow the letters into evidence, and Wilson’s suit dragged on until 1996. But the whistleblower letters sparked an investigation identifying more than 100 other victims. Several more civil suits followed.

In 2008, Burge was finally arrested on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice related to one of those suits. He was convicted two years later and served four and a half years in prison before being released in 2014. When Burge was convicted, more torture survivors wanted to pursue civil cases but could not, due to the statute of limitations on their alleged assaults. To many, justice had not been fully served.

For years, victim advocates campaigned without success for an official apology from the city. In 2013, Mayor Rahm Emanuel finally offered one, calling this history a stain on the city’s reputation. “But then we called for more than that,” says Flint Taylor, who represented Wilson and other victims at the People’s Law Office and negotiated the terms of the reparations ordinance with the city. “There should be reparations for people who didn’t have lawsuits.”

The People’s Law Office, along with a coalition of other lawyers, activists, families, and community organizers, created the Chicago Torture Justice Memorials (CTJM) and wrote the first draft of an ordinance to provide those reparations. It was the brain child of attorney Stan Willis and his group Black People Against Police Torture, which is no longer in existence. In October 2013, Aldermen Howard Brookins and Joey Moreno introduced it to the City Council, where it failed to get a committee hearing or garner the mayor’s explicit backing for more than a year. But in March, with Emanuel facing a tight reelection campaign, the mayor signaled his support. The city finally presented a renegotiated version of the ordinance to the City Council on April 15. “The national context for this was absolutely critical,” says Martha Biondi, chair of the African-American studies department at Northwestern University and part of the negotiating committee. “The struggle for the reparations ordinance became the heart of the Black Lives Matter movement locally in Chicago.”

The ordinance consists of three overarching components: public recognition of the torture, including memorials; recovery services for victims and their families, including job placement, mental-health counseling, and free tuition to city colleges; and a $5.5 million fund for financial reparations. It will also require that Chicago public schools teach the history of Burge’s torture regime in eighth and 10th grades.

Originally, the ordinance called for a $20 million fund. The city and the negotiating team agreed to lower that number based on an estimate that just 50 to 65 people will be eligible to apply, rather than the initial estimate of more than 100. The remaining victims are either deceased or still eligible to pursue civil suits. “For me, the reparations ordinance is a great example of what is possible when people fight together,” says Mariame Kaba, a prison-abolition activist and founding director of Project Nia. “It models what we should be doing for people who are victimized. We need to be providing [health services]—and we need to memorialize these kinds of things.”

Kaba and other local organizers also credit the protests that have kept police violence in the headlines since Michael Brown’s death. “Less and less are people under illusions that police killings and brutality occur in isolated incidents by ‘bad cops,’” says Aislinn Sol, an organizer for Chicago Black Lives Matter. “This increasing mass sentiment is what forced Rahm to [support] the ordinance now.”

On May 6, the reparations ordinance will come before the City Council for a vote. It already has the support of 27 of the 50 aldermen. If passed, it will take years for the benefits to come into full effect, and victim advocates say this isn’t the end of their fight. They note that Burge is still collecting a $54,000 pension from the city, among other issues they want addressed. But as more and more videos of police killing black people emerge around the country, there’s hope among this city’s reformers that justice can in fact be served—not just in Chicago, but everywhere.

Does the Holocaust Discount Jewish White Privilege?

Published Date : 2015-04-04 19:04:12

By Phoebe Maltz Bovy

The top three most popular articles right now on the online Jewish magazine Tablet all deal, in one way or another, with the question of Jews and privilege. The most interesting of the three, as well as the most viral, is Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s personal essay, “I Probably Won’t Share This Essay on Twitter: Some thoughts on being Jewish in contemporary polite society,” which opens with recent tweet of hers:

Brodesser-Akner describes a sort of Jewish underground where, behind closed doors, Jews tell one another how they actually feel about Israel, anti-Semitism, and so on. She begins by mentioning an off-the-record conversation she had with an unnamed “famous screenwriter/director” who confessed to her that he was “really, really pro-Israel,” and adds further off-the-record evidence: “My DM boxes on Twitter and Facebook are filled with people like me—liberals, culture reporters, economics reporters—baffled and sad at the way the cause of Jews avoiding another attempt at our genocide has gone from a liberal one to a capital-c Conservative one.”

Articles that make assertions about secret, unquotable conversations pose certain methodological challenges. How can we be sure we’re not just getting the author’s own musings on Jewish identity? This sort of argument is especially frustrating to Jews who are not speaking out in the way she advocates, not out of fear of saying publicly what they’d only admit privately, but because they actually think the opposite. Some who insist that Jewishness is a form of privilege are Jewish themselves, an observation I could further back up with my own semi-private social-media evidence; but let’s turn instead to some of the responses to the piece from members of the American-Jewish press:

When it comes to Israeli policy especially, it seems not just inaccurate but dangerous to suggest that the American Jews who aren’t, say, rah-rah for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in public are thus in private. It would play into stereotypes of Jews having dual loyalties, or all holding the same (far-right) views when it comes to Israel. But the largely positive response the essay is getting on Twitter suggests this dynamic is, if nothing else, one that a number of Jews can relate to.

I could kind of relate, too. There are times, offline, when I’ve held back aspects of my Jewish identity out of a fear that something would happen if I were more open. But it’s impossible for me to untangle whether this is more about anti-Jewish things people have said to me on occasion, or about the far more substantial amount of anti-Jewish rhetoric and behavior I know about from family history and my own studies. Although my beef with “Jewish privilege” as a concept is less about a sense that Jews lack privilege, than that anti-Semites use the term as a way to claim that Jews control the world.

As the tweet that introduces the piece suggests, Brodesser-Akner anchors her skepticism about “Jewish privilege” to the Holocaust:

It is my Jewish privilege to have very few blood relatives because the rest of them were murdered in the Holocaust. It’s my privilege to have to keep my mouth shut at casually racist remarks, because ‘you know what I mean, like a JAP, everyone says it.’ It is my privilege to have thought twice about accompanying a celebrity to Paris as I profiled him, then let the clock run down on the offer so that I could only interview in Los Angeles. It is my Jewish privilege that the word lampshade makes me cringe, that the word camp—camp!—makes me cringe. It is my privilege to always wonder what I should have been doing differently, how I am a disgrace to the martyrs of the Holocaust because my outrage and sadness is confined to my Direct Messages.

We’ve seen this argument before, but last time it didn’t get such an enthusiastic reception. A year ago, Princeton undergraduate Tal Fortgang notoriously argued that because he was descended from Holocaust survivors (and at least one public college graduate), he couldn’t possibly have white privilege in the twenty-first century United States. In my response to the controversy over that essay, I didn’t address the Jewish angle because—as I noted on my blog at the time—Fortgang hadn’t engaged with it. His argument wasn’t that he suffered from anti-Jewish discrimination; he was merely pointing out—in a right-leaning student publication, not a Jewish one—that his ancestors had struggled. Immediately after describing his grandparents’ tales of horror, he turned to more recent, and not particularly tragic, family history:

• • •

Nothing in the piece suggested he saw his own ancestral trajectory as different from that of someone like Ann Romney, whose grandfather was, she had us know, a Welsh coal miner. Fortgang’s critics painstakinglyexplained that it’s possible to have had relatives who were discriminated against on the basis of what was then defined as race and to benefit from whiteness. But those critics were addressing an argument Fortgang didn’t make. He wasn’t claiming that Jews couldn’t benefit from white privilege, but that virtually no white American could.

Brodesser-Akner’s essay is in a sense the one Fortgang’s essay kept threatening to be, but never was. The difference is that she also addresses present-day anti-Semitism. If it were simply that she, a Jew with a fairly specific personal relationship to the Holocaust, happens to find “lampshade” and “camp” triggering, one might make all the usual points about how times change, and definitions of whiteness evolve. One probably should still make those points. But it’s not just past anti-Semitism she’s talking about.

It’s entirely possible for a Jew whose relatives were killed in the Holocaust to benefit from certain aspects of (for lack of a better term) white privilege. That the Nazis wouldn’t have considered you white doesn’t mean that store clerks, taxi drivers, prospective employers, and others in the contemporary United States won’t accord you the unearned advantages white people, Jewish and otherwise, enjoy. That your ancestors were victims of genocide in a different place and at a different time doesn’t mean you can’t be part of the victimizing caste in your own society, any more than having had impoverished forbears means that you can’t have been born into money. (Not, to be clear, that all Jews are!)

But if you have relatives who were killed for their “race,” killed because powers-that-be didn’t consider them white; if your family and culture were deeply shaped by this fact, and if you’d still be considered Other if you lived on the continent where all of that happened, then I think balking at white-privilege accusations is understandable. There’s an aspect of white privilege that’s about the ability to be sort of carefree about your identity. For your heritage to be a quirk, but not a thing. Through some mix of real and imagined (but understandable, given the historic context) concerns, that version of white privilege isn’t one all Jews see as available to them.

16th ANNUAL ERIC WILLIAMS MEMORIAL LECTURE

Published Date : 2015-03-30 13:18:41

The Legacy of Frantz Fanon

Published Date : 2015-03-28 14:59:56

The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks by Randall Robinson

Published Date : 2015-03-28 13:00:36

Reprinted from The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks by Randall Robinson by permission of E. P. Dutton, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. Copyright © 2000 by Randall Robinson. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Introduction

I looked straight up and immediately saw the callous irony, wondering if the slaves who had helped to erect the structure might have bristled at it as quickly as I. The monumental fresco covering 4,664 square feet had been painted by Constantino Brumidi in 1864, just as the hideous 246-year-old American institution of slavery was drawing to a close. According to the United States Capitol Historical Society, Brumidi’s Apotheosis of George Washington had been painted in the eye of the Rotunda’s dome to glorify “the character of George Washington and the principles upon which the United States was founded.”

Symbolizing the carapace of American liberty, sixty-odd robed figures are arranged in heroic attitudes around a majestic Washington, before whom a white banner is unfurled bearing the Latin phrase E Pluribus Unum, or one out of many.

But all of the many in the fresco are white.

Beneath the eye and around the rim of the Capitol dome stretches a gray frieze depicting in sequenced scenes America’s history from the years of early exploration to the dawn of aviation.

The frieze figures are not all white. Native Americans appear in several of the scenes. In one, the only depiction of an act of violence, a Native American holds back the arms and head of another Native American, as still another Native American coils to bludgeon the pinioned figure. Hmmm.

Although the practice of slavery lay heavily athwart the new country for most of the depicted age, the frieze presents nothing at all from this long, scarring period. No Douglass. No Tubman. No slavery. No Blacks, period.

At ground level, set back into the circular stone wall are several huge oil paintings. We see the explorer de Soto discovering the Mississippi River. Next, an elaborately gowned, kneeling Pocahontas receives the baptismal sacrament amidst English gentry in a soaring sanctuary. And there is Columbus triumphantly landing in the Americas.

No reference is made to Blacks or slavery in any of the paintings. In the whole of the Rotunda, only a small bust of Martin Luther King Jr. intrudes on an overall iconography of an America that is self-consciously homogeneous and pleased with itself. The King bust is a poor likeness of the man. Its aspect is forlorn. The shoulders sag. The head is bowed, implying surrender, not prayer. The eyes look into the floor, as if the figure understands but cannot quite bear what is going on around it in the Rotunda. A nearby statue of a standing, upward-gazing Thomas Jefferson serves to underscore the King figure’s meekness. It was Jefferson who gave to a friend the contract to build the Capitol. The tall statue’s countenance is proprietary, of the Rotunda if not of the country.

After completing the fresco in the eye of the dome, Brumidi spent many years painting frescoes and oils for the interior of the Capitol. In his words, he wanted to “beautify the Capitol of the one country in which there is liberty.”

The frescoes, the friezes, the oil paintings, the composite art of the Rotunda—this was to be America’s iconographic idea of itself. On proud display for the world’s regard, the pictorial symbols of American democracy set forth our core social attitudes about democracy’s subtenets: fairness, inclusiveness, openness, tolerance, and, in the broadest sense, freedom.

To erect the building that would house the art that symbolized American democracy, the United States government sent out a request for one hundred slaves. The first stage of the Capitol’s construction would run from 1793 to 1802. In exchange for the slaves’ labor the government agreed to pay their owners five dollars per month per slave.

Slaves were not only made to labor on the Capitol building but also to do much of the work in implementing Pierre-Charles L’Enfant’s grand design for the whole of the District of Columbia. L’Enfant had decided to place the Capitol building on Jenkins Hill and the President’s Palace (later the White House) on another hill, which was at the time covered by an orchard. Slaves were used to clear a broad swath of forest between the sites for the two buildings.

I looked up again at Brumidi’s celebration of the “principles upon which the United States was founded” and visualized the glistening backs of Blacks with ropes and pulleys heaving the ponderous stones of the dome into place. I then went down a floor to a gift kiosk run by the Capitol Historical Society to look for books about the Capitol’s construction. I found two: In the Greatest Solemn Dignity and Uncle Sam’s Architect: Builders of the Capitol. Neither book mentioned anything about the use of slave labor.

I returned to the Rotunda and took a seat on one of the low-backed cushioned benches arranged around the curved wall of the large room. I took out the notes I had made from a telephone discussion with William Allen of the Architect of the Capitol office. Allen had said that arkose sandstone blocks—in all likelihood the ones into which the huge and heroic oil paintings are set—were brought by slaves and oxen from the Aquia Creek quarry in Stafford County, Virginia. They had been mined and loaded onto boats by slaves and brought forty miles up the Potomac River before being unloaded near the old Navy Yard, which is very close to TransAfrica’s former office on Eighth Street S.E. On the construction site, stone blocks that could not be handled by oxen were handled by slaves and pulleys.

My reverie was interrupted by a group of Asian tourists who stepped in front of me to peer up into the dome. (They credit America as America credits itself.) The worn and pitted stones on which the tourists stood had doubtless been hauled into position by slaves, for whom the most arduous of tasks were reserved. They had fired and stacked the bricks. They had mixed the mortar. They had sawn the long timbers in hellishly dangerous pits with one slave out of the pit and another in, often nearly buried alive in sawdust.

The third phase of the Capitol construction (the second occurred after 1812) would take place during the Civil War, just as Brumidi set about to paint the first of his “liberty” frescoes for the building. During the war, slaves dislocated in the turmoil gravitated to Union soldiers, who often brought them to Washington to be put to work on the Capitol. William Allen called them “spoils of war” and “contraband slaves.” When I asked him about the term “contraband slave,” he grew quiet as if questioning for the first time the purpose of my general inquiry about the use of Black slave labor.

Atop the dome of the Capitol stands the Statue of Freedom in the figure of a Native American female warrior clad in a star-festooned helmet and flowing robes. The statue was designed for $3,000 by Thomas Crawford in Rome, Italy, in 1856. In 1863, it was cast in bronze in Bladensburg, Maryland, at a foundry owned by Clark Mills, whom the government paid $23,736 for his work.

Philip Reed, a slave owned by Mills, was given the responsibility for casting the Statue of Freedom and loading its five sections, each weighing more than a ton, onto reinforced wagons for the slow trip to the east grounds of the Capitol. There, Reed and other slaves reassembled Freedom to make certain that all of its pieces would fit together. The task of assembling Freedom took thirty-one days. The statue was then disassembled, hoisted, and reassembled by slaves on the tholos, a pedestal on the dome surmounted by a globe.

I sat on the bench musing for a good while. I love buildings. My earliest ambition was to be an architect, driven perhaps by a child’s yearning for immortality. Buildings are in some respects like people. They run the gamut from hideous to beautiful. Some are powerful. Some are weak. Most are terribly ordinary. A few are works of surpassing genius. Virtually all provoke emotional reaction: awe, inadequacy, lightheartedness, revulsion, exaltation, boredom.

Buildings are like people in other ways as well. They are usually successful at revealing only what they wish the viewer to see. They embody human characteristics. They have souls, memories, traditions, and larger meanings that sum up to well more than the inert materials that constitute them. They clothe themselves in veneers of deceitful finery. They cornice. They gild. They dazzle. They inspire. They lie. And they keep their secrets very well. Beneath the grandeur, I thought as my eyes were drawn back up into the dome.

A full half of the people on the floor were looking up with me. Most of them were white Americans. At least a fourth of them, though, were tourists who appeared to be from either India or Pakistan, from Japan perhaps, and from Western Europe. These upturned faces, bathed by the sun’s rays streaming through the clerestory windows in the dome’s hatband, looked to be in worship, transfixed.

I could not completely place myself outside this spell. Everything about the room was dwarfing—the scale of the art, the size of the round chamber, the height and sheer majesty of the dome. It had all combined to achieve the Founding Fathers’ objective, which was, I am certain, to awe. And to hide the building’s and America’s secrets.

I thought, then, what a fitting metaphor the Capitol Rotunda was for America’s racial sorrows. In the magnificence of its boast, in the tragedy of its truth, in the effrontery of its deceit.

This was the house of Liberty, and it had been built by slaves. Their backs had ached under its massive stones. Their lungs had clogged with its mortar dust. Their bodies had wilted under its heavy load-bearing timbers. They had been paid only in the coin of pain. Slavery lay across American history like a monstrous cleaving sword, but the Capitol of the United States steadfastly refused to divulge its complicity, or even slavery’s very occurrence. It gave full lie to its own gold-spun half-truth. It shrank from the simplest honesty. It mocked the shining eyes of the innocent. It kept from us all—Black, brown, white—the chance to begin again as co-owners of a national democratic idea. It blinded us all to our past and, with the same stroke, to any common future.

At the dawn of the twenty-first century African Americans lag the American mainstream in virtually every area of statistical measure. Neither Blacks nor whites know accurately why. The answer can be found only in the distant past, a past as deliberately obscured as the Capitol’s secrets.

Solutions to our racial problems are possible, but only if our society can be brought to face up to the massive crime of slavery and all that it has wrought.

Now never begins yesterday. To set afoot a new and whole Black woman and man, we must first tell the victims what happened to them—before and after America was new.

Insights crystallize often under the oddest circumstances. Like a melodic idea to a composer, a light pops on for no apparent reason, allowing understanding where one has been well trained not to have it. In a small village in western Turkey a while back, I watched a dervish whirl in his mesmerizing dance, performing a ritual a thousand years old. I have witnessed such time-honored practices in forty-five countries across the world. Seeing disparate peoples in far-flung cultures held safely above the abyss by the stout rope of their traditions, I have always been left, as I keenly was in the case of the whirling dervish, with a feeling of sweet sadness, perhaps envy even. For the armaments of culture and history that have protected the tender interiors of peoples from the dawn of time have been premeditatedly stripped from the Black victims of American slavery.

No race, no ethnic or religious group, has suffered so much over so long a span as Blacks have, and do still, at the hands of those who benefited, with the connivance of the United States government, from slavery and the century of legalized American racial hostility that followed it. It is a miracle that the victims—weary dark souls long shorn of a venerable and ancient identity—have survived at all, stymied as they are by the blocked roads to economic equality.

This book is about the great still-unfolding massive crime of official and unofficial America against Africa, African slaves, and their descendants in America.

I do not honor here with much attention the diversionary noises between protagonists and antagonists over notions of affirmative action. For while I support affirmative action, I believe that those who would camp Blacks in an exitless corner expending all energy defending its thin dime do the Black community no service.

It is, again, not that affirmative action concepts are wrongheaded. They indeed are not. They should remain in place. But such programs are not solutions to our problems. They are palliatives that help people like me, who are poised to succeed when given half a chance. They do little for the millions of African Americans bottom-mired in urban hells by the savage time-release social debilitations of American slavery. They do little for those Americans, disproportionately Black, who inherit grinding poverty, poor nutrition, bad schools, unsafe neighborhoods, low expectation, and overburdened mothers. Lamentably, there will always be poverty. But African Americans are over-represented in that economic class for one reason and one reason only: American slavery and the vicious climate that followed it. Affirmative action, should it survive, will never come anywhere near to balancing the books here. While I can speak only for myself, I choose not to spend my limited gifts and energy and time fighting only for the penny due when a fortune is owed.

At long last, let America contemplate the scope of its enduring human-rights wrong against the whole of a people. Let the vision of Blacks not become so blighted from a sunless eternity that we fail to see the staggering breadth of America’s crime against us.

Solutions must be tailored to the scope of the crime in a way that would make the victim whole. In this case, the psychic and economic injury is enormous, multidimensional and long-running. Thus must be America’s restitution to Blacks for the damage done.

As Germany and other interests that profited owed reparations to Jews following the holocaust of Nazi persecution, America and other interests that profited owe reparations to Blacks following the holocaust of African slavery which has carried forward from slavery’s inception for 350-odd years to the end of U.S. government-embraced racial discrimination—an end that arrived, it would seem, only just yesterday.

For centuries Blacks have fought their battles an episode at a time, losing sight of the full ugly picture. Seeing it whole all but defies description.

I have tried in these pages to sketch the outlines of a story that stretches from the dawn of civilization to the present. The dilemma of Blacks in the world cannot possibly be understood without taking the long view of history. I have, by necessity, painted basic themes with a broad brush and make no claim to comprehensiveness. (For those with an appetite for more information, a resource list follows the text.) Here my intent is to stimulate, not to sate. To pose the question, to invite the debate. To cause America to compensate, after three and a half centuries, for a long-avoided wrong.

Copyright © 2000, 2015 by Randall Robinson

Debts of history: Greece counters German bailout demands with calls for Nazi-era reparations

Published Date : 2015-03-23 08:46:12

BERLIN –  It was 1943 and the Nazis were deporting Greece’s Jews to death camps in Poland. Hitler’s genocidal accountants reserved a chilling twist: The Jews had to pay their train fare.

The bill for 58,585 Jews sent to Auschwitz and other camps exceeded 2 million Reichsmark — more than 25 million euros ($27 million) in today’s money.

For decades, this was a forgotten footnote among all of the greater horrors of the Holocaust. Today it is returning to the fore amid the increasingly bitter row between Athens and Berlin over the Greek financial bailout.

Jewish leaders in Thessaloniki, home to Greece’s largest Jewish community, say they are considering how to reclaim the rail fares from Germany — with seven decades of interest.

“We will study the law and do our best to claim,” the community’s president, David Saltiel, told The Associated Press.

Such a move would suit the new government in Athens, which is trying to shift the public focus from Greece’s current debt crisis to Germany’s World War II debts ahead of Monday’s first visit to Berlin by Greece’s new Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.

While war reparations have been a staple demand of previous Greek governments, Tsipras’ radical left government has made the issue a central part of the bailout negotiations with Germany. The Germans have dismissed such demands, saying compensation issues were settled decades ago in post-war accords.

Billions of euros in rescue loans from other European countries and the International Monetary Fund have saved Greece from bankruptcy since 2010. Germany, the largest contributor to the bailout, has been vocal in pressing Greece to cut back on government spending to bring its finances under control.

But the Greeks point out that, following its wartime defeat, Germany received one of the biggest bailouts in modern history within a decade of laying waste to much of Europe. Greece was among 22 countries that agreed to halve Germany’s foreign debt at a 1953 conference in London.

Even some German politicians have called for a change of heart on the reparations issue. They argue that if Germany doesn’t confront its World War II guilt, it cannot expect other countries to repay their more recent debts. The point has particular resonance in Germany because, in German, guilt and debt are the same word: Schuld.

Among the claims that Greece, or individual Greeks, might bring against Germany:

— Tens, possibly hundreds, of billions of euros (dollars) in present-day money as compensation for destroyed infrastructure and goods, including archaeological treasures, looted by the Nazis from 1941 to 1944.

— Compensation for the estimated 300,000 people who died from famine during the winter of 1941-1942.

— Compensation for the slaughter of civilians as reprisals for partisan attacks. One of the most infamous massacres took place in the Greek village of Distomo on June 10, 1944, when Waffen-SS soldiers killed more than 200 women, children and elderly residents. Another in Kalavryta in December 1943 involved German troops killing more than 500 civilians, including virtually all of the town’s males aged 14 or over.

— Repayment of some 1.9 billion drachmas, around 50 million euros ($55 million) today, that the Jewish community paid as ransom to occupying authorities in 1942 in return for 10,000 Jewish men being held as slave laborers. The men were released only to be sent to concentration camps the following year.

— Repayment of an interest-free loan of 568 million Reichsmark (7.1 billion euros or $7.7 billion) that the Nazis forced Greece to make to Germany in 1942.

— Returning the train fares that the Reichsbahn received for transporting Jews to their deaths. Historians disagree on whether the tickets were bought directly by Jews or paid by a special Nazi fund established with money stolen from Jews. They broadly agree that the money came from Holocaust victims.

Previous efforts to bring claims against Germany have ended in legal quagmires.

In 2011 the European Court of Human Rights dismissed a lawsuit brought by four survivors of the Distomo massacre. The judges in Strasbourg, France, concluded that a German court hadn’t discriminated against the plaintiffs when it rejected their claim on the basis that states can’t be sued by individuals.

Germany insists that the 1942 loan should be considered part of the overall reparations issue. German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, says that liability has been “comprehensively and conclusively resolved.”

But a confidential legal assessment provided to the German parliament concluded that Berlin’s liability wasn’t so clear-cut. A Munich historian, Hans Guenter Hockerts, says the Greeks shouldn’t be confident of winning any of their claims, but are on firmest ground in demanding repayment of the 1942 loan.

Even the Nazis felt bound by terms of that loan and paid back two installments before their occupation of Greece ended. The unpaid 476 million Reichsmark would be equivalent to at least 6 billion euros ($6.5 billion) today.

That figure dwarfs the war reparations actually paid by Germany since 1945, which include:

— $25 million in goods shortly after the war; Greece says the proper sum should have been nearer $14 billion.

— 115 million Deutschmarks — equivalent to about $330 million today — as part of a 1960 treaty with Greece meant to compensate victims of Nazi atrocities, including Greek Jews.

— 13.5 million euros (about $15 million) paid to former slave laborers from a fund established in 2000 by German companies and the government.

— 1 million euros ($1.1 million) paid annually for a “German-Greek future foundation” meant to fund remembrance and historical research projects.

Gesine Schwan, who twice ran for president as the candidate of Germany’s center-left Social Democrats, says the government’s stance on new reparations payments is damaging Germany’s image in Europe.

“It’s embarrassing if rich Germany demands that poor Greece … pay back debt,” Schwan wrote in a newspaper column, “but isn’t prepared even to discuss repayment of a forced loan that Nazi Germany took from Greece during the war.”

A Broad Three-Point Reparations Program for US Afrodescendants Versus CARICOM’s 10-Point Program

Published Date : 2015-03-20 13:16:50

A TRIAD OF IDENTITY ISSUES: The Enduring Cry for Freedom and Justice

Published Date : 2015-03-20 13:13:14

A TRIAD OF IDENTITY ISSUES:

The Enduring Cry for Freedom and Justice

By Patrick Robinson,

Justice at the International Court of Justice, Hague, The Netherlands.

I speak today not as a member of the International Court of Justice, and certainly not as an academic, nor even primarily as a lawyer.  I speak as a proud citizen of a sovereign and independent country, Jamaica, in the hope that I can contribute to the resolution of certain issues from our colonial past that continue to haunt us.

I address three issues that go to the core of the question of the identity of the Jamaican people: the question of a claim for reparations for the enslavement of our ancestors, the replacement of the Monarchy by a Republican system of government and the replacement of the Privy Council by the Caribbean Court of Justice.

All States attach importance to their national identity; to how they see themselves and how they wish to be seen by others.[1]  The late Rex Nettleford suggested that the search for national identity “may be said to inhere in a people’s desire to collate and codify their collective experiences as well as to lay foundations for the realization of future aspirations”.[2] The history of a country, its profile and aspirations will therefore shape its identity.  National identity in Jamaica is influenced by its 307 year old history of British colonization and the even longer history of the enslavement of West Africans, from whom more than 92% of the present population is descended.  Colonization and with it the colony-metropole relationship is bound to affect the question of national identity.

Generally, Jamaicans tend to shy away from a discussion of Jamaican history and national identity because it takes them back to the enslavement of their ancestors.  But in my view many of the issues that face us would be more easily resolved if their consideration was influenced by a heightened sensitivity to the question of national identity.  We should not allow the National Motto, “Out of Many, One People” to dull our interest in identity issues with its sweet-sounding, multi-racial aspirational message.  Oneness or one-people-ness should not be allowed to suffocate blackness by overwhelming the pride we should feel in our heritage as a black people emancipated from enslavement.  There is a major issue about the place of blackness in the Jamaican society.

Writing in the Observer of April, 15 2014 under the caption, “10 Things we should not be confused about”, Grace Virtue asserts that the statement: “Jamaica is a black country” is a fact with no value judgement attached. “Ambivalence about the statement arises”, she argues “because some of us attach a negative judgement to this statement….” The question is: Would Ms Virtue be rapped on the knuckles by the authors of the National Motto for this analysis?

I begin with a word or two to remind ourselves of the historical context in which questions relating to identity, reparations, the Monarchy, Republicanism and the Privy Council arise in Jamaica.

Jamaica’s relationship with England started in the period of republicanism that lasted in England for 11 years in the middle of the 17^th century. In the English Civil War the Roundheads defeated the Royalists, King Charles I was beheaded, and the Republican Commonwealth and Protectorate commenced in 1649. Oliver Cromwell, a leading figure in the Republican movement that overthrew the Stuart Monarchy, became Head of State, with the title, Lord Protector. He ruled England from 1653 to 1658. When the Monarchy was restored in 1660 it was lex talionis as Cromwell’s body was disinterred by the Royalists and his head removed.

In 1655, Cromwell sent Admiral Penn and General Venables to take Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic) from the Spanish; they failed, but not wishing to disappoint Cromwell by returning empty-handed, they proceeded to nearby Jamaica, which was not well protected, and captured it from the Spanish, who had occupied the island from 1509.

The Spanish imported people captured, enslaved and shipped from Africa to replace the native Tainos, who were decimated by Spanish brutality and diseases. The English continued the trade in captured Africans to acquire labour, mainly to make prosperous their sugar plantations and to enrich even further, the plantocracy; and here I note that in 1774 the average white person in Jamaica was 52.3 times wealthier than the average white person in England and Wales. [3]

Born in bloodshed and sustained in bloodshed, the relationship between England and Jamaica was marked by atrocity upon atrocity against the enslaved. But they did not meekly accept their lot. There were many acts of resistance. In fact there were more enslaved-led resistance wars in Jamaica than in any other British colonial territory in that period, including what is now the United States of America. Additionally, the English had to contend with the Maroons, Africans who refused to be enslaved and fought the English from 1655 to 1739, when the English were forced to sue for peace and enter into a treaty granting them lands and some autonomy.

Sam Sharpe’s Emancipation War of 1831, in which over 500 enslaved rebels were killed, the Morant Bay Rebellion of 1865, in which over 400 persons were killed and the Labour Protests of 1938 in which 15 persons were killed, are the seminal events that stoked the furnace in which Jamaica’s independence was forged. Indeed, it was the 1831-32 Emancipation War that more than any other event led to the abolition of slavery in 1834, and full Emancipation in 1838. Although others assisted, notably the Baptist clergy in Jamaica and the abolitionists in England, emancipation from slavery was achieved by the struggle and courage of the enslaved men and women themselves. While the English gave the Caribbean enslavers 20 million English pounds as compensation for their loss, or almost £200 billion in today’s money[4], the newly freed people were given nothing materially and, for the most part, left to fend for themselves.

After slavery, Chinese and Indians were brought in as indentured labourers. The system of indentureship and post-emancipation employment and subsistence living produced their own horrors for the workers.  Jamaicans received adult suffrage in 1944. In 1955, Jamaica was granted internal self-government.  In 1957, Jamaica became part of the short-lived West Indies Federation, which was dissolved in 1962.

On 6^th August 1962, Jamaica became an independent country with the Queen as the Head of Parliament and the Executive. But the Queen herself has no substantive role in the Government of Jamaica, where she is represented by the Governor-General.  Therefore in one form or another, Jamaica has had a monarchical system of government from 1660 to the present time, and the enslavement of our ancestors by the British lasted for 183 years.

In 1833, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council was established to hear appeals from the “plantations and colonies”. The Privy Council was, of course, the final appellate body not only for colonial Jamaica, but for Dominions in the Commonwealth. However, today the vast majority of Commonwealth countries have severed ties with the Privy Council, leaving a paltry few, regrettably including Jamaica, with that court as their final appellate body.

Marcus Garvey said “A People without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture are like a tree without roots.”  It seems to me  that we have chosen not to remind ourselves of the origins of the great majority of Jamaicans; yet to proceed without acknowledgement of our past can only have negative implications for our national psyche and development as an independent country.

We must replace the Monarchy with a Republican form of Government, the Privy Council with the Caribbean Court of Justice and seek reparations from the U.K. for the enslavement of our ancestors. And when we shall have achieved these epochal milestones let us be clear about the event that was their trigger.

The struggle for freedom and independence did not begin in 1962 when we obtained Independence; nor did it begin in 1955 on the grant of Internal Self-Government; and it did not begin with the Labour Protests of 1938; nor with the Morant Bay Rebellion of 1865, nor with full Emancipation in 1838, nor with Sam Sharpe’s Emancipation War of 1831, nor even with the first big recorded revolt of the enslaved in 1684. No, it did not begin with any of those events, significant though each one was on the long journey to freedom and independence. As several historians, including Hilary Beckles and Verene Shepherd in Trading Souls set out clearly, that struggle started with the first cry for freedom by our oppressed ancestors from the south across the Atlantic. In other words, that first cry was not uttered in Jamaica; it was uttered on abduction in West Africa; it was uttered in the so-called slave castles of Ghana and Senegal and it was uttered all through the notorious Middle Passage that witnessed several attempts by the enslaved to free themselves and return to Africa. That cry could still be heard in 1684 after the first activist war; in 1831 after the Emancipation War led by Sam Sharpe; in 1838 after full Emancipation which extracted another £27 million in unpaid labour by our ancestors, (based on research done by Sir Hilary Beckles); in 1865, after the Morant Bay Rebellion, whose 150^th anniversary we mark this year; in 1938 after the Labour Protests, in 1955 after Internal Self-Government and even in 1962 after Independence; and it is a cry for freedom that will not go away and die because it is a cry that will haunt us until we seize the plenitude of sovereignty and independence available to us by replacing the Monarchy with a Republic, the Privy Council with the CCJ and claim reparations to redress the wrong done to the ancestors of more than 92% of the population.

Let us not be diverted by those who, in advancing the facile argument that relinquishing these two symbols and claiming reparations ‘can’t put food on the table,’ say that there are more important social and economic issues to which Jamaica must attend. For the replacement of these ancient symbols and the making of this claim are issues that go to the identity and self-image of Jamaicans, and as such are anterior to and transcend all other issues; indeed they are a basic, fundamental issue in Jamaican society. We are not in an ‘either or’ situation. We underestimate Jamaicans if we believe that we cannot take the steps to relinquish these two symbols, make the claim, and at the same time adopt the measures necessary for our social and economic advancement. To do so would be to disconnect these issues from the legacies of colonialism that still haunt us; to do so would be to suggest that we too do not have a stake in the enlightenment project of rights, freedom and progress.

And so, the impetus to relinquish and replace the Monarchy and the Privy Council and to claim reparations is properly located in our ancestors’ primordial cry for freedom and justice. Without their determination and their sacrifice Jamaicans would not enjoy even an iota of the freedom that today we take for granted.

It is to be regretted that so many of my countrymen and women do not wish to have a conversation about our history and do not wish to be reminded that they are descended from enslaved Africans. National Hero Norman Manley – himself a product of the finest education available in the colonies and in England – had no such fears or inhibitions. He readily acknowledged “[springing from] the black masses”, and knew who his ancestors were.  Why is it that, when following atrocities, others say “Lest we forget”, “We shall always remember” and Never again”, we say “Forget the past”. As recently as the 27^th January there was a massive celebration in Poland of the Holocaust Memorial marking the 70^th Anniversary of the Auschwitz Liberation.  It is fitting that we should remember the Holocaust and, understandably, the Jewish people do not allow us to forget.  But the barbaric, iniquitous and murderous transatlantic slavery is forgotten. Thankfully, on that same 27^th of January on the other side of the Atlantic, in our own Jamaica, as a result of the activism of. M.P. Mr Mike Henry, there has now been a bi-partisan political decision in the Parliament of Jamaica that we have a right to ask the UK for reparations; thankfully we have a National Commission on Reparations led by Historian Prof Verene Shepherd that is engaged in public education on this very important matter.

The Claim for Reparations

Let us be clear, the transatlantic enslavement of African people is the greatest atrocity and example of people’s inhumanity to another people in the history of humankind. It was:

• striking for its duration of over 350 years;
• unmatched for its barbarity – demonstrated in the 18^thcentury by the Englishman ‘Thomas Thistlewood, whose favourite punishment for the enslaved on his Jamaican plantation was to coerce one of the enslaved to defecate in the mouth of another, whose mouth was then gagged for about three hours;[5]
• unmatched for its sheer scale and magnitude, demonstrated, firstly, by the length of the pernicious triangular crossing from Great Britain to West Africa, then to the Caribbean, and to the Americas in the infamous Middle Passage (in which millions died) and back to Britain, a distance of over 12,000 miles;, secondly, by the number of persons enslaved – well over 15 million, according to Nigerian scholar Joseph Inikori;[6]and thirdly, by the number of those killed – over six million – a figure based on those who died on abduction, on the journey to the so called slave castles, in the Middle Passage and on the plantations.
• unmatched for its profitability-manifested in the fact that in 1774 the average white person in Jamaica was 52 times as wealthy as the average person in Britain and that the compensation money paid to the planters started a second industrial revolution in the UK after 1835.

In 2005 the U.N. General Assembly adopted the Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparations for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law.  These Principles were adopted without a vote and it is arguable that they reflect a rule of customary international law.  Article 14 of the Principles provides that “an adequate, effective and prompt remedy for gross violations of international human rights law […] should include all available and appropriate international processes in which a person may have legal standing ……”

There must be a remedy for the grotesque wrong of transatlantic slavery. Why would anyone be surprised that a claim for compensation for the greatest crime against humanity in history would be made on behalf of its victims?  And why should a country in which more than 92% of its population are descendants of those victims not have an interest in making such a claim?

Some Jamaicans will argue that the enslavement of our ancestors is ancient history and should be forgotten; it took place hundreds of years ago.  But consider this.  Our enslaved ancestors could not make the claim on their own behalf.  As the property of their enslavers they were chattels with absolutely no legal status.  And when they were finally emancipated they still could not make the claim. In fact, it is fair to say that in the entire colonial period between 1838 and 1962 the descendants of the enslaved in Jamaica were in no position to make a claim for reparations against Britain.  The hardships faced by the black people of Jamaica in that period came to a head in the Morant Bay Rebellion of 1865 and the Labour Protests of 1938.  Clearly, during the post emancipation colonial period the idea of the descendants of the enslaved or the colony of Jamaica making such a claim would be unrealistic.  And so for us fifty years after Independence the claim for reparations is not stale; it is fresh.  And so it is entirely appropriate that Jamaica, with more than 92% of its population the descendants of our enslaved ancestors, should at this time make the claim.

We owe our enslaved ancestors our freedom and we owe it to them to make the claim for reparations.

Of course some Jamaicans will say no to a claim for reparations. They will argue that to focus on reparation takes us back when we should be looking forward and that it is negative to look back.  I note that we remember this aspect of our history once a year and if truth be told, there is little interest in the majoritarian black population in what we are celebrating. This attitude reflects the devaluation of blackness in Jamaican society and demonstrates how socialized .and brainwashed we have been into accepting not only that our history is not worthy of attention but also that the suffering endured and the benefit accrued to the enslavers is not our business.

The marginalization of blackness in Jamaica started with enslavement of the first West African by the Spanish, and continued apace by the British who achieved prosperity through the transatlantic slave trade.  But what is depressing is that this devaluation of blackness has been galloping like a runaway horse in the fifty three years of independence.

Blackness has been marginalized by the National Motto “Out of many, one people.” While the idea of multiracial unity is commendable, in my opinion, it wasn’t necessary to reflect it in what is, perhaps, the most important symbol of national identity: The National Motto. For the past 53 years, we have sought to represent ourselves as one people, one Jamaica, as if our history began in 1962 and as if to focus on the blackness of the more than 90% of our population is to do a disservice to the identity of the entire country and how it is presented to the rest of the world. The Motto reflects the fear of the colonial plantocracy that the majoritarian enslaved would rise up against them.  Yet, more important than oneness of the different races is mutual respect and love between them. And just as important as multiracial oneness is the oneness of the black majoritarian population. For absent that oneness, there can be no oneness of all the races.  The thrust therefore, of my analysis is not divisive, but unifying.

And so, in my view, the promotion and empowerment of blackness – best exemplified by the advocacy of National Hero Marcus Garvey and the Rastafarians – has been retarded since Independence.  Blackness is marginalized in many activities.  There is a Miss Jamaica Beauty Contest which can never be won by a Jamaican woman with features typical of a Ghanaian or Nigerian woman.  The majority of women in Jamaica have such features.  What does such a discriminatory event do for the self worth of our women?  And then we wonder why young women and men from the inner city indulge in the terribly shameful practice of skin bleaching.  Of course, the beauty contest is not the only explanation of this very undesirable phenomenon.  It is no answer to this criticism of the beauty contest to say that we are a multiracial society, and this is illustrated by the Motto, Out of Many, One People.  The attitude to the Jamaican language, treating it and those who use it – the majoritarian black population – as inferior is another reflection of the devaluation of blackness.  I immediately make it plain that my point is not that the English language should not be highly valued.  It should be.  But we must rid ourselves of the superior-inferior attitude.  Jamaicans must be told the simple truth: they must master English because it has a significant economic value.  It is the international language, if there is one.  I have lived in the Netherlands for 16 years without speaking Dutch and can get away with this linguistic indolence because every Dutch man and woman speaks English.  Disrespect of the Jamaican language reached its nadir some years ago when the Minister of Justice was reprimanded by the Speaker of the Senate for saying “Respec due” to the civil servants for accepting wage restraint.  He was told that the Standing Orders required Standard English.  The amazing aspect of this laughable incident is that not one member of the Senate rose to the defence of the Jamaican language, although every single one of them understood what the Minister was saying.  The Standing Orders of both Houses should not be interpreted as prohibiting the use of the people’s language in the people’s Parliament.  If they can’t be so interpreted, then they should be immediately amended. Respec due to the Jamaican language.

There is nothing novel about the claim for reparation, which is nothing more than a form of compensation or redress by a State for a wrong, though it is not confined to the payment of money.

In 1952 Germany paid Israel and the World Jewish Congress $65.2 Billion for atrocities committed during the Holocaust and for the resettlement of Jews.  In 1988 the US paid $1.2 Billion to Japanese Americans who were interned in camps during the Second World War.  In 2008 Italy paid $5 Billion to Libya for the colonial occupation of Libya.  In 2013 Japan paid £230,000 to five South Koreans for forced labour during the Japanese occupation of South Korea.  A good example of the kind of reparations being sought for our enslaved ancestors is the $170 Million paid by New Zealand in 1995 to the Maoris for land stolen from their ancestors by settlers in 1863.  An apology was also made. In Australia, the government has apologized for the treatment of Aborigines after an official enquiry called it genocide.  Compensation is being negotiated.

The rare show of bipartisanship by the Jamaican Parliament on this matter is very welcome.  No Jamaican need be embarrassed about the claim. Every Jamaican should support the claim, and to complement the splendid work by the National Commission on Reparations, schools, churches and community groups should educate their students and members about its significance.

The Monarchy

Of course, there is a connection between the attitude to blackness, the Motto, the issue of reparations, and the attitude to other colonial legacies to which too many appear to be attached. Two of these are the monarchical system and the Privy Council, and I address these in more detail now, starting with the Monarchy.

A monarchical system of government is one in which the Head of State inherits power – birth is the criterion for assuming a position in governance. A monarchical system of government is inherently undemocratic, since the will of the people has no influence on the process by which the Monarch, as Head of State, is appointed. I concede that some monarchies have, over time, become very popular with their subjects and enjoy widespread support. For the popularity of the U.K. Monarchy, we need look no further than the ardent public participation in that country in the celebration of the Queen’s Jubilee in 2012. Indeed, many Jamaicans also admire the Queen. However, let us separate the two issues and admit that in an age where so much stress has been placed after the Second World War on democratic values as the best guarantee for good governance, a monarchical system would not qualify as the model to follow in modern statehood.

Apart from the principled objection to a monarchical system of government, there is another reason why the present monarchical system is inappropriate for Jamaica: Jamaica is a post-oppression society and its people should not be asked to have as its Head of State a person who symbolizes the oppression inflicted on their enslaved and other ancestors.

By far the worst relic of enslavement, indenture ship and colonialism is that they have left Jamaicans with a muddled sense of their identity. Colonisation has left ingrained in the psyche of Jamaicans the feeling that they are not good enough, that what they look like is not good enough and that what is foreign, especially if it is white, English, European or American is better.

Don’t underestimate the importance of symbols, especially in a country with a history like Jamaica’s, and one as young as Jamaica is. In Jamaica the symbols at the apex of the political and judicial systems are all wrong. The Monarchy and the Privy Council, comprised of foreigners, ignorant of Jamaican culture, living thousands of miles away, many of whom have never set foot in Jamaica, and who have precious little in common with the Jamaican people, are an anachronism that Jamaicans should not be asked to endure any longer. It is no more acceptable for a foreigner, or if you prefer, a non-citizen of Jamaica, to be the Head of State of Jamaica than it would be today for the Head of State of France or the Head of State of Germany to be the Head of State of the United Kingdom. In fact, the situation in which a foreigner and the symbol of the oppression of our ancestors is the sovereign Head of State of Jamaica would be deliriously risible were it not so tragic. Certainly, countries such as the USA, France, Germany, Israel and the United Kingdom itself would not in this day and age tolerate a parallel situation. Why, then, 53 years after Independence, does Jamaica?

Jamaica should have a productive relationship with the United Kingdom, and Jamaica can have such a relationship with the United Kingdom – I note that more than half a million Jamaicans and their descendants make the U.K. their home – but it should not be one in which the British Monarch is Jamaica’s Head of State. When Jamaica becomes a republic, it would, like its Caribbean sisters Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, and Dominica, remain within the Commonwealth. As a Republic within the Commonwealth, Jamaica and the United Kingdom will continue to develop their relationship for their mutual benefit.

The benefit usually associated with the Monarchy is the perceived stability and certainty that it is said to provide: the Monarchy remains while governments change. It is not clear to me that if Jamaica has enjoyed political stability in the last 50 years – and a fair comment must be that it has – that this can be attributed to the British Monarchy. There is no reason to believe that the current level of political stability in Jamaica would not continue under a republican system of government.

For the Monarchy to be abolished, in addition to the observance of other procedures, the Jamaican Constitution requires a two-thirds majority of both Houses of Parliament approving the relevant law and an affirmative outcome of a referendum.  But there are many symbols that can be removed without going through those procedures.  I give two examples.  The nomenclature “Throne Speech” could and should be changed.  I commend M.P. Mr Raymond Pryce for his initiative in this regard some years ago.  For the new name, I suggest “The Marcus Garvey Policy Statement”; for “Queen’s Counsel”, I suggest, “Norman Manley Distinguished Counsel” (NMDC). By those changes we honour two National Heroes.

The U.K. Privy Council

I now turn to the other colonial relic, the U.K. Privy Council. The time has also come to relinquish ties with the Privy Council. Yet there are some of us in Jamaica who oppose such a move. The explanation for this opposition is the feeling that we are not good enough and cannot be depended on to be just and fair and deliver justice in the way that an English court can. The modern media, particularly television and film, contributes to the negative image that Jamaicans have of themselves; our own misdeeds help to explain the lack of confidence Jamaicans have in their institutions. But, by far the most potent explanation of the mistrust of, and lack of confidence in, each other is the 307 year British colonial experience.

If it were true that Jamaica is a nation of incompetents and dullards, then anyone who proclaimed the stellar achievements of Jamaicans like Marcus Garvey, Norman Manley, T.P. Lecky, Una Marson, Mary Seacole and Bob Marley, would be guilty of a scandalous falsehood.  Self reliance and indigenization have resulted in Jamaica being a globally recognized centre of excellence in athletics.  If Jamaica is independent and sovereign in sports, in music, in education, and in making decisions in every other facet of national life, including its legislative and executive functions, why shouldn’t Jamaica also be independent in its judicial function?

Jamaica and the Caribbean have always produced lawyers of the highest calibre – Norman Manley of Jamaica, is an example, and so too Hugh Wooding of Trinidad and Tobago. It wasn’t surprising, therefore, that the Federal Court of Appeal, that was in existence for five years from 1957-1962, functioned at the highest level of professionalism, producing judgements of the highest quality.

The lawyers and Judges in Jamaica and the Caribbean are well equipped to serve in a final appellate body.  However, if the U.K. is to be the benchmark for excellence in the dispensation of justice here are some reassuring facts.  In the research done the discovery that would perhaps most startle those who berate Jamaican judges is something that I have instinctively known all along: in terms of reversals of their decisions Jamaican judges compare favourably to their UK counterparts. The percentage of appeals allowed by the Privy Council from decisions of the Jamaican Court of Appeal is roughly the same as it is for appeals allowed by the House of Lords – replaced in 2009 by the UK Supreme Court – from decisions of the UK Court of Appeal – between 30% and 40%. Jamaican judges would therefore seem to be as good, or if you wish, as bad as the UK judges. The comparison is apt since the Privy Council is comprised of judges drawn from the UK Supreme Court – formerly the Law Lords in the House of Lords.

Moreover, the Privy Council is not accessible to the vast majority of Jamaicans. The right to appeal to the Privy Council is illusory since Jamaicans cannot afford the 5,000 mile trek for justice. Consequently, only a few persons utilise that court; in effect, only those who are relatively well off and those accused of murder who receive pro bonohelp from English lawyers. As one commentator has put it: it is only the wealthy and the wicked who go to the Privy Council.

There is another cogent reason for leaving the Privy Council. Like the tardy guest, Jamaica has overstayed its welcome. It is clear that Jamaica and the other countries still tied to the Privy Council are not wanted and if they had any pride and self-respect they would leave. In 2009, Lord Phillips, former President of the UK Supreme Court, complained that his judges had to spend too much time on cases from the Commonwealth – 40% of their working hours. He said that Caribbean countries should utilize the CCJ and that “in an ideal world” former Commonwealth countries would stop using the Privy Council and set up their own final courts of appeal. After that classic put down, you would have to wonder why any self-respecting Caribbean country, why any country with ancestors such as National Hero Marcus Garvey, who preached self-reliance for the upliftment of the black race, would not have immediately set in motion the process to sever ties with the Privy Council and have its own final appellate body. For Kwame Nkrumah was right when he said “it is far better to be free to govern or misgovern yourself than to be governed by anybody else”.

In the light of Lord Philipps’ comment in 2009 about his judges being obliged to spend so much of their time on Commonwealth cases, it is more than passing strange that, with no increase in the membership of the Privy Council, we were reassured a few weeks ago that the Council has always had a feature somewhat akin to an itinerant capability that it would be willing to consider activating, 1) if it were invited by the Chief Justice and the Government, 2) if there was enough work, and 3) if their expenses were met.  This is a very iffy and uncertain arrangement.

Moreover, we recall that Lord Phillips had earlier said that he was considering using UK Court of Appeal judges to cope with the heavy workload resulting from Commonwealth cases, as he saw  no reason why some Privy Council cases had to be heard by five of the U.K.’s most senior Judges. We can only hope and pray that, whether in London or the Caribbean, U.K. Court of Appeal Judges will never be used to determine appeals from our Court of Appeal. You see what a low pass we have come to when the former President of the Supreme Court, Lord Phillips, can contemplate appeals from our Court of Appeal being heard by U.K. Court of Appeal Judges – judges whose jurisdiction would be coordinate with, and not superior to, that of our Court of Appeal judges – when the Jamaican Constitution does not envisage such a possibility.  But as we well know in Jamaica, people will continue to tek step with you when you don’t assert yourself and “stand up for your rights,” as Peter Tosh said.

More important, has the Council, despite its protestation to the contrary, now become a fully fledged party to the domestic dispute about its survival?

The outsourcing by a country of what is after all a major segment of its sovereignty i.e. its final judicial function, is inconsistent with modern trends.  Even in times of turmoil and conflict countries seek to hold on to and resist the parcelling out of their judicial functions to an external or foreign body.  The best example of this is the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).  The 122 States Parties insist on the principle that the only circumstance in which their national judicial functions are to be taken over by the ICC is when they are unable or unwilling to exercise jurisdiction.  Another example of the modern trend is the principle of subsidiarity in the operation of the European Convention on Human rights and the European Court of Human Rights.  This principle recognizes that the machinery for the protection of human rights established by the Convention is subsidiary to the national system safeguarding human rights.

The question, then, is why do we in Jamaica continue to cede such an important aspect of our sovereignty to a foreign body, the U.K. Privy Council, when we have the Caribbean Court of Justice, perfectly willing and able to perform the final appellate functions for us: And in anticipation of the argument that the Privy Council is not a foreign court, let me say that both on the basis of principle as well as for all practical purposes, the Privy Council is a foreign body.  It was established by an Act of the U.K. Parliament which can at any time, even today, repeal that Act and leave Jamaica without a final appellate body.  And, it remains a foreign body notwithstanding the occasional, tokenistic inclusion of a Commonwealth Judge on its Bench.

Let me say a little about the court that I have identified to replace the Privy Council. The Caribbean Court of Justice was established by an Agreement between countries in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) in 2001. The CCJ has two jurisdictions. In its original jurisdiction it hears cases that arise from the interpretation and application of the CARICOM Treaty – these are mainly trade and integration-related disputes. The original jurisdiction binds all CARICOM states. In its appellate jurisdiction it hears appeals from decisions of the courts of appeal of CARICOM states. The Agreement allows a state to enter a reservation in respect of this jurisdiction which will replace appeals to the Privy Council. So far four countries, Barbados, Guyana, Belize and the Commonwealth of Dominica have accepted the CCJ’s appellate jurisdiction.

Bearing in mind that up to 2010 there were only two countries that had accepted the CCJ’s appellate jurisdiction, one would have to say that it has done very well in terms of the number of cases filed and disposed of; there have been a total of 160 cases filed in its appellate jurisdiction, of which  140 have been adjudicated.  10 cases have been filed under the Court’s original jurisdiction, and 9 disposed of.  Compared to those figures, the European Court of Human Rights only heard 10 cases in its first 10 years, but it now has over 130,000 cases filed. All new courts take time to build up a volume of work. My own Tribunal, The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, was established in 1993, but did not hear its first case until 1995.

But why a Caribbean court and not a Jamaican court, as our final appellate body? There is no denying that Jamaica shares with CARICOM members a common history of colonialism,

enslavement, struggle, freedom and independence; and that common history makes them part of us, and us part of them. Moreover, the path to the CCJ and a Caribbean jurisprudence has been prepared by the common legal training provided to Caribbean students over the past 45 years under the auspices of the UWI’s Faculty of Law and the Council of Legal Education. This training is superior to the training received by Jamaicans who studied law in the UK. It is a training that has produced lawyers of the highest quality as well as eminent judges, many of whom have become Chief Justices. As good as a final Jamaican appellate body would be, a final appellate body with judges from our sister Caribbean countries and Jamaica, would, by reason of the deeper pool to draw from, be better and stronger, and better serve Jamaica’s national interests.  The CCJ has in its relatively short life, earned a reputation for its excellent judgements, its accessibility, transparency and efficiency in the delivering of justice.  Recently, the Global Arbitration Review, the world’s leading international arbitration law journal, recognized the Court’s judgement in British Caribbean Bank vs the A.G. of Belize as the most important published decision for 2014.

Both the method of selecting the Court’s Judges and its funding have come in for praise from a group of scholars who examined the process for selecting international judges.  They found that the Regional Judicial and Legal Services Commission (RJLSC) was the only non-State election body at the international level, and that the independence of the CCJ’s Judges was better preserved through selection by such a body than by governments.[7]

They also found unique the Court’s funding by a Trust Fund based on funds originally borrowed on the international market by the Caribbean Development Bank, to be repaid by the governments.  “This means”, the authors say, “that neither the court nor the R.J.L.S.C. is dependent on contributions from the member states and this has contributed significantly to the perceived and actual independence of the court and its selection procedures”. Their commendation of the CCJ is completed with the suggestion that other election based courts would benefit from adopting this funding procedure. Jamaica has already invested $20 Million (US) in the Court and can ill afford not to derive the benefits of this expenditure.

It is surprising that in light of this objectively rendered and unsolicited praise of the CCJ’s selection process, some of my compatriots have found it possible to criticize the court in relation to the selection and non selection of Jamaicans as Judges.  There is a Jamaican on the Court in the person of Professor Winston Anderson.  An academic with a PhD in International Law from Cambridge University and a former Legal Advisor to CARICOM, Dr. Anderson is a highly qualified international lawyer who fills one of at least two places on the Court, reserved by the Agreement establishing the CCJ for persons with expertise in international law.  But even if there were no Jamaican on the Court, we need to be very careful about complaints of bias against Jamaicans.  At any particular time in the CCJ’s life there will be unequal representation from CARICOM countries.  We can comfort ourselves with the thought that eminent commentators have found the CCJ’s selection system to be uniquely commendable in the universe of international courts.  It is noteworthy that the RJLSC has as its Vice-Chairman, Dr. Lloyd Barnett, a Jamaican and a well known and very distinguished constitutional lawyer.

It is amazing that some persons cannot see the difference between a Jamaican having to travel to the U.K. to litigate a case before the Privy Council or for some other purpose and another Jamaican going to Trinidad and Tobago for the same purposes.  In the first situation the Jamaican will need a visa and if he lands in Britain without a visa, he will be sent back to Jamaica, and more important, he has no legal basis for any action against the U.K.  If you need a visa to have your rights vindicated before your supposedly final Court of Appeal, and this is at the behest of a foreign Sovereign, then that right juridically and functionally is gravely compromised or non-existent. In the second situation he needs no visa for entry into Trinidad and Tobago and if he is denied entry into that country, he can file an action before the CCJ on the basis that his right to freedom of movement within CARICOM has been breached. In the Shanique Myrie case, the CCJ in its illuminating decision clarified that the right to free movement was subject only to the receiving state’s right to deny entry if it is able to show that the Jamaican would be a charge on the public purse or falls within a restrictively determined class of undesirable persons.

In any event, the Jamaican would not have to travel to Trinidad and Tobago to litigate his case since the CCJ is, unlike the Privy Council, an itinerant court that will travel to the litigant’s country without having to be invited by the Government and the Chief Justice.

Moreover, the right to free movement is not unqualified.  Even in the European Union, a body with deeper integration than CARICOM, that right “is subject to limitations justified on grounds of public policy, public security or public health” – Article 45(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

Fifty three years after independence, the best gift to Jamaica would be a categoric and unequivocal decision to sever ties with those two symbols that are inappropriate for the country: the replacement of the Monarchy with a republican system of government – ironically, the system that prevailed in England in the first period of its relationship with our country – and the replacement of the Privy Council with the CCJ.  In adopting those measures we will be following the example of another island state: Singapore (the country that is most frequently cited by Jamaicans as worthy of emulation for its growth and development) was a colony of the UK for about a century and a half, became an independent republic within the Commonwealth in 1965 and abolished all appeals to the Privy Council in 1994.

We are of course pleased that the Court delivers excellent judgements, works speedily, is fair in its dispensation of justice, and is more accessible than the Privy Council.  However, the main basis for replacing the Privy Council with the CCJ is that it represents the most efficacious way to express our sovereignty and identity in order to serve Jamaica’s interests.

The law to replace the Privy Council with the CCJ must be passed by a two-thirds majority of both Houses of Parliament – the House of Representatives and the Senate; anything further is not only supererogatory, but may even be dangerous.

Conclusion

So strong is the sentiment against looking back into our history that if we continue along this trajectory, it would not surprise me to find that fifty years from today it will be considered offensive or a sign of  ill-breeding to say anything about the enslavement of our ancestors or anything relating to Africa and blackness. One way of eradicating this pathology of national schizophrenia in relation to who we are and how we wish to be perceived as a people is to educate ourselves, beginning with the young, about our history. Jamaican and Caribbean history should be compulsory in the first five years of secondary school, with students required to write an examination on the subject in the CSEC – Garvey for breakfast, Garvey for lunch and Garvey for dinner.

Republican status is the natural and logical culmination of the process that began with the first cry for freedom by our oppressed ancestors and was continued by their full Emancipation in 1838 and the attainment of Independence in 1962. Indeed, I maintain that Republican status in 1962 would have been more consistent with the linear progression that marked the movement to full independence than the Monarchical system that is deeply entrenched in the Constitution.  Certainly, that is what Jamaica’s most popular national Hero, Marcus Garvey, would have desired. After 53 years we are still struggling to find the courage to remove these last relics of colonization. Replacing the two symbols and making the claim for reparations is about acknowledging the struggle of our ancestors – Tacky and Nanny of the Maroons; Sam Sharpe and Eliza Whittingham; Paul Bogle, Elizabeth Taylor and George William Gordon; Marcus Garvey, Aggie Bernard, St. William Grant; Alexander Bustamante and Norman Manley – we say to them: you did not struggle in vain; it will be the final vindication of their struggle; fail to relinquish and replace those ties, fail to make the claim for reparations, and we fail them; not to grasp the plenitude of sovereignty and independence available to us would be an abnegation and a grave betrayal of their hopes and aspirations.

But, even as it is right that we recognise and acknowledge the struggle of our ancestors, it is imperative that we should not allow ourselves to be weighed down by certain aspects of that history.  Our past must not become an albatross around our necks; we should be inspired and buoyed by the courage of our ancestors and use their spirit to transport us to greater heights of achievement. Relinquishing and replacing the ties is also about saying to our ancestors, “we are ready and able to complete the journey you started centuries ago”. To borrow the wonderfully expressive phrase from the Jamaican language used by Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller: “time come”.

But symbols are not an end in themselves; they are only a vehicle to take us where we want to go. Jamaicans must make Jamaica work. Our enslaved and other ancestors initiated the process that led to political independence. They would want us to achieve economic independence or as much of that as is attainable in our interrelated and globalized world. Mindful of Norman Manley’s charge to this generation “to reconstruct the social and economic society and life of Jamaica”, the best way to memorialise and celebrate the struggle of our ancestors – who, make no mistake about it, are responsible for the freedom and independence we have today – is for Jamaicans to work hard to ensure that our country experiences real growth and development – time come for that too.

[1] Mirror, Mirror. Identity, Race and Protest in Jamaica – Collins, Sangster 1970 p.19.

[2] Ibid.

[3]   Trevor Burnard, Mastery, Tyranny and Desire: Thomas Thistlewood and His Slaves in the Anglo Jamaica World, p 15 – The Press U.W.I. 2004.

[4]   Nick Draper in The Price of Emancipation (Cambridge 2010) pp.106-107, as cited in Hilary Beckles, Britain’s Black Debt, p 144, para.3.

[5] Supra Footnote 3, p 104.

[6]   Joseph Inikori, Measuring the Atlantic Slave Trade; An Assessment of  Curtin and Antsy, Journal of African History, 17 No 2 1976, pp 197-223.

[7]   Selecting International Judges; Principle, Process and Politics, Ruth Mackenzie, Kate Malleson, Penny Martin and Philippe Sands – Oxford University Press p 147.

"Learning from Historical Tragedies to Combat Racial Discrimination Today"

Published Date : 2015-03-20 13:12:37

 Keynote Speech Delivered at the United Nations on the Occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

Theme

“Learning from Historical Tragedies to Combat Racial Discrimination Today”

By Professor Verene A. Shepherd

The University of the West Indies, Jamaica

Member of the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent

March 20, 2015

United Nations General Assembly, New York

Excellencies

Distinguished Guests

Friends all:

It is a privilege for me to address you as we approach another International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, proclaimed by this United Nations General Assembly in 1966– six years after the tragedy in South Africa that inspired its proclamation, and marked annually on March 21. I thank the President of the General Assembly of this United Nations, His Excellency Sam Kutesa, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and my colleague members of the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, for this signal honour.

I applaud all of you assembled here this morning for showing, by your presence, that you share a common concern for the creation of a world in which racism, racial discrimination, Afrophobia, xenophobia and related intolerance play no part either in our personal lives or in our international relations.

Like me, you believe in the fundamental rights and freedoms enshrined in the group of international instruments adopted after World War II, as a response to the atrocities of the War, to protect the human rights and inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of the human family. Within this context, racial discrimination is to be treated as abhorrent.

So, I acknowledge the appropriateness of the theme chosen for this year’s commemoration: “Learning from Historical Tragedies to Combat Racial Discrimination Today.”  And the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), the 50^th anniversary of which we mark this year, is very explicit about what constitutes racial discrimination. It is,

“any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.”

Many of us here are familiar with the major historical tragedies or inhumane actions that have affected global history and which were related to racial or ethnic hierarchizing and discrimination, including conquest, colonization, genocide against indigenous and minority populations, the African Maafa (trans-Atlantic “slave trade” and African enslavement), wars to suppress enslaved-led protests and anti-colonial uprisings, the Jewish Holocaust, various acts of ethnic cleansing, racial apartheid, the brutal suppression of more modern civil rights, labour and independence movements, land appropriation and underdevelopment, 20^th century wars of expansion to empower some nations at the expense of others – and the list goes on.

The historical tragedies outlined are not so remote in the past that we cannot recall them; and even if we wished to forget them, our artistes, authors, activists and human rights defenders will not allow us to do so, because their books, artistic productions (films, paintings and songs), advocacy and their modern-day protests over the continued legacies of those historical wrongs, keep them in our consciousness.

There was untold suffering as a result of these tragedies and inhumane acts, including murder, torture, public flogging, imprisonment and general humiliation; and the descendants of those whose ancestors suffered, for example from the African Maafa and the Jewish Holocaust, have tried to find ways to memorialise their ancestors and seek redress for such tragedies, including through reparation.

Mr President, I stand before you as a product of some of those historical tragedies, the most tragic of which were the forced relocation of my ancestors from Africa and India to a life of enslavement and contract labour in the Caribbean and the post-slavery and post-indentureship regime of racial apartheid and neo-colonialism that so scarred Caribbean societies.

But I also stand before you as a living example of what the battle against such historical tragedies can produce – a scholar activist and human rights defender, with no hate in her heart, who can work in local, regional and international spaces with other committed advocates to try to banish the legacies of those tragedies from our landscape.

But Mr President, I do harbour some degree of anxiety; anxiety, Mr President, because almost 50 years after the proclamation of this International Day, too many individuals, communities and societies continue to suffer from the injustices and stigma that racism brings.

We still live in a world where ethnicity, socially constructed race, the tyranny of the pigmentocracy, gender, religious beliefs, cultural practices, sexual orientation and other differences act as barriers to racial harmony; and those who suffer most from racism and racial discrimination are Africans and people of African descent, which is why the United Nations Programme of Activities for the Decade for People of African descent, launched right here on International Human Rights Day 2014 under the theme “Recognition, Justice, Development”, is so critical.

It offers us diverse strategies for righting the wrongs of the past so that we can build a more peaceful world; a world that Dr Martin Luther King, Jnr. dreamed about all those years ago. He had a dream that his four little children would one day live in a nation where they would not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.” I regret to say today that his dream has not been completely realised and historical experiences continue to adversely affect our contemporary world.

Yes, Mr President: we continue to be confronted with evidence that we are still some way from realising that goal of universal peace, inter-ethnic harmony and unbiased justice that so many have worked to achieve, indeed shed their blood to attain. We see the evidence today in the hands in the air [because] black lives and all lives matter campaign that has transformed itself from a local USA to a global movement; in the racial taunts directed at black players at football games where, on occasion, “macaco” (monkey) is shouted from the stands with complete disregard for the feelings of black players; in institutional and structural racism; in racial profiling at international borders and within some countries;  in messages and ideas based on racism, racial superiority or hatred that incite racism; in targeted police stop and frisk or search; in differential access to jobs, housing, quality education and health care and justice; in disproportionate incarceration rates by ethnic groups; in biased textual and visual representations, cartoons and journalistic pieces that disrespect others’ religion and ethnicity; in everyday speech and attitudes that reflect xenophobia and bigotry, in cultural practices that humiliate particular ethnic groups, in the iconic symbols placed in some spaces that remind formerly oppressed populations of the perpetrators of the tragedies of the past — and in so many other areas.

And so, today, I join with the international community in the global call for concrete action for the total elimination of racism, racial discrimination, Afrophobia, xenophobia and related intolerance and the comprehensive implementation of, and follow up to, the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (the DDPA). Indeed, the DDPA, adopted at the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance on 8^th September 2001, underlines the fact that promoting greater respect and trust among different groups within society must be a shared but differentiated responsibility of government institutions, political leaders, grassroots organizations and citizens.

This year, 2015, is a timely reminder to all of us of our responsibilities to those who are the victims of racism, racial discrimination and related intolerance. It is the 50th Anniversary of the adoption of the ICERD – one of the most widely ratified human rights conventions – a good sign that we understand that a joined up approach is critical to solving this scourge on the global landscape.

This year is also the 51^st anniversary of the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act in the USA that had such great implications for restoration of the rights and dignity of African-Americans, so many of whom had been brutalised by slavery and racial apartheid; we are approaching the 20^th anniversary of  The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995 and which reaffirmed the fundamental principle that the rights of women and girls are an “inalienable, integral and indivisible part of universal human rights” – a timely reminder in the face of the multiple forms of discrimination that women and girls face today.

It is the 50^th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, that  March 7 day in 1965 when police beat voting-rights activists as they attempted to march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama to insist that voting rights should not be denied anyone because of the colour of their skins; it is the 150^th anniversary of the 1865 Morant Bay Massacre in Jamaica, when over 400 Jamaicans were murdered by British Governor Edward Eyre and his army because they called out for the elimination of racial discrimination in the application of justice for a people emerging out of slavery without a plan of restorative justice by the colonial state; it is the 200^th anniversary of Simón Bolívar’s “carta de Jamaica”, in which he explained his mission to liberate Latin America from colonial oppression; and it is the 211^th   anniversary of Haitian independence – won by enslaved and free black people in a country that made the colonial oppressor rich but impoverished a whole nation; a nation that had a hemispheric emancipatory project in the midst of attempts to bring it to its knees for taking back its freedom; a country that had to pay reparation for its right to be and which is still waiting for that historical injustice to be made right. The history of Haiti and Latin America is linked of course because President Pétion of Haiti, on account of his aid to Bolívar’s revolutionary project for Venezuela and Latin America caused Bolívar himself later ask: “Should I not let it be known to later generations that Alexander Pétion is the true liberator of my country?”

Let us use the coincidence of these anniversaries and the work of our academics and artistes to remind ourselves of the tragedies of the past; but let us also use these memories to recommit ourselves or – for those who never committed, to commit ourselves – to the creation of a world where we never again repeat such tragedies on our people. Let us resolve, like the ICERD, “to adopt all necessary measures for speedily eliminating racial discrimination in all its forms and manifestations, and to prevent and combat racist doctrines and practices in order to promote understanding between races and to build an international community free from all forms of racial segregation and racial discrimination.”

But Mr President, there is hope amidst the painful memories. As we reflect on 21 March 1960 when police opened fire and killed 69 men, women and children at a peaceful demonstration in Sharpeville, South Africa against the apartheid pass laws, let us celebrate the fact that since that tragic day, the apartheid system in South Africa has been dismantled and South Africa has made great efforts to ensure that never again will such an evil system as racial apartheid ever raise its ugly head in their country.

The global community has also made strides in terms of the elimination of racism and racial discrimination. Colonialism has ended in many more countries since 1960 and the superstructure of slavery and racial apartheid dismantled. Racist laws and practices have been abolished in many countries, and the United Nations has built an international framework for fighting racism, guided by the ICERD) as well as by the Universal declaration of Human Rights and other rights-based instruments.

Today, as we mark the International Day for the Elimination of racial discrimination, the rest of us must commit ourselves to the fight against the repetition of historical tragedies like the Sharpville Massacre; and the theme for this year mandates us to do so.

The USA has its Edmund Pettus Bridge, the scene of the Bloody Sunday clashes, but we can build our own metaphorical or symbolic bridges – bridges of understanding – and extend such bridges – across the human family- from Alaska to Argentina; from the Norwegian Sea to the Mediterranean Sea; from Scotland to Siberia; from Algiers to Cape Town; from Jordan to Japan and from Russia to New Zealand – hands across the world for the good of us all and in memory of victims of historical tragedies and the revolutionary struggles against conquest, colonization, colonialism, imperialism, genocide, underdevelopment and various injustices. And so today we remember some of the victims of the Sharpville Massacre, among them:

Wiggi Bakela, James Beshe, James Buti Bessie, Ephraim Chaka, Gilbert Demo, Gilbert Poho DimoerJeremiah Hlanyane, Eliot Kabe, Elliot Sekoala Kabi, Miriam Lekitla, Jacob Mafabela, Paulina Mafulatse.

On account of the region that I am from, I am obliged to remind this audience of the victims of revolutionary struggles to end slavery, racial apartheid and colonial rule in the Americas, the region in which the greatest crime against humanity was committed and where each day we struggle to eliminate the remnants of historical tragedies and racial discrimination, among them:

Abba, Philda and Queen of Antigua/Barbuda; Sally Bassett of Bermuda, burned at the stake in 1730 because she refused to collaborate with the system of slavery;  Bussa of Barbados; Zumbi dos Palmares of Brazil; Tula of Curaçao; General Buddhoe and Martin King of the former Danish Caribbean;  Kofi of Guyana; Boukman Dutty, Cécile Fatima, Dessalines and Toussaint L’Overture of Haiti; Ann James, Chief Tacky, Samuel Sharpe and  Paul Bogle, of Jamaica; the legendary Lohkay,  St. Martin’s Maroon heroine whose breast was amputated for running away from the evil system of slavery; Yagna of Mexico; the leader of the 1639 revolt in St. Kitts/Nevis whose body was quartered and the limbs hung in the most public places; Joseph Chatoyer of St. Vincent and the Grenadines; Alida of Suriname; Roo and Bastian of Trinidad & Tobago; Harriet Tubman, Denmark Vessey, Emmett Till, Martin Luther King Jnr. Malcolm X, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, of the USA; and Latin American Independistas and racial equality activists: Bernardo O’Higgins, Ernesto “Ché” Guevara;  José María Teclo Morelos y Pavó, José Martí, Juan Gualberto Gómez Ferre, José de San Martin, José Prudencio Padilla, Mariano Moreno, Miguel Hidalgo y Castilla; Simón Bolívar,  …… and so many, many more.

We must sing praise songs for these men and women whose revolutionary ideology and programme were clearly anchored in their experience and in their sense of what had become, as the late Rex Nettleford often termed it, a derided and emasculated ancestral culture.

May Nelson Mandela’s impassioned words forever ring in our ears:  “Never, Never, and Never Again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another”.   And may we modify those words and make our own commitment and pledge “Never, Never and Never again will our beautiful world, continue to be scarred by racial hatred and intolerance of diversity and descend into chaos because of obduracy and intolerance. Like our soccer players, we will kick racism off side; we will ban “macaco” (monkey chants) from the side-lines and we will join hands across the continents and oceans and build sturdier bridges of understanding.

We do not want any more racially inspired wars BUT, equally, the late Jamaican artiste Peter Tosh has long cautioned that there can be no peace without equal rights and justice; and the late Robert Nesta “Bob” Marley, that revolutionary icon, using the philosophy of His Imperial Majesty, Haile Selassie the 1^st long cautioned (and I paraphrase):

 Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned; everywhere is war. Until there are no longer first class and second class citizens of any nation; until the colour of a person’s skin is of no more significance than the colour of his/her eyes; until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all, without regard to race – Dis a war. That until that day, the dream of lasting peace, world citizenship and rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion to be pursued, but never attained.

To avoid any such consequence, let us do today what we did in the past to end slavery, apartheid, colonial rule, discriminatory laws and practices and various unjust wars – form a united front comprising all nations, ethnic and religious groups, genders, classes and castes to end racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance and let us do it now in a spirit of mutual respect and tolerance, and by so doing demonstrate our commitment to the foundational principle of the inherent dignity of the human person.

I thank you.

Contribution and Black-Print to the (Proposed) Ten Point Program

Published Date : 2015-03-20 08:48:00

Calling for Reparations for Africa’s Ascendants in the “u.s.a.”

By Baba Jahahara Amen-RA Alkebulan-Ma’at*

Greetings of IMANI (FAITH) Esteemed Sister and Brother Leaders,

i/WE feel very blessed to offer, for review and consideration, this “Contribution and Black-Print to the (Proposed) Ten Point Program: Calling for Reparations for Africa’s Ascendants in the ’united states of america.’”  Unfortunately, i/WE missed the 1 March 2015 “Time-line” primarily due to the Ancestral and Spiritual Transformation of our beloved Goddess JOANNA “JO-GO” GOLDEN, in late February of this year.  For several decades, our dear Joanna organized, represented and negotiated for improvements in the working conditions and lives on behalf of thousands of workers in California and Nevada.  She became a member of our National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA) in the late 1990s, and contributed to our efforts to educate and organize others for our just and overdue Reparations.   Ase`.  Amen.

As is the case for All of our present work, what is offered in this brief expose, has as its basis a number of platforms and advocacy campaigns from yesteryear and yesterday.  Our predecessors from the previous century alone, gave us a solid Black-print for our demands and actions for Reparations of this day and these times.  So, WE recognize and honor the incredible visionaries and ongoing contributions of our pre-and-post “reconstruction-era” Convention movements, the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief and Pension Fund, Universal Negro Improvement Association, Nation of Islam, Organization of Afro-American Unity, Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, Republic of New Afrika, African People’s Socialist Party, National Black United Front, New Afrikan People’s Organization, December 12^th Movement, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, State of the Race conferences, several African tribunals, as well as our N’COBRA , our Foundations for Our New Alkebulan/Afrikan Millennium (FONAMI) and Africans Deserve Reparations campaign (and numerous other organizations and individual leaders).

My starting point for the (Proposed) Ten Point Platform is further developed from my own OVERstanding—expressed in three of my books Dripping With Blood! (1999); Reparations Sasa (Now)! (2007); and, Many Paths To Kugichagulia/Self-Determination (2015)—that Reparations are about much more… than just a check (or money)!  Reparations for African people in the u.s.a. can come in any form that our people feel are needed to increase the truth, justice and healing… and, are willing to mobilize our collective power to achieve.  Therefore, our Reparations demands are not static, or final.  They must be worked-out by involving more and more of our people from All sectors in the conversation; not just from the minds of WE, supposedly, “enlightened” Souls.  In addition, i/WE share the following ten points keeping in mind what one of my mentors, and our beloved Ancestor, Dr. IMARI ABUBAKARI OBADELE, often expressed: that the demands WE articulate now are merely downpayments to begin the negotiations with… until WE involve a true majority of our people!  Ase`.  Amen.

1)    WE Deserve and Demand the organization of democratic Plebiscites for Kugichagulia (Self-Determination) facilitated by true representatives of African people in the “united states of america”—and paid for by the government of the usa—to give our people the opportunity to decide on our Reparations needs and futures!   African ascendants of those enslaved in the “13 Euro-colonies,” “u.s.a.” and its so-called “territories” have never been extended the right to determine their political as well as economic priorities.  After the enslavement period was “officially” ended in 1865, an up until this very day, a “second-class” citizenship was forced onto the masses of our people.  This horrific state-of-domestic abuse has been enforced through continuing state terror and mostly un-checked criminal white citizen brutality; racist federal, state and local laws; the unjust state-led mass and corporate imprisonment, jailing and killing of millions; and, ongoing taxation without equal representation.

2)    WE Deserve and Demand an official Apology to African ascendants in the u.s.a., and to continental and diasporan African nations, from All Branches of the U.S. Federal Government – Executive, Legislative and Judicial (as well as the Military establishment and Corporate classes)—for their roles in the destructive war(s), brutal enslavement and dehumanizing colonization of our people!  WE recommend beginning with a repeal of the 13^th Amendment (which upholds slavery if one is “convicted of a crime”) and re-writing of the U.S. Constitution. In addition, WE call on each Branch to work with representatives of African people’s Plebiscites for Kugichagulia to begin uncovering the many crimes against our humanity and start correcting the wrongs through a processes of research, truth-telling and Reparations (through changing names of public institutions named after enslavers, etc, etc.)

3)    WE Deserve and Demand immediate hearings on H.R. 40, “The Commission to Study Reparations Proposals for African Americans Act,” sponsored by Congressman John Conyers of Detroit, Michigan!  WE Deserve and Demand additional congressional hearings on the U.S. government’s repressive “counter-intelligence program (cointelpro)” which was aimed at dividing and destroying African and progressive organizations and leadership!

4)    WE Deserve and Demand the immediate release, and/or amnesty and restitution for our hundreds of falsely imprisoned and exiled political leaders, activists and former members of formations such as our Black Panther Party, Republic of New Afrika, Black Liberation Army, Puerto Rican Independence and Indigenous Nations’ movements!

5)    WE Deserve and Demand the abolition of the prison industry, a permanent end to the death penalty and the immediate release of All persons of African ancestry not convicted of a violent crimes with restitution and living benefits (nutrition, housing, medical care, education, training and employment, etc.)!  WE Demand new trials for African people charged and “convicted” of violent crimes, based on wide-spread prosecutorial, jury and judicial bias!

6)    WE Deserve and Demand a redistribution of the fertile former “plantation” lands in “down-south” as well as “up-south (northern)” areas so that African people can begin farming and building independent, self-determined and self-sufficient communities and/or independent nations!  WE Deserve and Demand the necessary technology to help us address the worsening climate and environmental crises and destructive (brought to us by the same for-profit “stock” with the same “bonds” who gave us the horrific capitalistic war, enslavement and continuing crimes against African people and others).

7)    WE Deserve and Demand trillions of dollars in “Reparations Economic Development and Technology Fund” to support our collective community and land re-development efforts… and for individuals and families to support their self-determined and/or repatriation plans!

8)    WE Deserve and Demand trillions in our “Reparations Educational, Cultural and Technology Fund” to give our children and adults the opportunity to learn our true story of humanity; the contributions of African people, and others; to develop our skills as superb thinkers and builders; as well as to gain the OVERstanding of the crimes against our people, and its impact, past and present!

9)    WE Deserve and Demand trillions in Nutrition, Medical and Mental Care funds to assist us in healing from nearly half of a millennium of terrorist kidnapping, trading and enslavement; forced and unpaid labor; separation from and robbery of  our Spiritual and cultural traditions; racist mis-education; and, continuing societal and economic separate and unequal quality of life in every area; and, much more! 

10) WE Demand and fully support Deserved Reparations—paid by the government, military and corporations of the u.s.a.—to  our continental and diasporan African nations (and Indigenous nations and “territories” of the u.s.a.) decided on through democratic Plebiscite processes.

WE are grateful for this opportunity to share our Contribution and Black-Print to the Ten Point Platform for Reparations.  Constructive reviews, recommendations and revisions are most welcome.  In the Spirit of our great Ancestor MARCUS GARVEY, may WE move “FORWARD EVER!  BACKWARDS NEVER!” towards our just Reparations!  Ase`.  Amen.

*Baba Jahahara Amen-RA Alkebulan-Ma’at (fka European enslavement name, J. “Harry” Armstrong) is long-time justice, community, labor and environmental justice organizer in Chicago, Kansas City, New York and the Oakland/San Francisco Bay Area.  He is a Life Member and past National Co-Chair of N’COBRA and former Editor/Publisher of REPARATIONS NOW:  Self-Determination! Justice!  Healing!  Baba Jahahara has also authored several books (including the three on Reparations mentioned above); and has composed, recorded and performed worldwide numerous original songs from his now 11

Emancipation and Reparation Movement

Published Date : 2015-03-16 14:00:51

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3BaN4FxpPg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cubdbgPeWfA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oAMGYJgE84
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEUxBAhCVwI

Milestones on road to reparation

Published Date : 2015-03-08 23:59:20

Jamaican Judge: Compensate Us For Slavery 

Published Date : 2015-03-07 11:17:36

Justice Patrick Robinson

Article 14 of the United Nations General Assembly’s Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparations provides “an adequate, effective and prompt remedy for gross violations of international human rights law”.

Against this background, Justice Patrick Robinson has added his voice to the growing number of Jamaicans who think the perpetrators of the transatlantic slave trade should be held culpable, and be made to pay for their actions.

Speaking during the University of the West Indies Homecoming recently, Robinson, who described the transatlantic slave trade as the “greatest atrocity and example of people’s inhumanity to another people in the history of humankind”, gave examples where other countries have compensated other wronged groups in the past. While stressing that he argued that it is time for reparation for slavery.

“There is nothing novel about the claim for reparation, which is nothing more than a form of compensation or redress by a state for a wrong,” he said, while stressing that he was not speaking in his capacity as a judge of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). “There must be a remedy for the grotesque wrong of transatlantic slavery.”

Robinson cited Germany in 1952, when the country paid Israel and the World Jewish Congress $65.2 billion for atrocities committed during the Holocaust, as an example of a nation that paid reparation to a harmed group.

“It is fitting that we should remember the Holocaust and, understandably, the Jewish people do not allow us to forget. But the barbaric, iniquitous and murderous transatlantic slavery is forgotten,” Robinson said.

Robinson, who was recently elected judge to the ICJ, said that no Jamaican should be embarrassed about reparations; arguing instead that they should support the claim if not for themselves, for their ancestors.

He said: “No Jamaican need be embarrassed about the claim. Every Jamaican should support the claim. And why should a country, in which more than 92 per cent of its population are descendants of those victims, not have an interest in making such a claim?

“We owe our enslaved ancestors our freedom and we owe it to them to make the claim for reparations.”

The transatlantic slave trade was abolished in Britain in 1807; however, slavery was still a legal act until 1833.

In 2013, the then British minister responsible for the Caribbean, Mark Simmonds, shot down calls for reparation for slavery. Instead, Simmonds argued that the British government will continue its fight against modern-day slavery and focus on Jamaican economic development and growth.

Reparations based on diplomacy versus protest

Published Date : 2015-03-02 09:24:34

3/1/2015

Concerning the issue of Reparations for Native Genocide and Slavery, Barbados and other CARICOM states will go the route of diplomacy and not protest.

This was pointed out on Friday, February 27 by Prime Minister Freundel Stuart, as he spoke to members of the media during a press conference on the final day of the 26th Inter-Sessional Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community, (CARICOM), which was held at the Melia Beach Resort in Nassau.

Stuart stated that the issue was not going “to be an overnight initiative”, but one in which the entire region was “irrevocably committed”.

“…There is going to be no retreat on the issue of reparations. But the point has to be made that we do not pursue the issue of reparations on the basis of a diplomacy of protest; we are pursuing the issue of reparations on the basis of a diplomacy of engagement,” he stressed.

Saying that regional leaders would do nothing to undermine or “to vitiate the current civilised relations” that existed with former slave trading nations by embarking on a confrontational approach, he however, gave the assurance that leaders would not “turn our backs on our history and the legacy which has been bequeathed to us as a result of slavery and native genocide”.

“We contemplate therefore, as a first measure, having a discussion with designated countries – former slave trading countries, to see what areas of agreement exist and whether there can be an amicable and civilized resolution to our differences,” he noted.

The Prime Minister made it clear that regional governments were not trying to get sizeable monetary compensation from the former slave trading nations through court action but to remind them of the impact of slavery on persons in the Caribbean.

“There is a legacy with which we are dealing, and what we are trying to sensitise former slave trading nations to is the existence of that legacy and to the connection between that legacy and their actions in the 17th and 18th and part of the 19th century as well,” he said.

Stuart, who also Chairs the Prime Ministerial Sub-Committee on Reparations, stressed that achievements would most likely not be realised in the short-term, but “long after some of us are not leaders of CARICOM anymore… So we have to take the long view on this issue recognising that the legacy that we’re fighting did not take shape overnight and therefore, it is not going to be dismantled overnight, but we have to start somewhere starting with the pursuit of reparatory justice.”

He noted that Haiti was a very good example of the social, economic and political deficit in the region that was a direct result of slavery and it was necessary to try and see what developmental initiatives could be initiated as a result of the discussions to redress some of “these hideous imbalances”.

Stuart added that the United Nations had designated this decade as one for the people of African descent and since the victims of slavery and Native Genocide have been predominantly people of African descent, it was time “to take full advantage of this decade to ensure that the agenda of the decade reflects some of our more fundamental concerns”.

Repair-ations Guyana: A Case Study

Published Date : 2015-02-23 10:27:14

History, my friends, is being made everyday: a phenomenal thing to truly grasp. Historic “shifts,” impacting how we think, what we think and (hopefully) ever nudging the human race to forge new, more resilient paths to justice. Sometimes, however, those shifts are so rapid and so unassuming that their significance can oft times evade us.

Parliament of the sovereign nation of Jamaica passed a resolution recognizing the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade as a crime against humanity, one for which Reparations are owed. The news was relayed to members of the Caricom Reparations Commission over the weekend.[1]

FYI, Reparations: refers to the process and result of remedying the damage or harm caused by an unlawful act. [It is] generally understood to re-establish the situation that existed before the harm occurred. It can repair or rehabilitate physical and psychological integrity and dignity. In international law, a breach of an international obligation gives rise to a duty to repair the harm caused. [2]

FYI, The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: was the enslavement and transportation, primarily of African people, to the colonies of the New World that occurred in and around the Atlantic Ocean. It lasted from the 16th to the 19th centuries. Most enslaved people were shipped to the Americas to labour on coffee, cocoa and cotton plantations, in gold and silver mines, in rice fields, the construction industry, timber, and shipping or in houses to work as servants.

The shippers were, in order of scale, the Portuguese, the British, the French, the Spanish, the Dutch, and North Americans. Contemporary historians estimate that between 9.4 and 12 million Africans arrived in the New World, although the actual number of people taken from their homes is considerably higher. [3]

Why is this significant? Well, because, “[Jamaica’s governmental decision] forces other nations to [consider] taking like action. It also politically and diplomatically legitimises the Caribbean process of seeking out Reparations,” explains Eric M. Phillips, Chairman of the Guyana Reparations Committee, an auxiliary of the Caricom Reparations Commission (one of 12 such national committees in the West Indies). [4]

FYI, Caricom: is the acronym for the “Caribbean Community and the Common Market.” Established in 1973, it engenders and nurtures the region’s integration. Providing a service similar to that of the European Union. Members include Barbados, Jamaica and Antigua. Their headquarters are in Guyana.)[5]

I recently sat down with Eric Phillips, who was appointed by the President of Guyana to chair the Guyana Committee for Reparations. Phillips, a graduate of the NYU’s Stern School of Business MBA programme and former White House Fellow (1990-91), eagerly accepted. “The time for reparations for African people and their descendants is long overdue.” He explains to me.

Eric M. Phillips Jr. & Alyson Renaldo, East Bank Demerara, Georgetown, Guyana

Poolside, at a prominent hotel in Guyana’s capital of Georgetown, I asked Eric some very pointed questions about the Reparations movement spear-headed by Caribbean nations and ably figure headed by Sir Hilary Beckles, PhD, the recently appointed Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies.

This movement is living history, and as we enter into the month designated to honor black history, I wished to hear of its progression in Guyana.

FYI, Guyana:

-Geographically South American, formerly British Guiana, initially colonised by the Dutch. The First Nations of Tainos and primarily the Caribs (now commonly termed Amerindians in honor of Columbus’ blunder) were stewards of this and surrounding regions for thousands of years prior.

-It is the only English-speaking nation in South America.

– It is a land of six races: Amerindians, Chinese, Portuguese, European, with Black African and East Indian comprising the majority of the population.[6]

-While geographically South American, Guyana is considered West Indian (more nomenclature honouring Columbus’ navigational ineptitude), part of the Caribbean because it shares its colonial history with the neighbouring islands i.e. Trinidad & Tobago, Barbados, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Jamaica etc.

International infamy: In the late 1970s the heavily misguided American, Jim Jones relocated his, “The People’s Temple” to Guyana’s interior rainforests, eventually forcing the mass suicide of over 800 people.[7]

– Guyana is also this author’s cultural heritage and familial origin.)

I jumped right in:

Me: Why now Eric? Critics will undoubtedly stress that the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade ended in 1807, plus slavery abolished in the English-speaking Caribbean over 178 years ago, abolished 146 years ago in Spanish-speaking colonies, the French enslaved taking their freedom some 208 years ago[8] etc. Why is Caricom prioritising this now?”

Eric: The results of the Durban Conference of 2001 confirmed that the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was a crime against humanity. While this was a global victory, it did not get to the public stage due to global focus on terrorism, which took centre stage (after 9/11). Now, global focus has shifted, permitting us to regain some of the momentum lost after the findings at the Durban conference. The Caribbean were drivers at the Durban conference. While Jamaica and Antigua had already established Reparations committees, further discussions had begun into the issue, Caricom later made it a Caricom issue in 2013 by asserting:

That European Governments:

1. Were owners and traders of enslaved Africans.
2. Instructed genocidal actions upon indigenous communities.
3. Created the legal, financial and fiscal policies necessary for the enslavement of Africans.
4. Defined and enforced African enslavement and native genocide as being in their ‘national interests’.
5. Refused compensation to the enslaved with the ending of their enslavement.
6. Compensated slave owners at emancipation for the loss of ‘legal property’ rights in enslaved Africans.
7. Imposed a further one hundred years of racial apartheid upon the emancipated.
8. Imposed for another one hundred years policies designed to perpetuate suffering upon the emancipated and survivors of Genocide. And have refused to acknowledge such crimes or to compensate victims and their Descendants.[9]

Me: What does this initiative then mean for the West Indies?

Eric: The global economy has shrunk. Also, Caribbean nations are amongst the most vulnerable to climate change: [that concern] is a big driver. Threatened Caribbean ecologies means tourism could die. There is an urgent need to reinvest in Caribbean economy, youth of the region and in our regional civilisation. Caribbean nations struggle with high debt to GDP ratio, raw material export economies and a deficiency of technology, which are legacies of slavery. These nations were designed for European interests. It is time to turn these former slave economies into modern ones, which would require significant technology and capital, [remedies that were elusive] because there were no reparations. It is time for the global beneficiaries of the slavery economy to address the legacy of slavery. Further, across the globe, in many countries, there has been a thrust from those who have been harmed to seek justice. Now is the right time to reinvigorate the discussion of reparations.

Me: And specifically for Guyana, why is there a need to pursue claims?

Eric: Reparations is a sovereign issue and therefore claims must be country specific. For example, the RastafAri nation sought to launch a claim, but it was not to be recognised as they are not a sovereign nation. In the case of Guyana our claim is with England (1813-1966) and Holland (1616-1813). Understand that the economics of Guyana are still driven by extractive industries. Further, the loss of lives…over 400,000 lives prematurely ended due to slavery. It has been calculated that the death rate was over 85%. Millions were transported by the British during the enslavement period in the Caribbean, but there were only 655,000 at Emancipation. In Guyana just over 80,000 African persons were alive at the time of emancipation.

FYI, Africans in Guyana have never been paid for the wealth they created for European Nations. History has recorded that (Guyanese) Africans “had driven back the sea and had cleared, drained and reclaimed 15,000 square miles of forest and swamps, equivalent to 9,000,000 acres of land. Meaning, all the plantations now turned villages and cities were built by unpaid African labour. [10]The Venn Commission reported that, “to build the coastal plantations alone, a value of 100,000,000 tons of earth had to be moved by the hands of African slaves without machinery).”[11]

A Reparations Committee Meeting, Georgetown, Guyana

Me: They will say it’s the past Eric. Why should Europeans pay?

Eric: Because [Europeans] benefited from the extraction [of the country’s raw materials] and free labour, which resulted in genocide and was deemed “the greatest crime against humanity”. They, specifically the British (estate/plantation owners) were even awarded reparations after abolition, 20 million pounds in 1838 for the ‘loss of their property’; that money was then used to bolster the British economy. Similarly in Haiti, the French demanded 150 million francs (22 billion dollars by modern standards) or they threatened to destroy island. You see, development and reparations are clearly linked.

• • •Me: What is the structure of the Guyanese Reparations claim?

Eric: 

1.Loss of life.
2.The wealth extracted made England and Holland wealthier.
3.The genocide of, and lands taken from the Indigenous peoples.
4. Britain’s destruction of the village movement [the communities built by freed people]. The destruction included, flooding the land, denial of credit, recently freed people being forced to sell to the Portuguese for cheap rates, who would then re-sell to the planter class who refused to purchase produce goods from their former property. [1

Me: Kindly offer an overview of the path to attaining reparations.

Eric: The path is to provide well-documented, historical evidence. Next, to issue a formal letter of complaint. Then, seek diplomatic discussions towards redress. Failing that the next step would be the International Court of Justice [in the Hague].

Me: What would be considered a successful reparations yield for Guyana?

Eric: Land, capital, technology funds set aside for restoring culture, re-education and repatriation for those who wish it.

Me: Who will steward those funds, should they be obtained?

Eric: That is to be determined…that is all part of the process. There will certainly not be individual cheques.

Me: Specifically for Guyana, what role would an apology from former colonizers play in the nation’s healing?

Eric: Truthfully, an apology will be difficult to obtain as it will make the European nations more legally liable. It is good but not sufficient. It says, “we’re culpable” but does not give redress. Initially, we saw it as a necessity, but we realised we were setting ourselves up for failure. We don’t want to be caught in that trap. An apology is not a prerequisite for me although it may be for others. An apology without reparations is irrelevant. It’s like going to court and the defendant says I’m sorry but then there is nothing else.

Me: Eric, what do you wish people to know about your nation and region?

Eric: Guyana is a nation endowed with a great abundance of natural resources. It is underdeveloped because of the legacies of slavery including a pernicious “winner-take-all” political system it inherited from the British. These resources can only be converted into a vibrant economy with an injection of capital, technology and a more suitable governance arrangement. It is still heavily impacted by the divide-and-rule paradigms of slavery and indentureship. With respect to the Caribbean, it is a transported civilisation made up of many different ethnic and religious peoples who were brought here to serve and enrich European interests. It is now incumbent upon those who transported them to provide reparations; otherwise the effects of the greatest crime against humanity will not be overcome. In a world aware of the need for justice, crimes against humanity should be addressed no matter where and when they occur. Particularly in the West, whose legal systems are supposedly based upon the pursuit of justice, particularly when these legal systems are based on Christianity, which is essence, is about justice, is it not?

Me: Eric, I must tell you that an impassioned American friend of mine remarked that harvesting (albeit owed) monies is, to his mind, a limited victory if Europeans still own much of the land and businesses in the Caribbean and Africa.

Eric: An important remark and it brings us back to reparations, which must also include a healing or repairing of one’s self…and once we stop hating ourselves, then we will invest in ourselves. We are a large consumer base. Once we go through the process of healing, we will do, as all other people do, which is to invest in ourselves, our children, our businesses, our self-esteem…and in Africa. [The educational elements] of reparations will help us get around the old divide and conquer tactics used against us, which were purposeful, trivial, but meaningful. We could then stop wearing other people’s hair and return to being proud of our own. We could stop bleaching our skin and take pride in our natural ability to repel the harmful rays of the sun. We could stop being pawns is the global commercial game…playing in a game we cannot control and have no ownership of. I mean, is not beauty globally defined by culture? Yet recent history has had all of that defined by one small region’s standards. In all of this, Africa has suffered the most…but that’s another story.

Me: What is your personal stake in this Eric?

Eric: I am African, beyond anything. When I am seen on a plane they don’t think of me as Guyanese or educated, they see an African…with all of the global baggage that racism, (another legacy of slavery) gives. I am interested in restoring the historical pride and achievements of my ancestors and to build the generational wealth of Africans; and the great irony is that because of my education in the west, I understand the cause of global inequality. I wish to be part of the process that brings justice to African and Indigenous People in the Caribbean. Perhaps I am being called upon to assist in the process of ancestral justice…

I left this interview with my head spinning, not because of shock at any of the reveals (for I was privy to the majority of them), but more in consideration of Eric’s closing comments about, “hating ourselves”. I ruminated extensively (almost to the point of a headache), imagining, the measure of violence required to cause a group of people to potentially dislike…its…own…self…

For those readers who find the mere notion of festering self-hatred implausible, this author would encourage you to think of someone in your personal world, whom you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, has been victim to an unspeakable attack, an attack that you would enthusiastically assert was in no way the fault of that victim. Think back…were you ever exposed to that victim’s personal bouts of doubt? Questioning if in fact, they somehow played a role in their own injury?

This author then submits this query: what degree of additional damage, do you believe, would befall that victim if their predator were somehow able to continuously convey a seemingly ubiquitous message, ever repeating to them, ‘I’ve decided that you did in fact deserve what I inflicted on you, and, further I don’t wish to hear any more about the incident(s). It’s in the past. Geez, Move on already. Quit complaining.”

What, do you believe, would be the impact to their healing? And how would those fissures manifest? And for how long?

This author invites readers to add ‘scale’ to this example and then one could begin to perceive, through empathetic eyes, the conundrum faced by descendants of The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade…that is, if one wishes to.

ARR

1. http://www.iriefm.net/news/headline/jamaica%E2%80%99s-parliament-seek-reparations-britain
2. http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199796953/obo-9780199796953-0003.xml
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade
4. Caricom doc
5. http://www.caricom.org/jsp/community/history.jsp?menu=community
6. http://www.who.int/countryfocus/cooperation_strategy/ccsbrief_guy_en.pdf
7. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/jonestown-nov-18-1978/
8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_slavery_timeline
9. Caricom doc
10. Guyana. Guyana Reparations Committee. Ministry of Culture, Youth & Sport. A Correct Narrative History of African Slavery in Guyana Historical Discrimination Leading to Modern Day Inequality. By Jonathan Adams and Eric M. Phillips. Georgetown: Government of Guyana, 2014. Print.
11. http://www.guyana.org/features/guyanastory/chapter120.html
12. http://www.siliconafrica.com/france-colonial-tax/
13. Guyana. Guyana Reparations Committee. Ministry of Culture, Youth & Sport. A Correct Narrative History of African Slavery in Guyana Historical Discrimination Leading to Modern Day Inequality. By Jonathan Adams and Eric M. Phillips. Georgetown: Government of Guyana, 2014. Print.

Reparations are a Human Right: The 21st Century Reparations Paradigm

Published Date : 2015-02-12 19:40:38

Reparations are a Human Right:

The 21^st Century Reparations Paradigm

Paper delivered by Kamm Howard, January 15, 2014 at the 8^th Pan African Conference held in Johannesburg, Azania (South Africa)

Hotep.

In what has become established tradition in the Afrikan-centered circles in America, before I begin, I must ask permission from the elders at this 8^th Pan Afrikan Congress to continue.

Greetings to all the Congress organizers –those who had the vision and determination to see to it that this 8^th Pan African Congress would be one that puts the conferences back on tract to establishing sure and certain direction for the Pan Afrikan world going forward.

I also want to express greeting to all the presenters and participants to the 8^th PAC. Our being here, and what we bring to and take from the Congress will determine which way forward for the Afrikan World Community.

In addition, I want to acknowledge gratitude to Bankie Bankie and Professor Prah for the invitation and the opportunity to present here at the 8^th PAC.

I also bring greetings from America. First, from one of my mentors and participant at the 6^th Pan Afrikan Congress, Dr Anderson Thompson, professor emeritus of the Jacob Carruthers Center for Inner City Studies, currently led under the directorship of Dr. Conrad Worrill.

I am here representing N”COBRA, the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America. It was founded in 1987 as a mass-based coalition organized for the sole purpose of obtaining reparations for Afrikan descendants in the United States. All send their greetings and well wishes for a successful Congress.

Finally, I bring greetings from the Amos N Wilson Institute. I co-founded the Amos N Wilson Institute to keep alive and to put to test Dr. Wilson’s theories on Black power and particularly Afrikan-centered consciousness as an instrument of Black power. Dr. Amos Wilson was a brilliant and immensely political, race-first Afrikan-centered psychologist in America.

The Durban World Conference

I’d like to begin my conversation reminding everyone of the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) that was held here in South Africa, in Durban in 2001. Led by the December 12^th Movement in New York, the Black United Front in Chicago, and N’COBRA, the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, (that I serve as Legislation Commission Chair), nearly 400 African descendants from the Diaspora descended on Durban for this important world conference.

These men and women have become known as the Durban 400. Collectively they greatly assisted in making monumental history for the Afrikan world.

In the 2000 GRULAC (Group of Latin American and Caribbean Countries) regional preparatory conference for WCAR, held in Chile, South America, the African-descendant representatives, determined, at the ushering of Roger Wareham of December 12^th Movement, that Afrikan countries could not go to Durban with all their individual issues; this would be the first world conference against racism since the 1970’s and only the 3rd in the UN’s history. It was determined that this was a time where we needed to agree on a few issues that affect us all and we would take those issues collectively to the WCAR. This was Pan Africanism in practice. They settled on three issues 1) the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade, slavery and colonialism were crimes against humanity, 2) that there was an economic component to racism, and 3) that reparations are due. (1)

The United States did not like that language and tried to get it removed from the pre-conference document that would be debated on at the WCAR in Durban. They were unsuccessful but it was known that they were and would continue to use their diplomatic might to persuade nations to remove this language at the World Conference. That’s where the Durban 400 came in. They organized and went to Durban with a plan to systematically lobby all the Nation States to keep this language in the outcome document. In addition, they wanted to make a huge impact at the Non-Governmental Organization Forum and at the government conference held before the delegates. They were successful on all accounts.  America, witnessing their lack of influence and conceding to defeat, walked out of the Conference. Israel joined them. Canada and Australia abstained.  The other   nations that were members to the United Nations signed on to the Durban Declaration and Program of Action (DDPA), with this language in tact, as the outcome document of the 2001 World Conference Against Racism. (2)  Thus this document bears great international weight concerning global racism. In addition, in the DDPA “they created international definitions and established new U.N. mechanisms to address racism and other related issues.” (3)

After viewing many of the reports of the nations who met in Geneva, Switzerland at the Durban Review Conference, in 2009, I was convinced that this document had huge historical significance. In fact, I wrote a piece shortly after that arguing that the DDPA was one of the three greatest documents to have an impact on the Afrikan world in the last 500 years. Although the first two had wickedly great, far reaching and monumentally evil impacts on the Afrikan world, the DDPA I argued,  if Afrikans empowered ourselves with it,  could be used to reverse much of the injury we’ve suffered and endured over the last 500+ years of European contact. Again, empowered with the spirit of the DDPA we can reverse much of the 5 centuries of accumulated injury. (4)

The Sublimus Deus

What were those two earlier documents that had this great effect on the Afrikan world?  The first was the 1537 Papal Bull entitled The Sublimus Deus or the Magna Carter of Indian Rights. When the first Europeans arrived in the Caribbean islands in 1492, there were an estimated 6 million Taino and Caribe Amerindians. Less than 20 years later, in 1509, there were roughly only 60,000 remaining. (5)

In the minds of the destroyers, something had to be done, — however not from a humanistic perspective and certainly not something that would interfere with their economic agenda. Having witnessed that the Africans in the Americas were better acclimated to this “new” environment, they had their answer. The Africans were genetically resistant to many of the European diseases, were already agrarian-based, and unencumbered by the heat and humidity of the new shores. In other words they were “suited” for this economic activity.  This “knowledge,” together with the nearly complete elimination of many of the indigenous people of this “new” land,  the first great document of the last 500 years was produced by, none other than, the Roman Catholic Church.

Before I get to that document, let me clarify and objectify my use of the word “great.” I’m speaking of being and having a far-reaching and/or all-encompassing nature or effect. Not that it was great in the context of being good. In fact its impact was wicked and evil.

So the mass extinction and suffering of the indigenous peoples of the Americas and Caribbean Islands led to the production of the 1^st wickedly great and massively evil document to have a far-reaching and all-encompassing effect on the African world.

This document, the Sublimus Deus, or Magna Carta of Indian Rights, was issued at the bequest of the Portuguese “man of God,” Bartholomew De LaCasa.  De LaCasa, who later became a Bishop, petitioned the Church to end the enslavement of the indigenous Americans. He argued that they were human and thus, endowed with souls. And as such, they had human rights that should be upheld; he concomitantly recommended the legitimization of African enslavement. He saw no problem with Afrikans receiving the inhumane treatment administered to the Amerindians.  After some debate, the Pope issued his response. The year was 1537 and the Pope was Pope Paul III. (6)

As a result, of the De LaCasa’s efforts, the Pope issued the above Papal Bull, or edict, that basically stated that all enslavement of indigenous Americans was against the teachings of the Church and should cease. With the issuance of this document, the Church, in effect, 1) legitimized and relegated the future enslavement to African peoples, 2) denied African people their humanity, 3) rendered them “soul-less” and 4) denied them rights to their property, and 5) made them first, indentured, and then, the perpetual property of Europeans.

Thus the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade system was unofficially, officially inaugurated. This system, led to centuries of genocide and crimes against African humanity; the depopulation, destabilization, and underdevelopment of African nations;  and the  creation of sub-groups of African peoples in the Americas and Europe with highly fragmented and falsified African conscious and identities.   Fractured peoples like Black Americans (USA), Black Canadians and Black Mexicans; Belizeans, Panamanians, and Grenadines; Haitians, Trinidadians, and Jamaicans; Afro-Brazilians, Afro-Columbians, and Afro-Venezuelans; Blacks Britons, Black Italian’s and Black Frenchmen, among the many others, subsequently exist outside of Africa’s continental shores and culture. And we must mention the millions of Africans who died prior to reaching these shores – 4 out of 5 – and the massive trauma and underdevelopment left behind on the continent. There can be no question or contradiction, that actions emanating from the Papal Bull had a great impact on Africa – a far-reaching and all-encompassing evil impact on the African world.  And by its nature, had a diametrically opposite effect – a developing and productive effect, a positively great impact on the European world. This is why every centennial anniversary of 1492 they have a collective orgasmic celebration across the European world, raising the image of Columbus, – the name and symbol of the advent and continuation of European domination. And reveals why, no matter what European ethnic group, they name their greatest achievements after Columbus. 

The 1885 Berlin Act 

Now for the second great document that preceded the DDPA and is used to frame its potential power and historic nature. This document was equally as wicked and equally as far-reaching as the 1537 Papal Bull. This document was a collective agreement by European powers (nation states) assembled together from November 1884 to February 1885 in Berlin, Germany. This assemblage is better known as the 1884 Berlin Conference. This conference is widely known by continental Africans.

During this Conference, the African continent was “gentlemanly” divided among the European powers of the time.  Without any African knowledge or input, these nations partitioned the continent and determined which territory “belonged” to what European power for their subjugation and exploitation. All of Africa became the terrain of the greed, evil and militaristic might of Europe. Although Ethiopia did not succumb to colonialism, they still were impacted by their need to defend themselves against the attempted subjugation by the Italians.

This document  or agreement, known as the Berlin Act of 1885 was ratified by  Great Britain, Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Russia, U.S.A., Portugal, Denmark, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium and Turkey. (With the exception of Russia, Sweden and Turkey, these are the very countries, among others that either didn’t show up or walked out in a staged protest at the Durban Review Conference in Geneva. (We can see the connection.)

The Berlin Act, along with its map of “ownership,” marshaled in another hundred-plus years of crimes against African humanity. Collectively these crimes emanate from the programs of colonialism, neo-colonialism., and now globalism.  Years of sophisticated, orchestrated murder (or wars of domination) was initiated to secure the rule and exploitation of the African continent. Disease, famine, massive rape of natural resources, economic stagnation and retardation, internal warfare created by European imposed ethnic animosities, leading in some cases to genocide, alienation of African consciousness and crisis in identity, cleptocratic rule, strangling economic dept and economic collapse, cultural discontinuity and a view by the world of a hopeless and backward continent, all result from this imposed colonial, neo-colonial and globalist order.  This Act produced the “collective mess” (in the words of Baba Jake Caruthers) in which the African continent is wrestling to extract itself.

Here, we again conclude, that the Berlin Act also had a far-reaching and all encompassing evil consequence for the African world.  Also, again, like the first wickedly great document, this Act resulted in an opposite effect on the European world. Extreme wealth has been created by this contact with Africa. Natural resources that fueled the industrial, technological, nuclear, medical and information advances of all of Europe and America derived from the armed exploitation and rape of the African continent and its peoples during colonialism, is continuing today through its offspring – neocolonialism and globalism. Massive comfort, materialism, progress and privilege have become synonymous with white skin, as well as an errant view of holiness, intelligence, rightness, and beauty-  and that all of this- the fruit of death, disease, deception and destruction,  was ordained to them by a loving and just god.

The Importance of the DDPA

Now I turn back to the Durban Declaration and Program of Action. I suggested that the DDPA can have, (and is demonstrating it currently) as far-reaching and all-encompassing positive impact on the African world as the prior two documents had a wickedly great effect on the African world. So in essence, I contend, this document has the potential to galvanize the African masses in an effort to neutralize the negative effects of the last 500 years.

What makes the DDPA so potentially powerful are particularly the three issues mentioned earlier: that the slavery, the Trans Atlantic slave trade, and colonialism were crimes against humanity, there was an economic component to racism, and that reparations are due.

Crimes Against Humanity

Let’s briefly examine each of these.  The Trans Atlantic Slave Trade, slavery and colonialism were crimes against humanity.

International law Professor, Nora Whitman gives us the international law perspective on crimes against humanity in her new book, Slavery Reparations Time is Now.

Article 6 of the Statue of the Nuremberg Tribunal considers as crimes against humanity “murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhuman acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution or in connection with any crime. …

… What makes specific conduct a crime against humanity is its nexus to an international element. For this to be given, it is enough that the conduct is “state action or policy.” That is the case if the specified crimes are committed as part  of “state action or policy, (also when committed with the connivance or knowledge of higher-ranking public officials, or when such high-ranking officials fail to carry out their obligation to prevent the conduct in question or fail to punish the perpetrators when the conduct is discovered or reasonably discoverable, or if the action or policy is based on discrimination and persecution against an identifiable group, and if the acts committed are otherwise crimes in the  national criminal laws of the  state. (7)

The DDPA has this to say:

13. We acknowledge that slavery and the slave trade, including the transatlantic slave trade, were appalling tragedies in the history of humanity not only because of their abhorrent barbarism but also in terms of their magnitude, organized nature and especially their negation of the essence of the victims, and further acknowledge that slavery and the slave trade are a crime against humanity and should always have been so…. (8)

And

15. We recognize that apartheid and genocide in terms of international law constitute crimes against humanity… (9)

Economic Basis of Racism

There was an economic basis to racism. I detailed that earlier how the slave trade and colonialism fueled every stage of European development, since the latter 1400’s. There would be no developed Europe if it weren’t for these economic systems of exploitation that had their basis in European racism, racial-economic philosophy and pseudo-scientific racial justification. Recall that the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade was founded on the racist philosophy that grew out of the Sublimus Deus.

The economic status of African nations and peoples was as stated earlier the exact opposite. To the degree that Europe was made opulent, Africa and its peoples were impoverished and decimated. See Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.

We see today that the economic structures laid during each of those periods still have the same duo and diametrically opposed enriching and impoverishing outcomes.

Specifically, the DDPA asserts

14. We recognize that colonialism has led to racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, and that Africans and people of African descent, and people of Asian descent and indigenous peoples were victims of colonialism and continue to be victims of its consequences. We acknowledge the suffering caused by colonialism and affirm that, wherever and whenever it occurred, it must be condemned and its reoccurrence prevented. We further regret that the effects and persistence of these structures and practices have been among the factors contributing to lasting social and economic inequalities in many parts of the world today; (10)

And

18. We emphasize that poverty, underdevelopment, marginalization, social exclusion and economic disparities are closely associated with racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, and contribute to the persistence of racist attitudes and practices which in turn generate more poverty.

19. We recognize the negative economic, social and cultural consequences of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, which have contributed significantly to the underdevelopment of developing countries and, in particular, of Africa…. (11)

Reparations Are Due

Finally the emphasis that reparations are due. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserts the fundamental right to redress for violations of human rights. International law standard holds that the right to redress includes effective remedy for the violations.  Effective remedy for human rights violation may take the form of a) an apology; b) investigation and documentation of the violation and harm; c) restitution or reparation; and, d) punishment of perpetrators.

Specifically, the DDPA asserts in paragraphs:

101. With a view to closing those dark chapters in history and as a means of reconciliation and healing, we invite the international community and its members to honor the memory of the victims of these tragedies. We further note that some have taken the initiative of regretting or expressing remorse or presenting apologies, and call on all those who have not yet contributed to restoring the dignity of the victims to find appropriate ways to do so and, to this end, appreciate those countries that have done so;

102. We are aware of the moral obligation on the part of all concerned States and call upon these States to take appropriate and effective measures to halt and reverse the lasting consequences of those practices; (12) [emphasis added]

And

104. We also strongly reaffirm as a pressing requirement of justice that victims of human rights violations resulting from racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, especially in the light of their vulnerable situation socially, culturally and economically, should be assured of having access to justice, including legal assistance where appropriate, and effective and appropriate protection and remedies, including the right to seek just and adequate reparation or satisfaction for any damage suffered as a result of such discrimination, … (13) [Emphasis added]

21^st Century Reparations Paradigm

From Durban and the DDPA we now can chart, and are charting, a new type of fight for reparations – what I am calling the 21^st Century Reparations Paradigm. First, we ask, how is reparations defined? In 2002, the Afrikan and Afro Descendant Caucus at Durban held a follow-up of WCAR in Bridgetown Barbados. In their outcome document, the Bridgetown Protocol, the Afrikan world adopted N’COBRA’s definition of reparations – the process of repairing, healing, or restoring a people who where injured due to their group identity in violation of their fundamental human rights by a government, corporation, institution or individual. (14) Now key to this definition is repair from injuries resulting from a violation i.e., crime.

So right here we have the three justice concepts that inform the 21^st Century Reparations Paradigm- crime, injury, and repair. When we wed these concepts to the spirit of the three clause of the DDPA, the model becomes complete. We can use this model to begin to address the varied issue affecting the Afrikan world – these problems/challenges would be rightfully, and at all times, identified and classified as injuries resulting from crimes that have yet to be repaired.

Crimes

Here is how we move with these concepts in the spirit of the DDPA. Regardless whether we use terms like the Black Holocaust, the Maafa, the Chatellization Wars and/or humanicide, we are speaking of a “singularity situation of subjugation,” which was criminal. In asserting this reality of our experience as humanicide, Hunter Adams, informs us that:

[Humanicide] outlines how the process of killing of a people/person’s identity, culture, history, language, religion, socialization, and family relations occurred. It considers punitive killings, including those colonized, to enforce compliance with the odiously oppressive system, Moreover, it details tactics used to create conditions and mindsets that continue to batter Africans, notably in the Diaspora , with unearned shame and suspicion, pervasive profiling and micro-insults, bedevil race relations, foster unwholesome ways of living, relating, and consuming, sub-consciously fulfilling the slave narrative. Humanicide is not equivalent to racism, discrimination, or Apartheid – it encompasses and eclipses them.

Humanicide reveals the fractal nature of Trans Atlantic Slavery: the deeper we probe, the more complexity we discover. Currently, Humanicide is configured and characterized by multiple interfacing categories and attributes: philosophical, psychological, physical, cultural, biological, heath, economic, educational, linguistic, religious/spiritual, social historical, legal, regulatory/managerial and temporal. (15)

Since Durban the actions are internationally recognized as crimes and the perpetrators, criminal.

The two primary legal arguments for not repairing this crime are the errant notions that slavery was legal at the time so there was no crime, and that too much time has pasted for there to be a charge brought against the criminals. These notions are both legally dismissed by Nora Whitman in Slavery Reparations Time is Now. Dr. Whitman meticulously details that prevailing international law at the time did not see these actions as legal but also as criminal.

When one contends that “slavery” was “legal”, it needs to be asked by whose standards it is supposed to have been legal. The allegation of legality is based solely on the colonial laws that European enslaver states passed after they had been the driving force in transatlantic slavery for already more than a century. However transatlantic slavery was not legal by the laws of affected Africans, nor was it compliant with international law standards of the time. It was not even “legal” by the laws of European enslaver states…  (16)

In dealing with the issue of time or that it happened too long ago for claims to be brought, the power of the DDPA rises. It is well established international law that crimes against humanity have no statue of limitations.

Also from Dr. Whitman:

Legally and technically speaking, this kind of discourse refers to the doctrine of laches, which holds that a claim can no longer be brought forth after too much time has passed. We will see that with regards to transatlantic slavery, laches is without any relevance since, one, the crime is continuing and laches logically concerns only completed acts and because, two, the claim has in fact been brought forth since the first deportation of African over the Atlantic. Perpetrator states have only never accepted them. (17)

Therefore, if the government, corporation, institution or individual is still functioning they are criminal – until.  And I will get to that “until” in a moment.  Therefore, with this document, there excludes the process of needing to find them guilty of the crime. They are guilty by merely still existing. Thus in relationship to Afrikan people, the governments of US, Britain, France, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Belgium, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands, are today, criminals. So are multinational corporations like Firestone, Leveler, Shell, and many, many others,     are criminals. Most of what makes Europe Europe is a result of its criminality against Afrikan peoples. And as our late Queen Mother Yaa Asantewa Dorothy Benton Lewis, directed us, we must always refer to them as the criminals that they are – until. Again, I will talk about “until” later.

Injury

That brings us to our second justice concept of injury. Have we been injured, but most importantly, do the injuries remain? Before the 15^th century contact with Europe, there were many Afrikan societies far more culturally advanced than all of Europe.  They were resting on centuries and even thousands of years of high culture with its accompanying spiritual, political, economic, and social institutions -what is now being referred to as Afrikan indigenous knowledge. But aside from being separated from our cultural heritage and legacy, which has its own array of injuries, as those of us here know it is often the most learned amongst us, (and this is global), we have been taught to despise all that was/is Afrikan. This injury is the most violent, pervasive, and destructive, on going, self perpetuating and has shown to be most difficult to repair.

Let me quote a few scholars on this injury.

George G. M. James in Stolen Legacy

Mental slavery continues to this present day. This slavery affects the minds of all people and, in one way, is worse than physical slavery alone. That is, the person who is in mental bondage will be “self-contained.” Mental bondage is invisible violence. Not only will that person fail to challenge beliefs and patterns of thought which control him/her, he will defend and protect those beliefs and patterns of thought virtually with his last dying effort. (18)

Carter G Woodson the Father of Black History Month in America, in Mis-Education of the Negro 

When you control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his ‘proper place’ and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary. (19)

And we have a host of radical, Afrikan-centered scholars that identify the mental injury the affects the African world in glaring detail and with various labels -each more cogent than the next:

Sultan and Naima Latif – Psychic Trauma

What happens when a close nit harmonious community is shattered by strange looking foreign invaders who kidnap a number of its citizens?

What happens to those citizens who are smuggled away, locked in chains, and is shipped off to a foreign land where they are murdered, tortured, raped, beaten and forced to labor in the fields under the lash of a whip and the constant threat of death?

What happens to them when they are forced to have sex with each other, for the purpose of producing babies, who are snatched away, and sold like puppies, to strangers?

What happens to their children, who learn to live in mortal fear of their captors, and whose group being taught that they come from a people who are ugly, stupid, and commanded by God to be servants?

What happens to these children who are raped by their captors, and forced to give birth to their captors’ babies, then told that the offspring from these rapes are superior because they look more like the captors?

And what happens to the children conceived through rape, who are taught that the only way they will be treated with any kind of respect is if they can look, speak and act like their captors?

What is the mental condition that develops as a result of such an experience?

We believe it is psychic trauma. (20)

Dr. Na’im Akbar -Visions For Black Men.  Plantation Psychosis

It is important to understand that when African people are in opposition to themselves they are mentally ill.  That’s what mental illness is. When you work against your own survival, you are crazy. [It does not matter if one wears] a three-piece suit and is part of the White House staff. You are crazy. (21)

Dr. Kobi Kambon – Cultural Misorientation

Cultural Misorientation [is] a psychological orientation in [African Americans] resulting from European cultural oppression reflecting a European Survival Thrust, reflecting the basic components or content dimensions of a materialistic, individualistic, alien and anti-self, self-destructive and racial integration emphasis in one’s thoughts, attitudes and behaviors  (22) (Kambon, 2003, pp. 72-73).

Dr. Joy DeGruy – Post Traumatic Slavery Disorder

P.T.S.S. is a condition that exists as a consequence of multigenerational oppression of Africans and their descendants resulting from centuries of chattel slavery. …Under such circumstances … predictable patterns of behavior [tend] to occur:

Vacant Esteem – Insufficient development of … primary esteem, along with feelings of hopelessness, depression and a            general self -destructive outlook.
Marked Propensity for Anger and Violence -Extreme feelings of suspicion perceived negative motivations of others. Violence against self, property and others, including the members of one’s own group, i.e. friends, relatives, or acquaintances.
Racist Socialization and (internalized racism)– Learned Helplessness, literacy deprivation, distorted self-concept, antipathy or aversion for ….[the] members of ones own identified cultural/ethnic group; [the] mores and customs associated with ones own identified cultural/ethnic heritage; [and     the] physical characteristics of one’s own identified cultural/ethnic group. (23)

Dr. Bobby Wright – refers to the process of inculcating this alien consciousness in the minds o f Afrikans as Mentacide

[Mentacide] which is defined as the deliberate and systematic destruction of a groups mind… [in which] the ultimate aim is the extirpation of the entire race. …The technique of mentacide deludes Blacks into believing there is a commonality between them and oppressed whites, which leads Blacks to attempt to form alliances with them. Yet in spite of the historical failures of these alliances to benefit Blacks they continue to pursue them. (24)

Dr. Amos Wilson – agrees with Dr. Bobby Wright’s assessment that it is purposeful and intentional on the part of whites. In Falsification of Afrikan Consciousness, he says that the European global order is a social machine whose institutions are so ordered to manufacturer a falsified consciousness in people of Afrikan descent.  (25)

If we take all of the above collectively and place them in a succinct statement, we would have to agree with Dr. Amos Wilson’s conclusion that Afrikan people are “out of our Afrikan minds.” (26)

I heavily emphasized the psychological injury effecting Afrikan people because it is my belief that until we get the Afrikan mind back to the Afrikan all of our other injuries will remain and intensify. We only need to be reminded by Brother Steve Biko’s analysis, “the most potent weapon in the hand of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” Dr Wade Nobles concurs when he states “Black Psychology should be a starting point for all recovery, restoration, and understanding of both continental and diaspora Africans,” and  “[must] serve as a key praxis in the restoration of the African mind, identity and consciousness.” (27)   And finally in, Afrikan-Centered Consciousness Vs New World Order, Dr Amos Wilson makes it cogently clear that only an Afrikan Centered consciousness can defeat the European Global System. Anything else is in service to ones own domination. (28)

When examining the Pan Afrikan situation report provided by Professor Chinweizu we see a fuller extent of both the injury from the crimes and the repair that must take place.  Under the heading Tasks before Pan Africans Today, these tasks, nearly in their entirety, refer to injuries resulting from the European crime of humanicide. Here is the list – [paraphrased, in part]

1. Eradicating AIDS before it exterminates the Black race;
2. The deepening poverty and lack of jobs, especially for our school leavers;
3. The restitution of lands seized by European settlers;
4. The destruction of African agriculture;
5. The new, an possibly terminal, scramble for Africa;
6. Our new vulnerability;
7. Abolishing black comprador neo-colonialism;
8. Effecting cultural re-Africanization after cultural decolonization;
9. The democratization of our economic, political and cultural life;
10. Organizing our escape from the imperialist prison guarded by the IMF, World Bank and WTO;
11. Removing our own weaknesses which have either robbed us of victory in our struggles or kept us from consolidating our limited victories;
12. Defeating a resurgent Arab racism, expansionism and colonialism;
13. Environmental damage , from the dumping of toxic waste in Africa and the destruction of our forests etc;
14. Eradication of the colonialist mis-education that persists through the unchanged Eurocentric curriculum or our schools;
15. Closing the astronomical, and still widening technological gap between an unindustrialized Black Africa and the industrialized NATO countries;
16. Rehabilitating the ethno-nations of Black Africa. (29)

So injuries we know. In knowing them, we must always attach them to the crimes perpetrated in actions to advance of European expansion and greed – crimes against African humanity.

Repair

That brings us to the third concept – repair. Repair, healing and restoration are processes that are initiated to make us whole and healthy.  Repair will take many different forms and many different varieties and variations to bring healing to the Afrikan world. Afrikans have in the past and present, and must in the future, embark upon many ways to repair ourselves, first from the crisis of consciousness and identity, as stated earlier, and then toward those areas most noted when we talk about development. This is what is termed by Prof. Chinweizu as internal reparations. It is Afrikans using Afrikan creativity, organization and resources to repair us. It only becomes internal reparation, if and when we declare the work we are doing is to address the injuries from the various crimes against our humanity. When we boldly declare we are addressing the residual effects of European efforts of Humanicide, we are engaging in internal reparations.

We will find many Afrikans wanting to address the many negative conditions that exist among our people. If they do not have a historical understanding of the condition, at best their work will be bandages treating only symptoms.   In order to heal, you must understand the injury and to understand the injury, you must know its origin and causation.  Absent this analysis, we will be stuck going in circles and trying one European fix after another – all designed to hide, consciously or unconsciously “their” causation, complicity or continued benefit.

Determining the Healers

In addition with this model we will be able to analyze and categorize the many and varied individual and group actors (healers) engaged in our struggle – those of the past, but particularly, those who are leading/thinking/acting as healers in the present. Do they truly understand the crime; do they properly interpret the resulting injuries; and do they engage in repair, healing and restorative work from this clear interpretation of the on-going humanicide? Are they among those that take a long historical analysis going back to Kemet, Ethiopia, the ancient kingdoms, and pre-colonial Africa in their diagnosis of, and proscription for, our injuries; – those with clearer sight, value Afrikan Indigenous Knowledge, have an Afrikan World View, drink from the “deep well” of African thought, and operate from the Afrikan Principle of doing the greatest good for the greatest number of Afrikan people?

Or are they “pro-Black” but lack a foundation in Africology, African-centered thought or Abibifology; the healers who see the injuries as something of a contemporary cause and look only as far as colonialism or enslavement in pride of their European education in their diagnosis. As such the agents and agencies for a cure can only arise out of the historical sphere of this shallow diagnosis with its heavy and one-side dependence on the criminal and their “medicines”? Or finally are they attempting to fit our “development problems” within the context of European Globalism and empire; those working against our healing in the interest of and service to the criminals? Compradors, as Prof Chenweizu has so rightfully labeled them.

So among these healers we have Dessalines, Garvey, Malcolm X, Toure, , Lumumba, Sankara, Diop, Winnie Mandela and the current Robert Mugabe in this group. Among those healers who saw out of integrationalist eyes we would have to site Dubois, Nkrumah, King, Nelson Mandela and a host of current Afrikan leaders. And we would all agree that Mubuto Sese Seko would best describe one who prevented the healing and exacerbated the injuries in the employment of the original criminals. Here, too, we can add some current Afrikan World Leaders to this intensification list. History will most likely place Obama high, if not the highest, in this category.

Until What?

On two occasions earlier, I said the European world is criminal “until.” Until what? Until they began supplying resources for the repair of injuries they inflicted upon Afrikan people.  These resources are what we defined as reparations. So until we are free and healed from all injury we will demand resources, i.e., reparations from the criminals.

First and foremost, again I must stress, we must repair the Afrikan mind. Whatever resources we deem necessary to enact a global system that produces an Afrikan collective consciousness and shared identity in the minds of Afrikan people, we must be about enacting that system. Dr. Wilson posits that collective action can only proceed from a people with these two characteristics firmly in place. (30)

The Pan Afrikan Study Project, initiated by Professor Chinweizu, is one systematic approach. But I am fearful, however, that by the time our youth are exposed to it, they have already been indoctrinated with a consciousness orientated toward the European Global System. We have to find a way to break the information down to be inculcated much earlier. In fact, Dr. Wilson tells us that children, boys in particular, begin to be politicized at the age of 11. (31) Is this no wonder that this was the approximate age that rites of passage programs here on the Continent began to initiate our youth? In this regard, I am inspired by the Jamaican government’s inclusion of the Garvey Movement in the primary and secondary education curriculums.

Beware of White Concession

Most importantly, when it comes to extracting resources form whites, we must be aware of their ways. What the European community will do and have always done is tell us how they want to fix us. Or they will simply do something without our input and say they contributed to our repair.  Or they will get some of the Afrikans who know nothing about the crime or the extent of the injury and give them some resources to address the injury, knowing that it will fail because the analysis form which the remedy is targeted is faulty form the beginning. And, finally, they will employ Europeans to “fix” us – giving them back the resources that are directed at the injury. This cannot happen. In each of our areas, we must assess our damage and establish African-centered modalities to begin the repairing, healing and restoration process.

No Longer Advocates

So we have the crime and the criminals, there is no debate on either. We know the injuries, we are living them and they have yet to be repaired. And right here is where the 21^st Century reparationist enters the arena.  No longer do we spend time proving that a crime was committed. No longer do we continue trying to convince anyone of the massive residual injury that still affects us resulting from those crimes. No longer do we aim to convince the wrong doers of their wrongs or their obligations to correct them. No longer do we advocate for the right to reparations Thus, we are no longer reparations advocates. That is over. Done with. The work at Durban settled that for all time.

Reparations Enforcers*

So now our work must be to enforce our right to reparations. (32)We must become reparations enforcers. The 21^st Century Reparation Activists enforces their right to reparations. This is what the Mugabe government has done in Zimbabwe with the 2008 Zimbabwe Indigenization and Economic Empowerment Bill. The colonial crime was clear as well as the injury – an economy that still favored the foreigner exploiter at the detriment of the indigenous population. The Zimbabwean government declared the crime and injury and then they gave them an opportunity to repair the situation – the criminals (British Government) agreed to honor the repair claim (land issues agreed to in the Lancaster House Agreement. But the new regime reneged on the agreement. ( 33) So the Government, more particularly, the veterans,  did not go back to continue to advocate for their right to be repaired. They did that already successfully and thought it insane to fight a fight over that you already won. So they enforced their right to be repaired. In 2009 they began enforcing the Act.  They indigenized the land, ( they forcefully took back their land from the British settler criminals). They enforced their human right to reparations. Now 245,000 Zimbabwean farmers produce tons of food, more than the 6,000 whites produced before the enforcement. This policy has been called the “biggest” and “most progressive land reforms in the history of Africa.” (34)

They next began indigenizing the mines. According to the Economic Empowerment Secretary, George Magosvongwe, these efforts

“seeks to enforce the transfer to local entities of a least 51% of controlling equity in all existing foreign owned businesses. The aim is to ‘create a dignified employment especially for the youth, distribute wealth amongst citizens more equitably, cause a general improvement in the quality of life of every Zimbabwean and bring about sustainable national development which is homegrown. (35)

They are expecting to have similar results of development with this repair scheme as well. In fact, they have already experienced a shift in wealth utilizing this method. They have transferred 120 mining companies to Zimbabweans. (36) Their plan is to have an African only stock market trading in these shares. (37)

Additionally in their enforcement, they made certain industries exclusively indigenous.  “The ‘reserved sectors of the economy’ include: retail and wholesale business, hairdressers, beauty salons, bakers, employment agencies, agricultural, transport, estate agencies and advertising agencies.” (38) Again, by enforcing the Act, they are enforcing their right to be repaired from the crimes of colonialism. The Zimbabwe government, comprising mostly of ZANU-PF party pushed by its people (the war veterans), and coming on the heels of a major national election victory, are reparations enforcers.

Here the government used its internal resources of state-power to target individuals and corporations. This is the power that African States have to enforce reparations. On the Continent, Zimbabwe is leading the way.

Reparations Enforcement in the Diaspora – Brazil 

In the Diaspora, reparations enforcement is underway as well. In Brazil, where you have a country where half the population is of Afrikan descent, here we also see the government themselves enforcing the right – using the DDPA as it source of authority. In 2009, at the Durban Review Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, Brazil’s Secretariat of Race, an office created specifically in response to Durban, gave a report detailing a reparations policy (not called by that, but as we said, any action specifically designed to counter the injuries of Humanicide is reparations, either internal or external). In sharing these best practices, he hoped they would become the standard of all countries dealing with the issue of racism, particularly injuries resulting from crimes against Afrikan humanity. (39)

At Durban 2 he reported that:

• In 2002, Brazil created the office of the Special Secretariat for Polices for the Promotion of Racial Equality. This would be a new executive office held by a Chief Minister.
• Under the Secretariat of Race, the Brazilian government entered into a national debate with its citizenry. Universities, policy makers, organizations and individuals had the opportunity to debate the government on a national level to make all concerns, issues and solutions known.  Out of the national debate, the Brazilian government established a policy thrust that emphasized that those most in need would receive targeted assistance.  

Some of the targeted policy by the Brazilian government is as follows:

• Affirmative action policy in education at the undergraduate and graduate level was created, funded, and enforced.
• Wealth redistribution beginning with land redistribution was enacted.
• Economic development of the Qusilombos. It was determined that they were the most underdeveloped and should therefore be first targeted.  The Quilombos population was those Afro-Brazilians who were never enslaved. They took to the mountains and waged a war of freedom and self determination for many generations until enslavement was officially ended.
• Religions that were clearly African in origin were protected from discrimination. Thereby placing African religion on par with the major world religions.
• The 23 or so indigenous ethnic groups would be targeted for self-determined policy.
• Push for the creation of a standard world equality index. (40)

The results of Brazil’s reparations enforcement was that prior to Durbin 2001, 42% of the population lived at or below the poverty level. For Brazil, that was 92 million people- an astronomical number for sure. However, as a result of instituting the above policies, in seven (7) years, they reduced their poverty rate by 30%; thereby, lifting 23 million people out of poverty.  (41)

In Brazil, with former President Lula da Silva, like Venezuela under Hugo Chavez, you had leaders that understood, and vocalized their pride and commitment to their African heritage. As such, Brazil also used its state-power to redistribute state resources and to target institutions – educational and religious.

CARICOM

Caribbean states as well have begun their process of reparations enforcement. In July of 2013 the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), comprising of 14 island nations, agreed to the formation of an organ to push forward for reparations. In September, they met for three days in St. Vincent. The outcome was that each state set up a Reparations Commission and the collectively they would push through the CARICOM Reparations Initiative suit against Britain, France, and the Netherlands for genocide of the indigenous people and enslavement of Africans.

Where we have the governments of the Caribbean threatening to sue governments of Europe, the intended venue to hear such claims is the International Court of Justice at The Hague. The CARICOM has sought legal assistance form the law firm that successful won reparations from Britain for the Mau Mau of Kenya. (42) In addition, In addition, they are armed with the brilliant research of Nora Whitman, who did much of her research in the Caribbean. The major points in Dr. Whitman’s work is that the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade was not legal at the time according to then international law standards; it equated to genocide; and it matters not how much time has passed because the injury is still present and ongoing. She concludes, however, by stating, that even though there is “clear legal entitlement to reparations” reparations must be “taken”, i.e., enforced. (43)

In keeping with the notion even here, the paradigm remains the same, emanating out of the spirit of the DDPA– the focus is on crimes, the injury and repair. In his speech at the UN General Assembly in September of 2013, St. Vincent President, Ralph Gonzales stated, “The awful legacy of these crimes against humanity – a legacy which exist today in our Caribbean –ought to be repaired for the development and benefit or our Caribbean society and all our peoples” (44)

In addition, he too understands that far reaching potential of such action. “The struggle for reparations represents a defining issue for the Caribbean for the 21st Century.” (45) And, again, in reading and contributing to Whitman’s research, they are under no illusions that reparations will not have to be enforced.

CARICOM is using the sovereign power of states to target other states in International Court of Justice and perhaps the International Criminal Court.

Afrikans in America

In America the situation is slightly different. The United States government did not sign on to the Durban Declaration and Program of Action. In fact, remember, they walked out of the WCAR and did not even send a delegation to the Review Conference. So we could not hold them to Durban, like an Afrikan in Britain, or France.  Like the Afro-descendants in Brazil have. So Blacks in America sit outside of the DDPA’s covenant.

However, earlier last year I was doing some research for the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression in regards to their efforts to get enacted legislation creating a Civilian Police Review Council. They asked me to lead a group that would prepare a complaint before the Human Rights Commission at the United Nations. The US was coming up for its periodic review of its human rights obligations and I suggested that this was an opportunity to get the ubiquitous police crimes against people of African descent in America, Chicago in particular, before a world body.  In doing my research, I came across CERD General Recommendations 34: Racial Discrimination Against People of African Descent.

(ICERD is the International Covenant for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. It is one of the major international law instruments of the UN body of treaties. Over the years CERD, the Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination that monitors and enforces the Covenant through its required periodic reports from governments and its recommendations proceeding from those reports,  have issued General Recommendations (to all signatories to the Covenant) that have similar weight as amendments.)

Specifically, GC 34 “recalls Durban”, and notes that it is evident from reports that racism and discrimination of people of Afrikan descent  is structural and cultural resulting from the  Tran Atlantic Slave Trade, slavery and colonialism and  concluded that only special measures could overcome them, – that is, specifically targeted policies, programs and projects on a national scale. (46)

Re-calling our definition of reparations – the process of repairing, healing and restoring a people, injured due to their group identify, in violation of their fundamental human rights, by a government, corporation, institution or individual – special measures become part and parcel of the process on healing, repairing and restoring. In CERD GC 32, the Committee provides the meaning and scope of special measures. (47)

Therefore, in America, African descendants must go through the ICERD to get to the content of the DDPA, and are thus not excluded from the DDPA.  The main point is that we too are empowered by international law to enforce our claim for repair resources as well.

We have tested this paradigm in the city of Chicago with Norfolk Southern Railroad – a company that criminally injured thousands of African descendants for 33 years during the period of enslavement and many, many thousands more for nearly a hundred years after enslavement ended in America, via America’s prison convict leasing system. (This was America’s system of theft of Afrikan labor post enslavement.)  We declared them criminal, sited our human right to be repair from our injury, made a specific claim for resources, and sought the city government to assist us in enforcing our human right by barring the Company access to city controlled land until they dealt with their crime.

We did not get the resources we demanded- we were seeking 6% of the $285 Million project cost- $17 Million); however, by making the reparations demand as reparation enforcers, we did force concessions from the Railroad that benefited the Afro-descendent community in the community where they were investing. In fact, in a Chicago Sun-Times article entitled “Mayoral-Backed $285 Million Rail Yard Project Temporarily Derailed” the reporter called our efforts a “political derailment for Mayor Rahm Emanuel. (48) In a second article “City Council OKs Expansion of Englewood Rail Yard,” he wrote that we “extracted a string of concessions from Norfolk Southern.” (49) In the article he refers to environmental groups. However, it was our clear and consistent vocalization that reparations were a human right, that they had an obligation to repair the injury, that the City of Chicago had an obligation under the DDPA via CERD GC 34 to ensure our repair, and an understanding that the project could be delayed indefinitely, that NS Norfolk Southern was forced to give in to the environmental concerns. They had refused to move on this issue with over a year and a half of advocacy by those “environmental” groups prior to our involvement.

Here we enlisted the power of the local government to assist us in going after corporations. Our next stage, in Chicago, and throughout the US of A, is to build the capacity to enforce completely our reparations without dependence on government support. We must be able to radically effect the brand “value” of these entities through mass direct action campaigns as such that were used powerfully in the Civil Rights Era. This time not for civil rights but for reparation resources from declared criminal organizations, institutions and families. Operating from the view of Professor Y.N. Kly, in The Black Book II, “we have to make it more beneficial to these entities to concede to reparations than it would be if they did not.” (50) Once we do that, we will then also have capacity to enforce our human right of reparations from the Government of America, as well

Conclusion

So whether a African state on the continent like Zimbabwe, an African state in the Diaspora like those belonging to CARICOM, a state that has an equal or majority African descendant population like Brazil, or a state where the African descendant population in a national minority like America, the method for all is the same. We notify the criminal entity, whether government, corporation, institution or individual, that we are aware that they are declared criminals in relation to people of African descent and that their criminality injured us and that injury remains. International law substantiates all of this. In doing so, we inform them of their obligation to begin to provide resources for our healing, giving them a reasonable time to do so. After that time has expired, we enforce our human right to be repaired with our collective ability to impact the brand of these entities.

Thus, as we move forward for reparations in the 21^st Century, we must arm ourselves collectively with both the spirit and “rulings” issued in DDPA, with a liberated, African-centered interpretation of the three justice concepts in the African definition of reparations and the confident and sure notion that advocating for reparations is over, and we will thus have a new paradigm for reparations activism in the 21^st century – Reparations Enforcement. Reparations Now!!

Sources

1. “The Durban 400.” Documentary. 2003 The Drammeh Institute and Al Santana   Productions.

2.  The Durban Declaration and Program of Action (DDPA) http://www.un.org/en/durbanreview2009/pdf/DDPA_full_text.pdf

3. Congressional Research Service,” The 2009 U.N. Durban Review Conference: Follow-Up to the 2001 U.N. World Conference Against Racism,’ November 20, 2008 Luisa Blanchfield, Analyst in International Relations Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division

4.  Howard, Kamm, 2009 “The Durban Declaration and Program of Action: Historic — From Wickedly Great to Great

5.  Topoi vol. 2.no.se Rio de Janeiro 2006 Las Casas, Alonso de Sandoval and the Defense of Black Slavery.

6.  ibid.

7.  Whitman, Nora. 2013. Slavery Reparations Time is Now.. Power of the     Trinity Publishers. Vienna Austria

8.  Durban Declaration and Program of Action

9.  ibid.

10. ibid.

11. ibid.

12. ibid.

13. ibid.

14. Bridgetown Protocols. 2002. Bridgetown, Barbados.

15. Adams, Hunter. 2012 “Reframing Trans-Atlantic Slavery as Humanicide:

Resolving Hidden Wounds and Prioritizing A New Vision of African Humanity. Chicago, IL /Baltimore, MD USA

16. Whitman, Nora. 2013

17. ibid

18. James, George G. M. 1954. Stolen Legacy

19. Woodson, Carter Godwin (1990). The Mis-education of the Negro. Trenton, N.J: Africa World Press

20. Latif, Sultan and Naima. 1994. Slavery: the African American Psychic Trauma. Latif Communications Group, Inc. Chicago.

21. Akbar, Na’im. 1991. Visions for Black Men. 

22. Kambon, Kobi. http://www.jpanafrican.com/docs/vol3no8/3.8Theories.

23. Leary, Joy DrGruy. 2005. Post Traumatic Slavery Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing. Uptone Press. Milwaukee

24. Wright, Bobby.1984. Psychopathic Racial Personality and Other Essays. Third World Press. Chicago.

25. Wilson, Amos N.  1999. Falsification of Afrikan Consciousness. Afrikan World InfoSystems. New York

26. Wilson, Amos. N, “Falsification of Afrikan Consciousness.” Video Lecture. Afrikan World InfoSystems. New York.

27. Nobles, Wade. http://psychdiscourse.com/component/content/article/111-mar-apr-2011-v45-2/featured-news-v45-2/173-special-section-world-festival-of-black-arts-and-culture

28. Wilson, Amos N.  1999. Afrikan Centered Consciousness VS New World Order. Afrikan World InfoSystems. New York.

29. Chinweizu. 2011 “PASP # 1: Situation report 2011.”

30. Wilson, Amos. N, “Falsification of Afrikan Consciousness.” Video Lecture.

31. Wilson, Amos. N, 1998. Blueprint for Black Power.  Afrikan World InfoSystems. New York

32. The author first heard the term human rights enforcement at a teach-in held by JR Fleming. He asserted that he had moved past human rights to human rights enforcement. JR founded the Chicago-based, Anti-Eviction Campaign that “enforces the human rights to housing.”

33. Mugabe: Villain or Hero?  Documentary. 2013. Director/Producer: Roy Agyemang

34.  Global Research. “Zimbabwe: The Revolution Continues” 2013   http://www.globalresearch.ca/zimbabwe-the-revolution-continues/5337578

35. Global Research. 2013“Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe Re-Elected ZANU-PF Calls For Trillions In Mining and Foreign Assets To Be Turned Over To Zimbabweans”http://www.globalresearch.ca/zimbabwe-robert-mugabe-reelected-zanu-pf-calls-for-trillions-in-mining-and-foreign-assets-to-be-turned-over-to-zimbabweans/5344929

36.  ibid.

37.  ibid.

38. ABS Staff. “Zimbabwe Protecting Several Industries for Black Citizens”   November 25, 2013

39. UN Archives. The Durban Review Conference. Brazil. http://www.un.org/en/durbanreview2009/ddpa.shtml

40. ibid.

41. ibid.

42. Voice Online. “UK Government Blocks Caribbean Reparations Bid” Mary Isokariari

43. Whitman, Nora. 2013

44. http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/9/27/14-caribbean-nationssueeuropeancountriesforreparationsoverslavery.html

45. ibid.

46. www.un.org/ CERD/GC/34

47. www.un.org/ CERD/GC/32

48. http://www.suntimes.com/news/cityhall/21956991-418/mayoral-backed-285-million-rail-yard-project-temporarily-derailed.html

49.http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/23728479-418/city-council-oks-expansion-of-englewood-rail-yard.html?print=true

50. Kly, Y.N. 2012. The Black Book II: From El Hajj Malik to Barack Obama.

N’COBRA’s Testimony at The State of Civil and Human Rights in the United States

Published Date : 2015-02-12 19:40:09

N’COBRA’s Testimony at 

The State of Civil and Human Rights in the United States

Hearing Before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the

Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights

Submitted by Kamm Howard, Legislative Commission Chair, National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations In America (N’COBRA) ncobrachicago@gmail.com

N’COBRA’s contribution to the forum will focus on the use of international human rights instruments in furtherance of our goals to be repaired from the centuries-long injuries of enslavement, Jim Crow segregation (apartheid) and the continued injurious effects of crimes against our humanity.  .

Before identifying the instruments that mandate the State to initiate and sustain reparative measures, N’COBRA offers our definition of reparations.

Reparations is the process of repairing, healing and restoring a people who were injured, due to their group identity, in violation of their fundamental human rights, by a government, corporation, institution or individual.

This definition is one that focuses on initiating and engaging processes that gets this community to wholeness not solely on compensation, although compensation is one aspect of full reparations, as will be detailed below.

There are several international instruments that mandate and empower the Senate to legislate the repair of the African descendant community.  The Durban Declaration and Program of Action (DDPA), the outcome document of the United Nations World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) sits at the top of the list.

The DDPA

The relevant portions of this document are those paragraphs that settle the issue of 1) were the actions of enslavement, the Slave trade, colonialism and apartheid international crimes against humanity, 2) were there injuries resulting from those actions, 3) do those injuries remain among the descendants of those affected, and 4) is there an obligation on the part of the injuring parties (states, corporations and institutions) to repair the injuries. In each of these areas, the answer was yes.

In specific regards to the criminal status of the actions of slavery, apartheid (Jim Crow segregation) and colonialism* the DDPA, declares:

13. We acknowledge that slavery and the slave trade, including the transatlantic slave trade, were appalling tragedies in the history of humanity not only because of their abhorrent barbarism but also in terms of their magnitude, organized nature and especially their negation of the essence of the victims, and further acknowledge that slavery and the slave trade are a crime against humanity and should always have been so….

15. We recognize that apartheid and genocide in terms of international law constitute crimes against humanity…

Pertaining to the continued and persistent negative effects and legacy of the crimes,

14. We recognize that colonialism has led to racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, and that Africans and people of African descent, and people of Asian descent and indigenous peoples were victims of colonialism and continue to be victims of its consequences. We acknowledge the suffering caused by colonialism and affirm that, wherever and whenever it occurred, it must be condemned and its reoccurrence prevented. We further regret that the effects and persistence of these structures and practices have been among the factors contributing to lasting social and economic inequalities in many parts of the world today;

Finally, on the obligation on the part of the States to engage reparative justice:

101. With a view to closing those dark chapters in history and as a means of reconciliation and healing, we invite the international community and its members to honor the memory of the victims of these tragedies. We further note that some have taken the initiative of regretting or expressing remorse or presenting apologies and call on all those who have not yet contributed to restoring the dignity of the victims to find appropriate ways to do so ….;

102. We are aware of the moral obligation on the part of all concerned States and call upon these States to take appropriate and effective measures to halt and reverse the lasting consequences of those practices;

104. We also strongly reaffirm as a pressing requirement of justice that victims of human rights violations resulting from racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, especially in the light of their vulnerable situation socially, culturally and economically, should be assured of having access to justice, including legal assistance where appropriate, and effective and appropriate protection and remedies, including the right to seek just and adequate reparation or satisfaction for any damage suffered as a result of such discrimination, …

The International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the United Nations Minority Declaration, and the International Covenant for the Elimination of Racism (ICERD) are the next relevant instruments.

ICCPR

The ICCPR’s article 27 spells out a special relationship of the state to its national minorities – differentiating from immigrant minorities and subgroup minorities.

In those States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons belonging to such minorities shall not be denied the right, in community with the other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practice their own religion, or to use their own language.

National minorities also have a unique characteristic in that they were within the national boundaries at the time a nation was formed and that they had a significant role in the formation of the nation. In addition to Native Americans, Afrikans in American, and those Hispanics who self-define as Chicano’s share this status. In 1776 there were 500,000 Africans in America and accounted for 20% of the population. As such, this government has a special and legal obligation to positively legislate policy effecting people of Afrikan descent distinctively separate from sub-group minorities and immigrant minorities in America.

UN Declaration on Minorities

The United Nations Declaration on Minorities, particularly spells out the separate special rights of national minorities. The standards of concern and scope of national minority rights are:

1. Survival and Existence –  any action for the protection of minorities should focus primarily on the protection of the physical existence of persons belonging to minorities, including protecting them from genocide and crimes against humanity
2. Promotion and Protection of Identity – Central to the rights of minorities are the promotion and protection of their identity. Promoting and protecting their identity prevent forced assimilation and the loss of cultures, religions and languages.
3. Equality and Non-Discrimination – Non-discrimination and equality before the law are two of the basic principles of international human rights law. The principle of nondiscrimination prohibits any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference which has the purpose or effect of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by all persons, on an equal footing, of all rights and freedoms. There is no requirement to demonstrate discriminatory intent. The phrase “purpose or effect” refers to legislation and/or policies which may be textually neutral but are interpreted in a manner that results in discrimination. International human rights law prohibits both direct and indirect discrimination.
4. Effective and Meaningful Participation  – The participation of persons belonging to minorities in public affairs and in all aspects of the political, economic, social and cultural life of the country where they live is in fact essential to preserving their identity and combating social exclusion. … Participation must be meaningful and not merely symbolic, … Participation must be effective….For the participation of persons belonging to minorities to be effective, …States must also ensure that the participation of representatives of minorities has a substantial influence on the decisions which are taken, so that there is, as far as possible, shared ownership of these decisions.

Afrikans in America were brought to this country forcibly. In that process, nearly every human right recognized at the time and since were violated. Their national minority status, the singularly distinct racialized history and current unequal treatment in America, requires that all legislation that effects this group be constructed through the particular lens and scope of international minority rights. This will require and ensure reparative policy to be included within all future legislation of this nation.

ICERD

The International Covenant for the Elimination of Racism is particularly important to the issue of repair and healing of the Afrikan descendant community in America, especially when we view several of the Commission’s General Recommendations.

In General Recommendation 28 (CERD GC28), the Committee incorporated the Durban Declaration and Program of Action into the ICERD covenant. This is very important, because although, the US delegation walked out of Durban, having signed and ratified ICERD, it is of an obligation to bring its ICERD compliance in alignment with the DDPA.  CERD GC28 recommends to States …

1. f) To take into account the relevant parts of the Durban Declaration and Program of Action when implementing the Convention in the domestic legal order, in particular in respect of articles 2 to 7 of the Convention;

And

1. (d) To take into consideration all aspects of the Durban Declaration and           Program of Action concerning the fulfilment of its mandate.

This was reiterated, by CERD, in paragraph 30 of their concluding observations to America’s ICERD Periodic Review held in August 2014.

In CERD GC 34, the Committee particularly spells out a focused emphasis on People of Afrikan descent existing in States and calls for special attention and special measures by the State.

5.  The Committee understands that racism and racial discrimination against people of African descent are expressed in many forms, notably structural and cultural.

6.  Racism and structural discrimination against people of African descent, rooted in the infamous regime of slavery, are evident in the situations of inequality affecting them and reflected, inter alia, in the following domains: their grouping, together with indigenous peoples, among  the poorest of the poor; their low rate of participation and representation in political and institutional decision-making processes; additional difficulties they face in access to and completion and quality of education, which  results in  the transmission of poverty from generation to generation; inequality in access to the labor market; limited social recognition and valuation of their ethnic and cultural diversity; and a disproportionate presence in prison populations.

7. The Committee observes that overcoming the structural discrimination that affects people of African descent calls for the urgent adoption of special measures … The need for special measures [for People of African descent] has been the subject of reiterated observations and recommendations made to the State parties under the Convention,

CERD GC 32 defines and lays forth the scope of special measures that are to be directed toward the elimination of racism.

13. “Measures” include the full span of legislative, executive, administrative, budgetary and regulatory instruments, at every level in the State apparatus, as well as plans, policies, programs and preferential regimes in areas such as employment, housing, education, culture and participation in public life for disfavored groups, devised and implemented on the basis of such instruments. States parties should include, as required in order to fulfil their obligations under the Convention, provisions on special measures in their legal systems, whether through general legislation or legislation directed to specific sectors in the light of the range of human rights referred to in article 5 of the Convention, and through plans, programs and other policy initiatives referred to above at national, regional and local levels

CERD Early Warning and Urgent Procedures are required when the nature of the human rights violations have reached “alarming levels”, CERD provides additional standards and guidelines.

The Committee has in fact adopted both early warning measures and urgent procedures to prevent as well as to respond more effectively to violations of the Convention. Criteria for early warning measures could apply when the following indicators are present:

• A significant and persistent pattern of racial discrimination, as evidenced in social and economic indicators;

• A pattern of escalating racial hatred and violence, or racist propaganda or appeals to racial intolerance by persons, groups or organizations, notably by elected or other State officials;

• Adoption of new discriminatory legislation;

• Segregation policies or de facto exclusion of members of a group from political, economic, social and cultural life;

• Lack of an adequate legislative framework defining and criminalizing all forms of racial discrimination or lack of effective mechanisms, including lack of recourse procedures;

• Policies or practice of impunity regarding: (i) violence targeting members of a group identified on the basis of race, color, descent or national or ethnic origin by State officials or private actors; (ii) grave statements by political leaders/prominent people that condone or justify violence against a group identified on the ground of race, color, descent, national or ethnic origin; (iii) development and organization of militia groups and/or extreme political groups based on a racist platform; …

The Afrikan descendant community has cited numerous examples of the above type violations existing toward this community that meet the criteria of “alarming levels,” that require ‘urgent procedures” as defined and understood by international norms, standards and laws. Police violence is just one such area, although a very significant area as well as mass incarceration.

International Law and Reparations

Finally, in observing and creating human rights legislation that’s reparative and healing of injuries to the humanity of people of Afrikan descent, Congress must look at how international law both defines reparations and determines what meets the criteria of reparations.

The Permanent Court of International Justice (ICJ). The ICJ lays out the “general   and foundational rule for reparations in the Chorzow Factory case of 1928. Here, it held that reparations must, as far as possible, wipe out all consequences of the illegal act and re-establish the situation which would, in all probability, have existed if that act had not been committed.

The International Law Commission (ILC) In their Draft Articles on Responsibility of States for International Wrongful Act, the ILC fleshes out “all consequences” as full reparations. Full reparations include:

1.       Cessation, Assurances and Guarantee of Non-Repetition –a state responsible for wrongfully injuring a people  “is under an obligation to a) “cease the act if it is continuing, b) offer appropriate assurances and guarantees of non-repetition…” Many current discriminatory actions, like police violence, had their origins in slavery and Jim Crow apartheid and thus is a continued practice of injury. Cessation falls in line with the “halt” clause of the DDPA.)

2.       Restitution – re-establish the situation which existed before the wrongful act was committed. To restore the victim to the original situation before gross violations of international law occurred. How includes restoration of freedom, recognition of humanity, identity, culture, repatriation, livelihood and wealth.

3.       Compensation – The injuring State is obligated to compensate for the damage, if damage is not made good by restitution.  Compensation is “any financially assessable damage suffered…” Proper compensation is such that is “appropriate and proportional to the gravity of the violation and circumstances.

4.       Satisfaction – Provides a “means” of reparations for moral damage, such as emotional injury, mental suffering, and injury to reputation.”  Apology falls under the reparative category of satisfaction.  Apologies under international law have certain characteristics: acknowledgement that a legitimate rule was violated, full admission of fault and responsibility, expression of genuine regret and remorse, acknowledgement that there was/is no excuse/justification of the violation, a guarantee of non-repetition, and a willingness to do whatever it takes to repair the wrong/injury.  (This last aspect of an apology identifies where the 2008 Senate apology fell short).

5.       Rehabilitation – to correct the heart, mind and spirit damage of the people. Here attention is paid to the lasting and generational effects of the trauma of enslavement and segregation and current acts of police induced terror.

Moving Forward

What does a focus on these instruments mean going forward? First, America will begin to own its criminal racial heritage. This will remove this nation from the massive state of denial. It will begin the healing process for all people in this country. When a nation exist in denial, it will continue its injurious acts upon others indefinitely. Denial is a pathology.

This focus will lessen the evasive impetus to deny, shun, obfuscate, ignore or bury evidence that proves all Americans receive benefit today from those past injurious acts regardless of when they or their ancestor came to this country.

This focus will readily illuminate the facts and conditions that the degree of accumulated Afrikan injury prohibits Afrikans from benefiting at the same rate as others, but in many cases have a counter effect of intensifying the injury – thus the necessity of specialized policy.

This focus, will start the national dialogue on agreed upon global standards as opposed to standards imposed by a history of unjust acts and ill will toward people of Afrikan descent.

This focus will begin the conversation of reparations from the position that there are numerous actions and measures that can be taken that begin the process of repair that do not entail compensation to every Afrikan in America (or that will “bankrupt America because the debt is too huge.”)

This focus will affirm that Afrikan people have the human right to be repaired from past and ongoing crimes against our humanity; and that civilized states accept their obligation to restore justice to a people that the State has, in fact, grossly harmed.

This focus will assert the equality of humanity. And will empower progressive leaders to put forth reparative justice legislation, allowing US legislators to align themselves with global legislators that have already proactively and willingly began reparative, healing and restorative processes targeted toward their Afrikan descendant populations.

This focus will position America to stand in step with the global community in recognizing 2015 through 2024 as the International Decade of People of African Descent, under the theme, “Recognition, Justice, and Development.”

Conclusion

In August, America took an extreme beating in Geneva, Switzerland by the CERD Commission when delivering the ICERD periodic report. The High Commissioner of Human Rights, a native of South Africa, stated that apartheid is “flourishing” in America.  Other comments summarizing the ICERD review in  Geneva were ‘UN Condemns US ….,” “UN Experts Blast US…, US Slammed …,” and ” UN Experts Grill US…” In addition, the experts got a very telling eyewitness account of the racial discrimination during the Ferguson uprising.                                                  .

The ACLU rightfully calls this climate produced by the international exposure to America’s violations of the human rights of people of Afrikan descent, “a singular opportunity to hold Washington accountable.”

The Senate has an opportunity to hold itself and America accountable for its centuries of wrongs.                                            .

If the Senate wants to move this Nation forward in human rights observance and enforcement, reparative justice targeted toward the Afrikan descendant community has to be at the forefront your actions. This will naturally require that a focused effort to broadening this Nation’s understanding of both reparations and human rights and the use of human rights instruments. International instrument gives Congress a legal (constitutional) ground and solid base to initiate a 21^st century surge to right the horrific wrongs of this Nation’s past.

Russian Parliament Set to Request €4 Trillion in WWII Reparations From Germany

Published Date : 2015-02-04 18:46:16

Should Jews Have To Pay Reparations for Slavery?

Published Date : 2015-01-30 17:47:19

Uncivil Behavior? Judah P. Benjamin served as the Confederate Secretary of War.

By Richard Kreitner

The 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the United States — Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment in late January 1865 — comes at an fraught moment in the history of race relations. Considering that black men are being killed by police at the same rate as they were lynched in the era of Jim Crow, it can be depressing to reflect on how many promises of 1865, not to mention 1776, have not yet been fulfilled. But it can also be edifying to probe into some of the lesser-known aspects of the story of how the emancipation of slaves was finally accomplished. The history of the abolitionist movement is of more than antiquarian interest: it should serve to inspire us to finish the job today.

Nobody can argue that the balance of the Jewish record on the question of American slavery and the Civil War is anything but regrettable. If the career of Confederate Secretary of War Judah P. Benjamin were not enough, the overwhelming complacency of the antebellum Jewish community, even in the North, provides a record sufficiently embarrassing to warrant official acknowledgement — even, perhaps, reparation.

But there were American Jews before the war who risked everything to fight the South’s “peculiar institution.” Familiar with the story of Exodus, they knew it was not actually all that peculiar. Now, 150 years after the end of slavery, when the unfinished work of emancipation and Reconstruction is announced daily in the headlines, it is worth lighting a yahrtzeit candle to those Jews who found in Judaism the imperative to line up, every time, with the oppressed. Before Selma, before socialism, the Jewish abolitionists were the first to map that once-fertile, now neglected terrain: the intersection of the identities of radical, American and Jew.

By the middle of December, 1860, the Union was disintegrating. Abraham Lincoln had won every state in the North and none in the South. South Carolina had just elected delegates to a secession convention and the other Southern states seemed poised to follow. The lame-duck president, James Buchanan, issued a desperate proclamation, “in view of the present distracted and dangerous condition of our country,” declaring January 4th, 1861, a national day of prayer. He asked that “the People assemble on that day, according to their several forms of worship, to keep it as a solemn Fast.”

On the appointed day, the congregation of B’nei Jeshurun in New York saw Morris Jacob Raphall, a Swedish-born rabbi, rise to the bima. “How dare you, in the face of the sanction and protection afforded to slave property in the Ten Commandments–how dare you denounce slaveholding as a sin?” Raphall asked of Brooklyn minister Henry Ward Beecher, brother of the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Considering that the Patriarchs themselves owned slaves, Raphall continued, “Does it not strike you that you are guilty of something very little short of blasphemy?

Raphall’s sermon divided American Jews. “I felt exceedingly humbled, I may say outraged, by the sacrilegious words of the Rabbi,” Michael Heilprin, a veteran of the 1848 Hungarian Revolution, wrote in the New York Tribune. “Must the stigma of Egyptian principles be fastened on the people of Israel by Israelitish lips themselves?”

In the decades before the influx of Jews from Eastern Europe, there was no organized Jewish community, and thus no identifiably Jewish position on the most burning political question of the day. Surveying the views on slavery of American religious groups in 1853, the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society had reported that Jews “deem it their policy to have every one choose whichever side he may deem best to promote his own interest and the welfare of his country…They do not interfere in any discussion which is not material to their religion.”

Yet the report concluded with a sly taunt, implying that the question of slavery was perhaps not as immaterial to Judaism as many of its American adherents preferred to admit. “The objects of so much mean prejudice and unrighteous oppression as the Jews have been for ages,” the report lamented, “surely they, it would seem, more than any other denomination, ought to be the enemies of caste and the friends of universal freedom.”

Jews in the New World participated in slavery at least as fully and profitably as their Gentile neighbors. Jews in New Amsterdam owned slaves within a decade of their 1654 arrival, and their brethren in Newport, Rhode Island, were involved in the slave trade right up until the War of Independence, in which several slaves of the city’s Jews were forced to fight. In the South, being rich enough to own slaves and not owning any “carried it with it social and business disadvantages,” the historian Max Kohler wrote in 1897, while in the North outright abolitionism was discouraged by “business and trade policy,” which “rendered such avowals inexpedient.”

American Jewish leaders of the mid-19th century were concerned, above all, with expediency. The most prominent Jew in the United States, Mordecai Manuel Noah — a former consul to the Kingdom of Tunis and the mercurial incubator of the “Ararat” scheme to resettle world Jewry on an island in the Niagara River–began his career as an opponent of the expansion of slavery. “How can Americans be engaged in this traffic,” he once asked, regarding the slave trade, “men whose birthright is liberty, whose eminent peculiarity is freedom?” But with age Noah became such an outspoken opponent of emancipation that the first-ever black newspaper in America, Freedom’s Journal, was specifically founded to counter Noah’s venom, and William Lloyd Garrison was moved to describe him as a “Shylock” and a “lineal descendant of the monsters who nailed Jesus to the cross.” When Noah died in 1851, Morris Jacob Raphall delivered the eulogy at his funeral.

The views of Noah’s successors as leaders of the fledgling Jewish community were less demagogic, but just as wishy-washy on the question of slavery. Isaac Leeser of Philadelphia, the first translator of the Tanakh into English and a man whom the Library of Congress has dubbed “the architect of American Jewish life,” agreed with Raphall that slavery was legal according to Jewish law, but cautioned that “our synagogues…are no places for political discussions.” Isaac Mayer Wise, the guiding spirit of Reform Judaism in the United States, refused to condemn slavery as a moral or religious wrong, and when war broke out, Wise wrote an editorial for his influential newspaper, The Israelite, titled, “Silence Our Policy.”

Among those Jews not content with such a policy was Ernestine Rose, a dazzling orator, utopian and freethinker born in Poland — “I was a rebel at the age of five,” she said — who traveled throughout the United States condemning slavery and agitating for women’s rights. Once, in the South, a slaveholder told Rose he would have had her tarred and feathered if she were a man.

During the mini-Civil-War known as “Bleeding Kansas” in the mid-1850s, three Jews accompanied John Brown on his raids against pro-slavery settlers. The archives of the American Jewish Historical Society contain a 1903 letter in which one of them, the Viennese-born August Bondi (another veteran of the 1848 revolution), recalled an exchange between himself and Theodore Wiener during one of the posse’s first attacks. As they followed Brown up a hill to assault a Border Ruffian camp, Bondi wrote, “Wiener puffed like a steamboat, hurrying behind me. I called out to him, ‘Nu, was meinen Sie jetzt.’ [‘Now, what do you think of this?’] His answer, ‘Was soll ich meinen, sof odom muves.’ [‘What shall I think of it? The end of man is death.’]”

Many specifically invoked the Jewish experience itself to argue against slavery. “If anyone, it is the Jew, above all others who should have the most burning and irreconcilable hatred for the ‘peculiar institution’ of the South,” said Bernard Felsenthal of Chicago, later one of the first Zionists in America, who once rejected a job as rabbi in Mobile, Alabama, because it would have required acquiescence to slavery. Gustav Gottheil, another early Zionist, was still in England at the time of Raphall’s remarks, but responded with two sermons quickly published as Moses Versus Slavery. “How can we be silent,” Gottheil asked, when the Torah is invoked to condone an institution of which it is, in fact, “one grand consistent utterance of condemnation”?

One of the most eloquent Jewish denunciations of slavery was delivered rather elliptically: in 1859, an aspiring scholar named Moses Mielziner earned his Ph.D. from the University of Giessen with a dissertation on “Slavery Among the Ancient Hebrews,” which attempted to show that the Israelites had treated their slaves with some degree of decency. The contrast with slavery as brutally practiced in the United States was only implied, but in April of 1861, the month the Civil War began, the American Presbyterian Review published his essay in translation, presumably in response to the debate Raphall had provoked. “No religion and no legislation of ancient times could in its inmost spirit be so decidedly opposed to slavery as was the Mosaic,” Mielziner wrote, “and no people, looking at its own origin, would feel itself more strongly called to the removal of slavery than the people of Israel.” Judaism, in his view, “sharply emphasized the high dignity of man” and “insisted not only upon the highest justice, but also upon the tenderest pity and forbearance, especially towards the necessitous and the unfortunate.” Surely the Jewish people, who had themselves “smarted under the yoke of slavery, and had become a nation only by emancipation,” would be stalwart opponents of “the unnatural state of slavery, by which human nature is degraded.”

The most courageous Jewish response to Raphall’s sermon came neither from Europe nor the North, but from the dais of a synagogue in Baltimore, Maryland, a slave state. Rabbi David Einhorn, born in Bavaria, had fled to the United States in 1851 after the Emperor Franz-Josef closed Einhorn’s shul, fearing the growing Reform movement’s ties to the late revolutionary upheaval. Once in Baltimore, Einhorn quickly rose to prominence, and in deference to his congregation, largely avoided the slavery issue.

But by January, 1861, after Raphall’s inflammatory sermon in New York, Einhorn felt he could no longer keep silent. “The Jew has special cause to be conservative,” Einhorn allowed, noting his audience’s distaste for politics in the pulpit, “and he is doubly and triply so in a country which grants him all the spiritual and material privileges he can wish for.” While sharing the congregation’s “patriotic sentiments” for America, Einhorn said that to allow Jewish law to be “disgraced….and in the holy place!” would be to jeopardize the soul of Judaism itself:

“The spotless morality of the Mosaic principles is our pride and our fame, and our weapon since thousands of years. This weapon we cannot forfeit without pressing a mighty sword into the hands of our foes. This pride and renown, the only one which we possess, we will not and dare not allow ourselves to be robbed of. This would be unscrupulous, prove the greatest triumph of our adversaries and our own destruction, and would be paying too dearly for the fleeting, wavering favor of the moment. Would it not then be justly said, as in fact it has already been done, in consequence of [the Raphall sermon]: Such are the Jews! Where they are oppressed, they boast of the humanity of their religion; but where they are free, their Rabbis declare slavery to have been sanctioned by God.”

For such provocations and others Einhorn was, like Rose, threatened with tarring and feathering. A week after the war began, he and his family exiled themselves to Philadelphia.

Einhorn — a man with much to lose — saw an American Jewish community looking after its own short-term interests, willing to be silent about the oppression of others, frightened into political quiescence. He believed in a morality beyond mere self-preservation: influenced by Haskalah, the German-Jewish enlightenment, Einhorn thought that Jews were a people only insofar as they were united by common ethical beliefs. A Jewish community preserved at the cost of its commitment to what Mielziner had called “the highest justice” was, for Einhorn, no Jewish community at all.

One hundred fifty years after the end of American slavery, many American Jews, comfortably ensconced in mainstream white society, are again mindful, above all, of promoting their own interests. If the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society were around today, it would be as surprised as it was in 1853: surely a people so experienced in “mean prejudice and unrighteous oppression”–so much more so now than then–ought to be, in Ferguson, “the enemies of caste,” and, in Palestine, “the friends of universal freedom.” A resurrected Michael Heilprin might gently remind American Jews that they have never had a higher duty than to denounce Egyptian principles emitted from Israelitish lips themselves.

Richard Kreitner is special assistant to the publisher of The Nation and editor of its archives blogs, “The Almanac” and “Back Issues.”.

14 African Countries Forced by France to Pay Colonial Tax For the Benefits of Slavery and Colonization

Published Date : 2015-01-14 13:51:09

By: Mawuna Remarque KOUTONIN

Did you know many African countries continue to pay colonial tax to France since their independence till today!

When Sékou Touré of Guinea decided in 1958 to get out of french colonial empire, and opted for the country independence, the french colonial elite in Paris got so furious, and in a historic act of fury the french administration in Guinea destroyed everything in the country which represented what they called the benefits from french colonization.

Three thousand French left the country, taking all their property and destroying anything that which could not be moved: schools, nurseries, public administration buildings were crumbled; cars, books, medicine, research institute instruments, tractors were crushed and sabotaged; horses, cows in the farms were killed, and food in warehouses were burned or poisoned.

The purpose of this outrageous act was to send a clear message to all other colonies that the consequences for rejecting France would be very high.

Slowly fear spread trough the african elite, and none after the Guinea events ever found the courage to follow the example of Sékou Touré, whose slogan was “We prefer freedom in poverty to opulence in slavery.”

Sylvanus Olympio, the first president of the Republic of Togo, a tiny country in west Africa, found a middle ground solution with the French.

He didn’t want his country to continue to be a french dominion, therefore he refused to sign the colonisation continuation pact De Gaule proposed, but agree to pay an annual debt to France for the so called benefits Togo got from french colonization.

It was the only conditions for the French not to destroy the country before leaving. However, the amount estimated by France was so big that the reimbursement of the so called “colonial debt” was close to 40% of the country budget in 1963.

The financial situation of the newly independent Togo was very unstable, so in order to get out the situation, Olympio decided to get out the french colonial money FCFA (the franc for french african colonies), and issue the country own currency.

On January 13, 1963, three days after he started printing his country own currency, a squad of illiterate soldiers backed by France killed the first elected president of newly independent Africa. Olympio was killed by an ex French Foreign Legionnaire army sergeant called Etienne Gnassingbe who supposedly received a bounty of $612 from the local French embassy for the hit man job.

Olympio’s dream was to build an independent and self-sufficient and self-reliant country. But the French didn’t like the idea.

On June 30, 1962, Modiba Keita , the first president of the Republic of Mali, decided to withdraw from the  french colonial currency FCFA which was imposed on 12 newly independent African countries. For the Malian president, who was leaning more to a socialist economy, it was clear that colonisation continuation pact with France was a trap, a burden for the country development.

On November 19, 1968, like, Olympio, Keita will be the victim of a coup carried out by another ex French Foreign legionnaire, the Lieutenant Moussa Traoré.

In fact during that turbulent period of African fighting to liberate themselves from European colonization, France would repeatedly use many ex Foreign legionnaires to carry out coups against elected presidents:

• – On January 1st, 1966, Jean-Bédel Bokassa, an ex french foreign legionnaire, carried a coup against David Dacko, the first President of the Central African Republic.
• – On January 3, 1966, Maurice Yaméogo, the first President of the Republic of Upper Volta, now called Burkina Faso, was victim of a coup carried by Aboubacar Sangoulé Lamizana, an ex French legionnaire who fought with french troops in Indonesia and Algeria against these countries independence.
• – on 26 October 1972, Mathieu Kérékou who was a security guard to President Hubert Maga, the first President of the Republic of Benin, carried a coup against the president, after he attended French military schools from 1968 to 1970.

In fact, during the last 50 years, a total of 67 coups happened in 26 countries in Africa, 16 of those countries are french ex-colonies, which means 61% of the coups happened in Francophone Africa.

Number of Coups in Africa by country

As these numbers demonstrate, France is quite desperate but active to keep a strong hold on his colonies what ever the cost, no matter what.

In March 2008, former French President Jacques Chirac said:

“Without Africa, France will slide down into the rank of a third [world] power”

Chirac’s predecessor François Mitterand already prophesied in 1957 that:

 “Without Africa, France will have no history in the 21st century”

At this very moment I’m writing this article, 14 african countries are obliged by France, trough a colonial pact, to put 85% of their foreign reserve into France central bank under French minister of Finance control. Until now, 2014, Togo and about 13 other african countries still have to pay colonial debt to France. African leaders who refuse are killed or victim of coup. Those who obey are supported and rewarded by France with lavish lifestyle while their people endure extreme poverty, and desperation.

It’s such an evil system even denounced by the European Union, but France is not ready to move from that colonial system which puts about 500 billions dollars from Africa to its treasury year in year out.

We often accuse African leaders of corruption and serving western nations interests instead, but there is a clear explanation for that behavior. They behave so because they are afraid the be killed or victim of a coup. They want a powerful nation to back them in case of aggression or trouble. But, contrary to a friendly nation protection, the western protection is often offered in exchange of these leaders renouncing to serve their own people or nations’ interests.

African leaders would work in the interest of their people if they were not constantly stalked and bullied by colonial countries.

In 1958, scared about the consequence of choosing independence from France, Leopold Sédar Senghor declared: “The choice of the Senegalese people is independence; they want it to take place only in friendship with France, not in dispute.”

From then on France accepted only an “independence on paper” for his colonies, but signed binding “Cooperation Accords”, detailing the nature of their relations with France, in particular ties to France colonial currency (the Franc), France educational system, military and commercial preferences.

Below are the 11 main components of the Colonisation continuation pact since 1950s:

#1.  Colonial Debt for the benefits of France colonization

The newly “independent” countries  should pay for the infrastructure built by France in the country during colonization.

I still have to find out the complete details about the amounts, the evaluation of the colonial benefits and the terms of payment imposed on the african countries, but we are working on that (help us with info).

#2. Automatic confiscation of national reserves

The African countries should deposit their national monetary reserves into France Central bank.

France has been holding the national reserves of fourteen african countries since 1961: Benin, Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Togo, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon.

“The monetary policy governing such a diverse aggregation of countries is uncomplicated because it is, in fact, operated by the French Treasury, without reference to the central fiscal authorities of any of the WAEMU or the CEMAC. Under the terms of the agreement which set up these banks and the CFA the Central Bank of each African country is obliged to keep at least 65% of its foreign exchange reserves in an “operations account” held at the French Treasury, as well as another 20% to cover financial liabilities.

The CFA central banks also impose a cap on credit extended to each member country equivalent to 20% of that country’s public revenue in the preceding year. Even though the BEAC and the BCEAO have an overdraft facility with the French Treasury, the drawdowns on those overdraft facilities are subject to the consent of the French Treasury. The final say is that of the French Treasury which has invested the foreign reserves of the African countries in its own name on the Paris Bourse.

In short, more than 80% of the foreign reserves of these African countries are deposited in the “operations accounts” controlled by the French Treasury. The two CFA banks are African in name, but have no monetary policies of their own. The countries themselves do not know, nor are they told, how much of the pool of foreign reserves held by the French Treasury belongs to them as a group or individually.

The earnings of the investment of these funds in the French Treasury pool are supposed to be added to the pool but no accounting is given to either the banks or the countries of the details of any such changes. The limited group of high officials in the French Treasury who have knowledge of the amounts in the “operations accounts”, where these funds are invested; whether there is a profit on these investments; are prohibited from disclosing any of this information to the CFA banks or the central banks of the African states .” Wrote Dr. Gary K. Busch

It’s now estimated that France is holding close to 500 billions African countries money in its treasury, and would do anything to fight anyone who want to shed a light on this dark side of the old empire.

The African countries don’t have access to that money.

France allows them to access only 15% of the money in any given year. If they need more than that, they have to borrow the extra money from their own 65% from the French Treasury at commercial rates.

To make things more tragic, France impose a cap on the amount of money the countries could borrow from the reserve. The cap is fixed at 20% of their public revenue in the preceding year. If the countries need to borrow more than 20% of their own money, France has a veto.

Former French President Jacques Chirac recently spoke about the African nations money in France banks. Here is a video of  him speaking about the french exploitation scheme. He is speaking in French, but here is a short excerpt transcript: “We have to be honest, and acknowledge that a big part of the money in our banks come precisely from the exploitation of the African continent.”

#3.  Right of first refusal on any raw or natural resource discovered in the country

France has the first right to buy any natural resources found in the land of its ex-colonies. It’s only after France would say, “I’m not interested”, that the African countries are allowed to seek other partners.

#4. Priority to French interests and companies in public procurement and public biding

In the award of government contracts, French companies must be considered first, and only after that these countries  could look elsewhere. It doesn’t matter if the african countries can obtain better value for money elsewhere.

As consequence, in many of the french ex-colonies, all the majors economical assets of the countries are in the hand of french expatriates. In Côte d’Ivoire, for example, french companies own and control all the major utilities – water, electricity, telephone, transport, ports and major banks. The same in commerce, construction, and agriculture.

In the end, as I’ve written in a previous article, Africans now Live On A Continent Owned by Europeans!

#5. Exclusive right to supply military equipment and Train the country military officers

Through a sophisticated scheme of scholarships, grants, and “Defense Agreements” attached to the Colonial Pact, the africans should send their senior military officers for training in France or French ran-training facilities.

The situation on the continent now is that France has trained hundreds, even thousands of traitors and nourish them. They are dormant when they are not needed, and activated when needed for a coup or any other purpose!

#6. Right for France to pre-deploy troops and  intervene military in the country to defend its interests

Under something called “Defence Agreements” attached to the Colonial Pact, France had the legal right to intervene militarily in the African countries, and also to station troops permanently in bases and military facilities in those
countries, run entirely by the French.

French military bases in Africa

When President Laurent Gbagbo of Côte d’Ivoire tried to end the French exploitation of the country, France organized a coup. During the long process to oust Gbagbo, France tanks, helicopter gunships and Special Forces intervened directly in the conflit, fired on civilians and killed many.

To add insult to injury, France estimated that the French business community had lost several millions of dollars when in the rush to leave Abidjan in 2006 the French Army massacred 65 unarmed civilians and wounded 1,200 others.

After France succeeded the coup, and transferred power to Alassane Outtara, France requested Ouattara government to pay compensation to French business community for the losses during the civil war.

Indeed the Ouattara government paid them twice what they said they had lost in leaving.

#7. Obligation to make French the official language of the country and the language for education

Oui, Monsieur. Vous devez parlez français, la langue de Molière!

A French language and culture dissemination organization has been created called “Francophonie” with several satellites and affiliates organizations supervised by the French Minister of Foreign Affairs.

As demonstrated in this article, if French is the only language you speak, you’d have access to less than 4% of humanity knowledge and ideas. That’s very limiting.

#8. Obligation to use France colonial money FCFA

That’s the real milk cow for France, but it’s such an evil system even denounced by the European Union, but France is not ready to move from that colonial system which puts about 500 billions dollars from Africa to its treasury.

During the introduction of Euro currency in Europe, other european countries discovered the french exploitation  scheme. Many, specially the nordic countries, were appalled and suggested France get rid of the system, but unsuccessfully.

#9.  Obligation to send France annual balance and reserve report.

Without the report, no money.

Anyway the secretary of the Central banks of the ex-colonies, and the secretary of the bi-annual meeting of the Ministers of Finance of the ex-colonies is carried out by France Central bank / Treasury.

#10. Renonciation to enter into military alliance with any other country unless authorized by France

African countries in general are the ones with will less regional military alliances. Most of the countries have only military alliances with their ex-colonisers! (funny, but you can’t do better!).

In the case France ex-colonies, France forbid them to seek other military alliance except the one it offered them.

#11. Obligation to ally with France in situation of war or global crisis

Over one million africans soldiers fought for the defeat of nazism and fascism during the second world war.

Their contribution is often ignored or minimized, but when you think that it took only 6 weeks for Germany to defeat France in 1940, France knows that Africans could be useful for fighting for la “Grandeur de la France” in the future.

There is something almost psychopathic in the relation of France with Africa.

First,  France is severely addicted to looting and exploitation of Africa  since the time of slavery. Then there is this complete lack of creativity and imagination of french elite to think beyond the past and tradition.

Finally, France has 2 institutions which are completely frozen into the past, inhabited by paranoid and psychopath “haut fonctionnaires” who spread fear of apocalypse if France would change, and whose ideological reference still comes from the 19th century romanticism: they are the Minister of Finance and Budget of France and the Minister of Foreign affairs of France.

These 2 institutions are not only a threat to Africa, but to the French themselves.

It’s up to us as African to free ourselves, without asking for permission, because I still can’t understand for example how 450 french soldiers in Côte d’Ivoire could control a population of 20 millions people!? 

People first reaction when they learn about the french colonial tax is often a question: “Until when?”

For historical comparison, France made Haiti to pay the modern equivalent of $21 billion from 1804 till 1947 (almost one century and half) for the losses caused to french slave traders by the abolition of slavery and the liberation of the Haitian slaves.

African countries are paying the colonial tax only for the last 50 years, so I think one century of payment might be left!

Azealia Banks On Mission To Track Down Descendants of Slave Traders, Make Them Pay Reparations

Published Date : 2015-01-05 14:43:07

 Azealia Banks

IBW to Host Reparations Summit In New York

Published Date : 2015-01-03 15:23:51

New York, Jan. 3, 2015…The New York-based Institute of the Black World 21st Century (IBW) today announced that the organization will host the CARICOM Reparations Commission’s next meeting April 9-12 in New York. The CARICOM Commission is chaired by Sir Hilary Beckles, Vice-Chancellor Designate of the University of the West Indies. Inspired by the creation of the CARICOM Commission, a National African American Reparations Commission is being established as part of an effort to intensify the Reparations movement in the U.S. The Commission will be dedicated to the memory of Queen Mother Audley Moore, one of the foremost proponents of Reparations in the history of Africans in America and a mentor to generations of Reparations activists. In addition to the CARICOM and African American Commissions, representatives of Reparations movements from Central and South America, Canada and Europe are expected to participate in what is emerging as a Pan African Reparations Summit. The program/schedule for the Summit will include formal business sessions, a dialogue between leaders of the Caribbean Diaspora in the USA and the CARICOM Commission, meetings between the newly formed African American Commission and the Caribbean Commission, Rallies in Harlem (the symbolic Capital of Black America), Brooklyn (home to the largest Caribbean community in the U.S.) and a Tribute to Congressman John Conyers, Dean of the Congressional Black Caucus and Sponsor of HR-40, the Reparations Study Bill — which he has faithfully introduced in the Congress since 1989. At the most recent Reparations Braintrust at the Congressional Black Caucus’s Annual Legislative Conference, Sir Hilary Beckles called upon participants to declare a “Conyers Decade of Reparatory Justice.” The tribute to Congressman Conyers will begin that process. There will also be special recognition of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA) for decades of ground-breaking work on the issue. Dr. Ron Daniels, President of IBW, said that the National African American Reparations Commission (NAARC) will develop a Reparations Program similar to the Ten Point Program that has been adopted by the CARICOM Commission. “The first step will be to devise an Interim Program that NAARC will take to the people in a series of town hall meetings to receive input before adopting the final program. The process of engaging people of African descent across the country, including young people, is incredibly important to strengthening the Reparations movement.” Dr. Daniels reported that to date Dr. Conrad Worrill, Director of the Carruthers Center for Inner-City Studies, Northeastern University; Dr. Ray Winbush, Director of the Institute for Urban Research, Morgan State University; Dr. Iva Carruthers, General Secretary, Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference; Professor Charles Ogletree, Executive Director, Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, Harvard University; Rev. Dr. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, Pastor Emeritus, Trinity United Church of Christ, Chicago; Atty. Roger Wareham, December 12th Movement; JoAnn Watson, Former Detroit City Councilwoman; Atty, Nkechi Taifa, Criminal Justice Reform and Reparations activist; Dr. Julianne Malveaux, Political Economist and President Emeritus, Bennett College for Women and N’COBRA have already agreed to be members of NAARC. The Commission will ultimately have fifteen members. Under the leadership of Dr. V. P. Franklin, the Journal of African American History will serve as a resource to NAARC. Sir Hilary Beckles has been eager to have Reparations Commissions form in various countries to build a global movement for Reparatory Justice. Commenting on the significance of the Reparations Summit in New York, he stated, “I am extremely excited that our sisters and brothers in the U.S. are moving forward with the creation of a Reparations Commission. We are reaching out to Reparations activists throughout the Caribbean, Central and South America to encourage them to attend the Reparations Summit in the U.S. It has the potential to be a milestone event.” The activities for the CARICOM Reparations visit to the U.S. will conclude with Sir Hilary Beckles traveling to Detroit for a Reparations Rally — which will be the climax to the Tribute to Congressman John Conyers. Hosting the Reparations Summit and the formation of NAARC will mark the launch of what Dr. Daniels describes as an initiative to broaden and deepen support for reparations among people of African descent and people of good will in the U.S. – including support for H-R 40. “This is a modest effort which is intended to complement the sustained work that activists and organizations have been doing for years. But, it will not be without cost. In the spirit of the Honorable Marcus Garvey, we will have to depend on contributions/donations from the people to finance the work of NAARC,” said Dr. Daniels. Dr. Julius Garvey, the son of Marcus Garvey, and Emily Moore, a staunch IBW supporter from New York, have each stepped up with contributions of $1,000 to kick-off this people-based fundraising drive. Don Rojas, IBW’s Director of Communications, said that observers are welcome to attend and participate in the forthcoming Reparations Summit. “This is the kind of event that can take off and provide impetus to the growing reparations movements in the USA and across the world So, as we are formalizing the program/schedule, we encourage those who are interested in attending to immediately go the IBW website www.ibw21.org to Pre-Register. Observers will be credentialed on a first come first serve basis. For further information, contact: Don Rojas, Director of Communications, IBW Ph: 410-844-1031 Email: donjbrojas@gmail.com

Revolution in Reverse?

Published Date : 2015-01-02 09:45:38

David Commissiong's 10 Fundamental Principles of Reparations

Published Date : 2015-01-02 09:44:51

Green Neocolonialism, Afro-Brazilian Rebellion in Brazil

Published Date : 2014-12-29 10:00:45

Israel calls for reparations for Middle Eastern Jews

Published Date : 2014-12-01 08:23:08

  How the Legacy of Slavery Is Linked to White Racism Today

Published Date : 2014-11-01 17:31:05

Ta-Nehisi Coates on White Supremacy and a Life of Struggle

Published Date : 2014-10-29 11:09:21

This year’s top The Root 100 honoree reflects on his groundbreaking article, “The Case for Reparations,” and his belief that African Americans have accomplished much, despite overwhelming obstacles.

This year we selected writer Ta-Nehisi Coates as the top honoree on The Root 100, our annual list of influential and high-achieving African Americans. It was June when The Atlantic published his widely read and highly acclaimed cover article, “The Case for Reparations,” which “lays bare a compelling argument for the pecuniary redress of Africans brought to this country in chains and continually terrorized—socially, politically and economically.”

Coates sat down with The Root’s managing editor, Lyne Pitts, to talk about the impact of his record-shattering article, which, he says, “way outdistanced my expectations.”

The Root: You called this article “The Case for Reparations.” So obviously you were making that case to someone. Who was it written for?

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Well, this is tough to say, because I don’t want this to come off the wrong way. In general, when I write something like that, I’m writing for black people. But that shouldn’t mean that I don’t want other people to read it, or I don’t expect other people to read it.

But I think for those of us who find ourselves in majority-white spaces, we feel this need to slow things down and dumb things down and speak to people in a certain way. And I just try to write as though I were in a room full of African Americans. I don’t want to cut anything back.

And I think in the long run that that actually shows more respect for my white readers. Because the expectation is that they’re gonna be able to follow me, and that it’ll be OK, if I speak in my natural way or write as I naturally would, as though I were explaining it to people within my community. And those who are outside of my community will actually understand and can understand. And I truly, truly believe that.

TR: What did you want African Americans to know that we didn’t know?

TC: That our condition is not a mistake. That we don’t need to run around pretending, as though there’s some great mystery going on—it’s not. If an alien came to planet Earth and looked at the socioeconomic statistics for African Americans and then measured that against the history and the policies of this country, there would really be no surprises about who we are and where we are. And I think that’s important, because there are things that are not within our control in this country.

But there are some things that always get out of control, and one of those things is the level of stress that we put on ourselves. The feelings that we have about our position. The doubt—I don’t want to call it self-loathing—but the effect it has that we have somehow done something to ourselves, injured ourselves. And I just want to relieve that stress. There’s no need to walk around feeling—to be fooled into thinking—that somehow you’re insufficient as a human being. And that’s the condition that we find ourselves [in].

On the contrary, I have always said that, to be perfectly blunt, there’s nothing wrong with black people that the complete and total elimination of white supremacy would not fix. And that’s what I believe, and I want black folk who read that piece to know, “You’re OK.” You know? That the conditions within the community are not OK, but as a human being, you’re OK.

TR: Because we can’t fix it?

TC: I think we’ve done the best we can; I think we’ve done the best we can. And that’s hard to take. And that’s even hard to say, because what it means is, like, saying that certain things are not in your control. But I think we kind of do have to say that, you know?

It’s very hard for me to look at African-American history and see people slouching. I don’t see that. I see people against great odds fighting against a power, a state that for most of its history has not operated with the interest of African Americans at its heart.

TR: At the same time that your article was published, the Huffington Post and YouGov did a poll (pdf), looking at how Americans feel about the issue of reparations. The majority of white Americans said Germany should pay for Holocaust survivors. A third of white Americans said the Japanese should get money for internment. But when it came to descendants of African-American slaves, 6 percent. What’s that about?

TC: It’s not about the money; I’ll tell you that. What it is is about the history. The problem with reparations, I think, for white Americans has never really been the money. It’s what giving the money signifies. And what it signifies is that America is not innocent, is not this city of total and complete nobility that we like to imagine. …

The wretched treatment meted out to African Americans, and the wretched treatment meted out to Native Americans, in the minds of most white people is almost separate from the core idea of what America is. America is this place of democracy, freedom, all these other values, and these other things were sort of just mistakes that happened along the road—as opposed to thinking of those mistakes as things that actually made all those other good things possible.

It’s very hard for people to get their heads around that. I mean, how, then, do you think about your country? You know, if the Founding Fathers are not what you thought they were? But I think it’s essential work. I think it has to be done.

And that poll doesn’t really scare me too much. Because people have been lobbying for reparations since the birth of this country. I mean, literally since the birth of this country, there were, you know, enslaved or freed African Americans saying, “I should be paid for my debt.” And that’s, you know, end of story.

This is the long fight. You know, it’s not supposed to happen in my lifetime. It may not even be something that’s supposed to happen in my children’s lifetime. It’s a long, long, long walk.

Giving money to Japanese Americans does not indict American history in the same way … reparations to African Americans would. Certainly, Germany giving money to Jews does not indict America at all. You know? So I think that’s more about this country not yet having come to grips with its own identity.

TR: How has this work informed your other writing? It seems to have affected you in some way.

TC: Yeah, it did. … I think a lot of people think it depressed me, but it didn’t. It is probably the best thing that ever happened to me. Because what it gives you is a grounded—as far as I’m concerned—a grounded view in life, about the limits of human beings, and what human societies are capable of doing. And as far as I’m concerned, it is very much an open question as to whether there can be an America without white supremacy, in which African Americans are fully integrated.

That is, like, initially horrifying, and people … feel like that’s a really, really pessimistic thing to say. But I’m a writer. My job is to explore all possibilities. It would not be honest for me to proceed from the notion that, yes, this will get fixed. I hope it does. I hope it does, but you have to be open to other things.

And then, at that level for me, it then becomes, like, a deeper question. It allows me to say, OK, so what if this thing doesn’t get fixed? What, then, are my responsibilities as an African American even if I know that? What are my responsibilities to my son in that world? And this is one of the things that I got hip to.

Slavery in this country lasted for 250 years. From the moment African Americans got here, you know—enslaved Africans got here—there’s no doubt that they knew what was happening here was wrong. You can see a record across the 250 years of African Americans protesting, black people saying this is wrong. Generations of those people died, and slavery did not end. And so, as far as they were concerned, in terms of their life, this thing lived on forever.

We shouldn’t just focus on folks like Frederick Douglass who actually did live to see the end of it. Many, many more people did not live to see the end of slavery. And yet they resisted and they fought, and they struggled. And so my responsibility, regardless of what my conclusions are, or regardless of what I think is going to happen tomorrow, my responsibility is to resist and is to struggle and is to keep on going. And it doesn’t require, as far as I’m concerned, [me] to believe in ultimate victory. It just requires some amount of loyalty and fealty, frankly, to my ancestors. To people who came before me and struggled.

It would be absolutely just, like, the highest sort of wrong, a moral betrayal, to retreat to a corner and curl up in a fetal position. Even if I believed there was no hope at all. Resistance, in and of itself—struggle, in and of itself—is rewarding. So that really is it. It just—it opened me up to other possibilities, and I think it just made me fuller as a human being.

It’s very tough to explain that to people. It’s hard to get that across, ’cause I think we feel like, well, if this isn’t gonna get fixed, and we don’t feel like it’s gonna get fixed, what are we struggling for? But for me the question is, well, what is your life about? What are your values? How do you want your life spent? And I want my life spent struggling. This is how I want to live.

TR: I mentioned that you are our top honoree in The Root 100. And again, congratulations for that honor. It is given to a person who we think has great influence, who has done something substantive in the last year, and obviously the article we are talking about is certainly evidence of that. What kind of influence do you want to have?

TC: Well, I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t spend too much time thinking that, you know? I hope to be able to write about the things that I’m curious about. That’s what I hope for. I hope it makes other African Americans’ lives a little easier. That’s what I hope.

The case for reparations, I felt, is representative of a deeply held truth within the hearts of African Americans. But my hope was that it meant something for them to see that on the cover of The Atlantic. It may not change anything, but folk are not gonna lie to me. We’re not gonna have this sort of conversation about race and racism, and things that we all know to be true within our hearts, and not spoken at the same level and at the same volume [as] other people’s thoughts.

Our ideas and our thoughts and our ways of seeing the world are just as good as theirs. They’re just as good as anybody’s. And anybody else’s is just as good as ours, you know? I don’t know if that qualifies as influence, but I just hope folks wake up in the morning and their day is just a little bit easier.

Establishment of The Bahamas National Reparations Committee

Published Date : 2014-10-15 15:33:15

The following is a press statement by Fred Mitchell, Bahamas Minister of Foreign Affairs and Immigration made on March 24th, 2014:

At the Thirty-First Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Regular Meeting held 23 July 2013, the Heads agreed on an action plan on the matter of reparations for native genocide and slavery, it was also agreed that National Reparation Committees be instituted in each member state to establish the moral, ethical and legal case for the payment of reparations by the former colonial European Countries, to the Nations and people of the Caribbean Community, for native genocide, the transatlantic slave trade and a racialised system of chattel slavery. The Chair of each committee would sit on the CARICOM Reparations Commission.

“Reparations is the process of repairing the consequences of crimes committed, and the attempt to reasonably remove debilitating effects of such crimes upon victims and their descendants” (Hilary Beckles, Chairman CARICOM Reparations Commission and Pro-Vice Chancellor and Principal of the University of the West Indies) .

Today I wish to inform you that Messrs. Alfred Sears and Philip Smith represented The Bahamas at the Second Meeting of the CARICOM Reparations Commission (CRC) held 27-28^th January, 2014 in Barbados in their role as Co-Chairs of the Bahamas Reparations Commission.

In preparation of a legal claim, each National Reparation Commission is to gather information pertaining to each claimant state; illustrate the link between historic discrimination and present day racial discrimination; outline modern racial discrimination resulting from slavery in areas of health, socio-economic deprivation and social disadvantage, education, living conditions/housing, property and land ownership, employment participation in public life and migration; and identity policies of the United Kingdom, which have perpetuated the discriminatory effects of slavery in the country (The Bahamas). This will serve as the Terms of Reference for The Bahamas Commission.

The Cabinet approved on the 4^th March, 2014, Messrs. Alfred Sears and Philip Smith as Chair and Co-Chair respectively of The Bahamas Ad Hoc Committee on Reparations and the following persons to serve on the Committee:

Dr. Chris Curry (Historian, COB)

Dr. Gail Saunders (Historian, COB)

Fr. David Cooper (Rector, Mary Star Catholic Church, Freeport)

Rev. Williams Higgs (Rector, Trinity Methodist Church)

Ms. Marion Bethel (Poet, Filmmaker, Lawyer)

Rev. Timothy Stewart (Pastor, Bethel Baptist Church )

Ms. Keisha Ellis (Researcher, COB)

Mr. Pedro Rolle (Chair, Chamber of Commerce, Exuma)

Ms. Theresa Moxey-Ingraham (President Sajouner College)

Dr. Niambi Hall-Campbell (Professor Sociology COB)

Mr. Michael Symonette (Businessman)

Mr. Michael Stevenson (Professor of Law, COB/UWI)

Ms. M. Elaine Toote (Director, Archives)

Ms. Kim Outten-Stubbs (Director, Pompey Museum)

Dr. Tracy Thompson (Director, Oral & Public History)

Mr. Whitman McKinney (Rastafarian Movement)

Mr. Elsworth Johnson (President, Bar Association)

Ms. Bianca Beneby (Attorney, Office of the Prime Minister)

Ms. Alesha Hart (Journalist, Businesswoman)

Mr. Travis Cartwright (Journalist)

Mr. Cecil Thompson (Retired Educator, Freeport)

Mr. Loren Klein (Attorney, Office of the Attorney General)

These persons were chosen because of their broad expertise and their representation of The Bahamian society. The members are to create a robust public education programme that would mobilize communities in order to secure the support of, inter alia, political entities, focus groups, civic leaders, the Diasporas and the media.

Continuing Education

Published Date : 2014-10-03 10:57:24

On Thursday, I was at Cornell making the case for reparations. I’ve never written anything that has garnered this much attention, and I confess some bewilderment at the response. Yesterday there were people sitting in the aisles, people standing outside the room, people sitting in windows, people outside of windows listening. I’ve been writing professionally for most of my adult life. I’ve done this because I love the act of writing, which is to say I love the act of discovery, of revelation, and then the attempt to share that revelation in all its fullness and clarity.

You can never be sure how many people will want to share in that feeling. And so I have found that it is best to not think too much about the ranks of one’s readers, one’s prominence or profile. The reasons to write were my own when I commenced 20 years ago, as a young poet, and they remain mine today as a not-so-young journalist. And yet sometimes you look up and there are people listening, and if not in large numbers, then in larger numbers than anything you ever imagined. You can never be sure quite why. No matter. This too, redounds.

The greatest boon of “The Case for Reparations” is that it has put me in conversation with some of the best minds of my generation, the generations preceding, and the generations following. My favorite portion of these talks, is after the speech when I get to listen to the audience, the small private lunches with students, or the dinners with academics. And so it was yesterday when I found myself listening, within a few short hours, to arguments for, and against, a binational Israel, then a short treatise on the history of black satire in America, and finally the possibility of reparations in a capitalist economy. In this sense, I felt myself back at home, back at Howard, out on the Yard, debating with the brothers and sisters, and catching up on the doings of various radicals, nationalists, and professed social democrats.

Those are the moments of magic for me because they remind me of why I came to writing—for discovery, revelation, for study. I find myself thinking of George L. Ruffin’s estimation of Frederick Douglass:

His range of reading has been wide and extensive. He has been a hard student. In every sense of the word, he is a self-made man. By dint of hard study he has educated himself, and to-day it may be said he has a well-trained intellect. He has surmounted the disadvantage of not having a university education, by application and well-directed effort.

He seems to have realized the fact, that to one who is anxious to become educated and is really in earnest, it is not positively necessary to go to college, and that information may be had outside of college walks; books may be obtained and read elsewhere. They are not chained to desks in college libraries, as they were in early times at Oxford.

Professors’ lectures may be bought already printed, learned doctors may be listened to in the lyceum, and the printing-press has made it easy and cheap to get information on every subject and topic that is discussed and taught in the university. Douglass never made the mistake (a common one) of considering that his education was finished. He has continued to study, he studies now, and is a growing man, and at this present moment he is a stronger man intellectually than ever before.

I find myself thinking of Malcolm X in the jail cell, wearing out his eyes in search of the knowledge, and at the end of his life, searching still:

My greatest lack has been, I believe, that I don’t have the kind of academic education I wish I had been able to get—to have been a lawyer, perhaps. I do believe that I might have made a good lawyer. I have always loved verbal battle, and challenge. You can believe me that if I had the time right now, I would not be one bit ashamed to go back into any New York City public school and start where I left off at the ninth grade, and go on through a degree. Because I don’t begin to be academically equipped for so many of the interests that I have. For instance, I love languages. I wish I were an accomplished linguist. I don’t know anything more frustrating than to be around people talking something you can’t understand. Especially when they are people who look just like you.

In Africa, I heard original mother tongues, such as Hausa, and Swahili, being spoken, and there I was standing like some little boy, waiting for someone to tell me what had been said; I never will forget how ignorant I felt. Aside from the basic African dialects, I would try to learn Chinese, because it looks as if Chinese will be the most powerful political language of the future. And already I have begun studying Arabic, which I think is going to be the most powerful spiritual language of the future.

I would just like to study. I mean ranging study, because I have a wide-open mind. I’m interested in almost any subject you can mention. I know this is the reason I have come to really like, as individuals, some of the hosts of radio or television panel programs I have been on, and to respect their minds—because even if they have been almost steadily in disagreement with me on the race issue, they still kept their minds open and objective about the truths of things happening in this world.

But time raced ahead of Malcolm, and he died not knowing—and knowing how much he did not know. So it goes for all of us, eventually.

At the end of my talk yesterday, a woman approached me with a question. She was a native of Côte d’Ivoire, and when I learned this I immediately asked, “Vous parlez français?” And to this she granted a mild, “Bien sûr.” A great fear came over me, because I knew that if I were serious about my studies—if I truly aspired to be that hard student—I must attempt speak to her in French, if she were willing. She was. And so we talked about reparations for the enslaved, for the plundered, for the colonized—and we did it all in the language of the colonizer.

I am approaching the end of my third year studying French. This was the first time I’d had a complicated conversation with a native French speaker who I did not know, and managed to follow along. This means more than is immediately apparent. Before I began studying I did not understand that comprehension comes on several levels. It is one thing to understand someone whom you know and speak with regularly. It’s still another to understand a stranger. And another still to understand a group of strangers who are talking about something of which you have no knowledge. So this small conversation was a moment for me—like the novice yogi going from bridge to wheel. And there again I felt one of the revelation, the discovery, the neurons firing, stretching, growing.

I started the case for reparations looking to answer a question that has burned at me since I was a child in West Baltimore—what was the wall which stood between the world and me? And now I feel myself to know the answer. And I feel that while my country may need to lie to itself, it can no longer effectively lie to me. That is a kind of liberation. And still I feel other kinds calling out to me.

Scholar Traces Trail of Slave Trade

Published Date : 2014-10-02 15:13:23

By Herb Boyd

Reparations groups protest at Norfolk Southern Rail Yard in Chicago

Published Date : 2014-10-02 15:09:07

                              
Coalition makes good on its reparations action

CHICAGO, IL–On Tuesday, September 23rd,  representatives from 25 organizations, armed with the Durban Declaration and Program of Action, met on the corner of 47th Street and Wentworth Avenue as Reparations Enforcers to work to collect $900 million from Norfolk Southern.

The group, being led by the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA) and the Coalition for the Enforcement of Repair and Restoration (CERR), carried out their plan to present to Norfolk Southern Railroad a Compensation Presentment for past crimes against Afrikan humanity.

With chants of “Reparations is a human right,” and “If there were no crimes against our humanity, there would be no violence in our streets,” the group proceeded west toward the Norfolk Southern Rail Yard.

Concluding their march, the group proceeded back to the 47th Street Rapid Transit Station.

There, in the midst of early evening travelers, they made statements on their intent on continuing their efforts.

As each organizational representative concluded their statement, shouts in unison declared “NO JUSTICE NO PROFIT.”

The organizers vow to return with continued non-violent direct action protest if Norfolk Southern does not agree to begin earnest conversations in regards to the settling of the presentment.

Kamm Howard leads the march for reparations. A Norfolk Southern railcar can be seen in the background.

Kamm Howard, recently elected to lead the reparations work of the Black is Back Coalition, speaks at the August 2014 conference.

The Black is Back Coalition is having a march on the white house on November 1st and 2nd, 2014 with the call “Peace through Revolution!”

The only certain peace for the peoples of the world is ‘Peace through Revolution!’ Join us for a rally and march on the white house at 12 noon on Malcolm X park, Washington, DC.

Speech by Hon. Camillo Gonsalves, Minister of Foreign Affairs, St. Vincent & the Grenadines at the Congressional Black Caucus Reparations Panel, Sept. 26, 2014, Washington, DC.  

Published Date : 2014-10-02 11:35:08

Each year, around this time, Caribbean leaders join other presidents and prime ministers in convening in New York to participate in the annual United Nations General Debate. And each year the countries gathered at the United Nations feel compelled to speak out against current and historical injustices – from genocide, to torture, to forced displacement of populations. From war crimes, to terrorism, to crimes against humanity. From Ukraine to Somalia to Palestine.

The countries of the Caribbean, despite – or maybe because of – our small populations and lack of military might, have viewed themselves as the conscience of the international community. We see ourselves as unencumbered by the historical baggage and geopolitical ambitions of other countries. We see our status as outsiders, one step removed from the inner sancta of international intrigue, as allowing us to call a spade a spade, and to be honest brokers in the quest for peace, justice and development.

Yet, historically, there has been one inescapable blot on this rather inflated self-portrait. At our highest political levels, we were neither fully confronting the myriad legacies of slavery on our citizens and national development, nor were we collectively acting in the pursuit of reparatory justice. The old Caribbean admonition was apt: “Dance a yard, before you dance abroad:” Deal with the injustices in your back yard before you prescribe solutions to similar wrongs in far-flung locales.

The path from slavery to de jure freedom in the English-speaking Caribbean traversed through a number of abolitions. First, the British abolished the slave trade, then slavery itself, and then a period of apprenticeship – which was sort of a “Slavery Lite” that allowed former slaveholders to continue extracting free labour from former slaves. After the abolition of slavery, Her Majesty’s government compensated the Caribbean slaveholders with a sum of £20 million for the loss of their human “property.” In today’s US dollars, that would be somewhere north of $3 billion. In Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, British slave owners received £592,509 for their 22,997 slaves, or roughly in the neighbourhood of US$50 million. Mind you, over the course of 45 years, between 1764 and 1808, a full 62,176 slaves left the coast of West Africa destined for a principal place of landing in SVG, but by 1834, fewer than 23,000 remained. The dead or infirm did not appear in the compensation ledger book. Presumably, the slaveowner had gotten his money’s worth from those human beings he worked though a harrowing life to a premature grave.

[In this forum, it is probably unnecessary to detail the atrocities of the slave trade. But neither must we, in our quest to make Reparations seem logical and reasonable, divorce ourselves from visceral memories and moral outrage that must always fuel our quest for justice]

But Saint Vincent and the Grenadines’ modern realities were indelibly scarred even prior to the massive injustices of the trade in human beings and day-to-day savagery of slavery. Before the arrival of the British to our shores, our country was populated by the indigenous Calinago people and the Garfiuna, who were the offspring of Calinago natives and escaped or shipwrecked Africans who made it to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines from neighbouring islands. The Garifuna fiercely resisted British conquest and fought two wars against the colonizers. The first war – a stalemate – ended in one of the earliest treaties ever concluded between the British and an indigenous population in this hemisphere. The second produced an unspeakable genocide, in which most of the surviving Garifuna were rounded up, placed on ships and deported from their own lands to a series of inhospitable locales, finally settling off the coast of Honduras. The natives that were allowed to remain on Saint Vincent saw their collective landholding reduced from 100,000 acres to 238 acres of the most inhospitable territory, at the foot of an active volcano. There is little that I have to say, here in the United States, about the historical and present-day consequences of land grabs, forced displacement and genocide of native populations.

This history, first of native genocide, and then of a mode of production premised on the enslavement of Africans, has bequeathed Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and awful, continuing legacy. From family roles and structures, to health, to poverty, to education, ambition and self esteem, the legacy has produced a population that, today, is “ecologically distinct” – to use a phrase that stuck with me from Mr. Coates’ Atlantic article. Nationally, and regionally, slavery and native genocide left Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and the wider Caribbean on the wrong side of a developmental chasm that runs between the countries that were exploited by the slave trade and those that received the benefit of a 400-year head start. On one side of the chasm, national governments are occupied with primary education. On the other? Universities and institutions of higher learning. On one side of the gorge, nations worry about clinics, basic medication and maternal mortality. On the other? Expanding hospitals and advanced medical research. On one side are the borrowers and accumulators of unsustainable national debt; on the other are the lenders and dictators of terms and conditions. The socioeconomic legacy of slavery among nations is self evident: almost no country that was either a source or destination country for enslaved Africans has moved from the periphery to the core of the global economy. Those nations that are currently managing the difficult transition from developing to developed nation – from China to India to Singapore – have many challenges to overcome. Thankfully, the legacy of African slavery is not one of them. [In this regard, the lament of Bob Marley is apt: “Today they say that we are free/only to be chained in poverty.”]

Which brings us, in a roundabout manner, to the issue of CARICOM’s historic reparatory justice initiative, its urgency and importance as a governmental priority in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. For decades, Caribbean artists, intellectuals and religious groups – particularly the Rastafarian community – have been beating the drum of global reparatory justice. The Caribbean’s history of activism and toil in the vineyard of racial justice is long and proud, starting with war heroes like Nanny of Jamaica and Chatoyer of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, through Marcus Garvey and Kwame Ture, to notable Americans of Caribbean descent, like Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan. But the type of sustained, focused, priority given to reparatory justice by heads of state and government is a relatively new phenomenon.

Within the last decade, a number of Caribbean leaders, beginning with the former Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda and the current Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, began to raise the claim of reparatory justice at the United Nations. To them, and to their colleagues, the facts of native eradication and African slavery fit them squarely within the modern definitions of genocide, torture, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Caribbean leaders began to highlight the self-evident but inconvenient truths of a legacy of poverty and under-development, in fields including public health, education, and employment, and other manifestations of structural and social inequality. They questioned why the United Nations’ Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, or its Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, was not being applied to the glaring historical consequences of native genocide and slavery in the Caribbean.

These questions and international advocacy led, in July 2013, to the historic, unanimous, decision of all Caribbean Community Heads of State and Government to set up National Committees on Reparations, to establish the moral, ethical and legal case for the payment of reparations by the former colonial European countries, for the crimes of native genocide, the transatlantic slave trade, and the system of chattel slavery itself.

A Prime Ministerial Sub-Committee on Reparations was set up, ably led by the Prime Minister of Barbados. Two months later, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines hosted the Caribbean Community’s first Regional Reparations Conference, a watershed three-day event that produced a Regional Reparations Commission, headed by Professor Beckles, and charged with developing a regional roadmap to pursue reparatory justice.

That Regional Reparations Commission proceeded to identify six key areas for diplomacy and action, and further refined those broad areas into a ten-point Caribbean Reparatory Justice Programme, on which Professor Beckles will no doubt elaborate. The Caribbean Reparatory Justice Programme, in turn, was endorsed by the Caribbean Community leaders in their March 2014 Conference, which also took place in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

That alone would constitute a full year of activity at the highest political level. But much more has been done. Separate National Reparations Committees have been established in most Caribbean countries, and they are hosting a series of public events to engage, educate and learn from local communities as we sharpen our reparatory focus. The resulting elevation of national and regional consciousness on this issue, in and of itself, will be the first victory of the process of reparatory justice.

The diplomatic engagement with former colonizers and enslavers has also begun. Last June, at a CARICOM-UK Forum in London, and on behalf of CARICOM Foreign Ministers, I raised the issue of reparatory justice with William Hague, the then- Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom. We indicated that CARICOM expects this issue to be the subject of formal discussion between our region and the United Kingdom. Sir Hillary himself stood in the British House of Commons – ground zero for the architecture of Caribbean chattel slavery – and enunciated our claim with passion and logic, even naming the names of various current members of the British House of Lords, whose familial wealth was not only made in the Caribbean, but whose foreparents enslaved Sir Hilary’s direct ancestors.

There is more, still. Many national Parliaments, including Jamaica and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, have passed Motions that give legislative impetus to the principles, priorities and processes necessary to pursue reparatory justice. CARICOM leaders have secured the services of a British law firm that has some experience in making claims of a reparatory or restitutional nature. That law firm, which recently engineered a £20 million settlement for the surviving Kenyan victims of British atrocities during the Mau Mau rebellion in the 1950s, has worked with Caribbean lawyers in preparing a Draft Notice of Complaint, which sets out the legal case for reparatory justice under international law and practice.

The initial British arguments in the Mau Mau case, and Mr. Hague’s own responses to my request for a discussion of the issue, signal that the Caribbean’s quest for reparatory justice may not continue to advance with the rapidity that it has over the past 14 months. In no particular order, the British have raised the issue of elapsed time; of evidentiary bases; of who should paid, and how much; of the fact that we are attempting to retroactively define as criminal acts that were legal at the time; even, incredibly, that any claims related to British colonial atrocities should now be lodged against the successor governments in the now-independent countries. In other words, for example, that Kenyan victims should now make claims against the post-independence Kenyan government that succeeded the British Colonial authorities. More fundamentally, and practically, I have heard at the highest levels that any conversation on reparations is politically unpalatable, and maybe even suicidal, to governments that have to answer to electorates in a post-crisis environment of economic austerity. Better for us to try to secure ill-defined promises of assistance or special treatment. Better yet for us to recall not only the evils of genocide and slavery, but also the positive legacies we have gained from the experience – democracy, Christianity, and a command of the English language, to name a few.

Some of these arguments are mimicked in our respective local contexts. Mr. Coates’ Atlantic article alludes to many of the questions raised by those more preoccupied with the practicalities, as opposed to the inherent justice, of the reparatory cause. I suspect that those practicalities are even more vexing in the United States, where conventional wisdom styles American reparations as an internal battle – of African-Americans seeking justice from their own government, as opposed to the Caribbean paradigm of nations predominantly descended from slaves and indentured labourers seeking justice from external colonial exploiters.

But whether reparatory justice is styled as individual African-Americans cashing in on General Sherman’s 1865 guarantee of “forty acres of tillable ground” to each freed African American family, or Caribbean governments enumerating six areas of responsibility that European governments are morally and legally bound to fulfil, the process begins with analysis, education, and conversation. It’s been at least a good 13 years since I graduated law school here in DC, but H.R 40 doesn’t appear to be remotely close to quantifying the amount or type of reparations required in the American context. It seeks to examine, primarily, “the lingering negative effects of the institution of slavery” and subsequent discrimination against Black people in this country. Similarly, nothing yet done by the Caribbean Reparations Commission, attempts to aggregate or delineate the precise contours of any reparatory settlement.

None of us are there yet.

CARICOM’s next step, internally and with the former slave-trading European nations, involves conversation, not a confrontation. Our initial engagement can only be adversarial if one party is attacking and the other is defending. But we cannot imagine any sane person defending the crime of slavery, or the atrocities committed against native and enslaved populations. Nor do we think that it possible for reasonable minds to differ on the fundamental point that the repercussions of that slavery and native genocide continue to have profound negative effects on present-day individuals and nations.

The commencement of those good-faith conversations is an important litmus test of the strength of our friendship and cooperation with our longstanding European allies. We are aware of the full range of practical, political and economic hurdles to a mutually acceptable reparatory settlement. But we shall not allow full sight of the forest of justice to be obscured by political trees and bureaucratic branches. There is steel in the Caribbean spine on this issue, and a determination to bring it to a head, whether diplomatically or legally.

The level of priority that CARICOM governments accord to issue of reparatory justice cannot be overstated. At the root of our region’s historical developmental impediments is not our small size. It is not our vulnerable, debt-saddled economies. It is not our general lack of natural resources.  It is not even our susceptibility to climate change, which is indeed an existential threat. No. These are all significant factors, with which me must grapple. But it is the enduring legacy of slavery that has been the unchanging developmental millstone that we have been forced to carry uphill for generations.

Bob Marley once sang in his song “Slave Driver” that:

Every time I hear the crack of a whip,

my blood runs cold.

I remember on the slave ship,

how they brutalised my very soul.

Slavery, and the slave ship itself was beyond an indignity. It was beyond barbarism. It was beyond inhuman. It was, apart from the physical atrocities, a brutalisation of the psyche of a people so violent and enduring that it has created a shared cultural memory of the trauma. A collective memory that lives so vividly in the souls of those who have died that it is bequeathed to those of us who live today and to those yet unborn. For the CARICOM Member States, it is a scar that is 15 countries wide and 400 years deep. For the world, it remains a festering sore on the conscience of humanity.

I know those scars are felt and shared and understood by millions of African-Americans brothers and sisters. That is why our leaders have instinctively and independently embarked on such similar reparatory paths. The ties that bind us are deep and unbreakable. The legacies that shape us are shared. And the solidarity that informs our quest to study, educate, advocate and obtain justice must not simply be assumed, but vigorously lived.

As we support your efforts to move forward with H.R. 40 and the just cause of reparations in the United States, so too do we solicit your active kinship, assistance and support. This is a great cause of our generation, and great causes are not won by timid, fractious men and women. Together, we can and will succeed.

I thank you.

The Global African - Reparations

Published Date : 2014-09-29 21:26:00

Cuba Supports Caribbean Reparations Claim at the United Nations

Published Date : 2014-09-29 21:24:59

Jamaica Calculates Its Reparations Money

Published Date : 2014-09-29 19:53:49

By Bert Wilkinson

At UN, memorial to transatlantic slave trade will send ‘powerful message’ for years to come

Published Date : 2014-09-29 15:53:13

General view of the Island of Gorée, Senegal, which was from the 15th to the 19th century, the largest slave-trading centre on the African coast. Photo: UNESCO/Dominique Roger

26 September, 2014 – The United Nations took one more step towards constructing a permanent commemoration to the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade today in what the head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said would be “a message of hope, of tolerance, of human dignity.”

At a high level ceremony on the margins of the UN General Assembly, the representatives of six nations – The Netherlands, New Zealand, Qatar, Senegal, Jamaica and Spain – marked the financing of The Ark of Return, the new memorial which is expected to be unveiled on the grounds of the UN’s Headquarters in New York in the beginning of 2015.

Speaking at the event, UNESCO’s Director-General, Irina Bokova, highlighted the memorial’s role as “a powerful symbol” and said UNESCO was “deeply honoured” to have been associated with the coordination of the process by which the memorial was selected.

The Ark of Return is the design of Rodney Leon, also the architect and designer of the African Burial Ground National Monument in Manhattan. It was selected as the winner of an international UNESCO-led competition in August 2013.

Maher Nasser, Acting Under-Secretary-General of the UN Department of Public Information – the body that manages the UN’s Remember Slavery commemorative programme – was equally humbled by the role the memorial would play in ensuring that the legacy of the slavery and the transatlantic slave trade not be forgotten.

“The memorial will be an important addition to UN Headquarters complex when it is built,” he told those gathered, “and it will send a powerful message on the need to remain vigilant about the dangers of racism and racial discrimination today.”

In his remarks, Ambassador Tete Antonio, the representative of the African Union to the UN, similarly described the inauguration of the memorial as “a momentous time in the history of the United Nations.”

“The overwhelming support of Member States is evident today in the generous contributions that continue to flow into the trust fund for the construction of the Ark of Return,” Mr. Tete Antonio noted.

“This is a symbol set in marble that will stand high on the grounds of the United Nations for generations to come lest we forget.”

The project is funded through generous voluntary contributions from Member States, complemented by funding from foundations and private individuals. A Trust Fund account is administered by the Fund of the UN Office for Partnerships.

As at 15 September 2014, pledges and contributions to the fund stand at about $1.5 million, leaving a minimal funding gap of approximately $500,0000 to complete the project as planned. It is the aim of the Permanent Memorial Committee that the shortfall should be raised by the end of 2014 given the current trend.

Over 70 member States have generously supported the project to date and the Permanent Memorial Committee appeals to others to join the group of contributors in order to bring the project to completion.

 

White supremacy and slavery

Published Date : 2014-09-22 14:02:52

Elias Isquith is staff writer at Salon, focusing on politics. Follow him on Twitter at @eliasisquith, and email him at eisquith@salon.com.

‘The Economist’ Has a Slavery Problem

Published Date : 2014-09-09 20:46:55

‘The Economist’ Has a Slavery Problem

By Greg Grandin

(AP photo/Bill Haber) 

A few months ago, my recent book The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World received a lukewarm review in The Economist. The title of the unsigned review, “Slavery: Not Black or White,” was odd, calling to mind a parody of an Onion headline: “Nietzsche: Not Good or Evil.” After all, slavery, a centuries-long institution involving the buying and selling of tens of millions of human beings, did in fact result in divvying up the diversity of much of the world’s population into those two colors.

The review itself was written in that smarmy style that makes US corporate managers and hedge funders swoon, identified some time ago by James Fallows as “colonial cringe.” Readers on this side of the Atlantic assign an Oxbridge accent to the text, which “involves a stance so cocksure of its rightness and superiority that it would be a shame to freight it with mere fact.” Another critic said the magazine is written by young people trying to sound old.

The Empire of Necessity tries to establish the dependent relationship of slavery to the capitalist revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in all of the Americas, north and south, and presumes to use Herman Melville as embodying the moral complexities of that relationship. In other words, there’s a lot going on in the book.

But the reviewer seemed only excited to find a few instances confirming that the trans-Atlantic slave system was not universally, 100 percent, absolutely, totally, categorically, “a matter of white villains and black victims.” “As is commonly supposed.” “Blacks,” he or she was happy to report, “profited from the Atlantic slave trade.”

The reviewer then complained about the book’s gloominess: “Unfortunately, the horrors in Mr Grandin’s history are unrelenting. His is a book without heroes. The brave battlers against the gruesome slave business hardly get a look in, although it was they who eventually prevailed.” One might think that “brave battlers” would be a good description of the group of West Africans who led the slave-ship revolt that is the book’s set piece.

Having endured horrific captivity and transport, forced not just across the Atlantic but the whole American continent into the Pacific, the deception they managed to pull off under extremely hostile conditions was, I’d say, heroic.

Slavery might not be black or white, but bravery and morality apparently are: whites possess those qualities, a possession that merits historical consideration; blacks don’t, at least according to The Economist. The Empire of Necessity didn’t “credit” William Wilberforce, the white reformist MP, or white abolitionist evangelicals and Quakers, for ending slavery. Nor, the reviewer points out, did I make mention of the British Royal Navy freeing “at least 150,000 west Africans from slave ships during the 19th century.”

The book isn’t about abolition, or, for that matter, the British Royal Navy. No matter. “The British historians,” wrote the great historian of slavery, Eric Williams, “wrote as if Britain had introduced Negro slavery solely for the satisfaction of abolishing it.” So too, apparently, anonymous Economist reviewers.

Then last week another review appeared that made it clear that The Economist has, well, a race problem. Also published without a byline, this one is of Ed Baptist’s wonderful The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, and is even more of an apologia for white resentment, if not supremacy (by which only white folks have virtues worthy of historical commentary).

It had to have been by the same critic, for it uses nearly exactly the same victim/villainy opposition as scaffolding: “Mr Baptist has not written an objective history of slavery. Almost all the blacks in his book are victims, almost all the whites villains.”

This time, though, the Internet responded with a barrage of snark (“@TheEconomist asks the tough question: why are black people victims in a book about slavery?” #notallwhites #notallslavemasters) that, remarkably, forced the editors to withdraw the review and apologize for its apologia: “Apology: In our review … we said: ‘Mr Baptist has not written an objective history of slavery. Almost all the blacks in his book are victims, almost all the whites villains.’ There has been widespread criticism of this, and rightly so. Slavery was an evil system…” Glad we got that cleared up.

The review of Baptist’s book in fact had other problems than what its editors apologized for. Baptist provides meticulous, extensive and comprehensive evidence that capitalism and the wealth it created was absolutely dependent on the forced labor of Africans and African-Americans, downplaying culturalist arguments for Western prosperity, of the kind rehearsed by historians such as Niall Ferguson.

This seemed to particularly irk the reviewer, who asserted that Baptist “overstates his case when he dismisses ‘the traditional explanations’ for America’s success,” including its “individualistic culture, Puritanism,” and “ingenuity.” Here, the reviewer adopts exactly the “cocksure” tone Fallows long ago described, unburdened by the need to actually make a counter-argument or provide evidence. An assertion pronounced in crisp English is as good as its word.

So a pattern is detected, one reaching back much further than the review of my book. In the 1860s,The Economist stood nearly alone among liberal opinion in Britain in supporting the Confederacy against the Union, all in the name of access to cheap Southern “Blood Cotton” (ironically, the title of the Baptist review) and fear of higher tariffs if the North triumphed. “The Economist was unusual,” writes an historian of English public opinion at the time; “Other journals still regarded slavery as a greater evil than restrictive trade practices.”

Since the Baptist review appeared, only to be quickly withdrawn, other historians, such as Mark Healey, have dug up reviews with similar problems. The Economist seems committed to making sure that white people aren’t taken for total villains and darker-skinned folks held accountable for their share of world’s inequities. It also seems dedicated to make sure the economic system created by slavery is denied its parentage, and on insisting that the miseries that continue to be produced by neoliberal capitalism can only be cured by more neoliberal capitalism.

A few years ago, for instance, the magazine upbraided the Laurent Dubois, in his book on the history of Haiti, for, you guessed it, dismissing cultural explanations for the country’s poverty and focusing instead on structural issues. Haitians need to be held responsible for “their society’s underdevelopment,” and the best way to end their misery is to stop clinging to substance production and accommodate themselves to “specialised wage labour for a global market.”

The reviewing practices of The Economist are opaque, its reviewers shrouded in collective anonymity and endowed with the timeless authority of the “Royal We.” “In our review … ” started off its Baptist recantation. But who was the author of the reviews of The Empire of Necessity and The Half Has Never Been Told? A staff writer? A professional historian? Of slavery? Of the United States? Of the British Empire?

If so, why not be a “brave battler” and stop hiding behind the neoliberal plural. Have the courage of your convictions and come out. An apology and withdrawal isn’t enough. Release the name of the reviewer.

Capitalism, Slavery and the Reparations Battle

Published Date : 2014-09-08 06:36:12

By Don D. Marshall

The case for reparations made by Professor Sir Hilary Beckles on behalf of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) has engendered conversations across the region and diaspora. Perhaps it promises to lift from the pages of quiet academic production and career enhancement, exchanges about the Caribbean, its historicalness and current development predicaments.

As we are aware, Sir Hilary as Chair of Caricom’s Reparations Commission is making a case for reparatory justice against European countries, mainly Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands and Sweden. At the 25th Inter-Sessional Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community held on 10 March 2014 in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the Commission’s 10 point plan was adopted. Heads agreed that efforts will be made to elicit a public apology for the African Slave Trade and the decimation of the indigenous peoples of the Americas and to commence negotiations for reparatory justice. Should the European powers fail to publicly apologise and refuse to enter into negotiations, CARICOM nations will file a lawsuit against the European powers at the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

In precise terms, the appeal is for reparatory justice for the horrific consequences of 400 years of the African Slave Trade, systematic genocide of the indigenous peoples of the Americas and historical justice for the descendants of African slaves and native American peoples. On April 19 2014, Sir Hilary re-presented the reparations case to an audience of civil rights activists at the Chicago State University, an event organised and webcasted by the Institute of the Black World 21st Century. Again the reach of the 10 point plan was explained, highlighting demands for assistance in boosting the region’s technological capacity; strengthening public health institutions, museums, research centres and cultural institutions; and legal and diplomatic assistance from European governments in resettlement plans for members of the Rastafari religion.

The moral and ethical reasoning for reparations is beyond dispute. Indeed the legal case to be answered may have some precedent as with the Jewish settlement following World War II; and Japan’s official acceptance of its obligation to provide monetary compensation to victims of war crimes committed during World War II.

The modalities of `the how and the what’ of compensation remain an important subject but the case as outlined, coming 176 years after the end of slavery and fifty years after island independence was gained in Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, has been greeted with doubt, some arguing that it is a needless distraction, others careful to note that it detracts from current struggles Caribbean working class people confront.

Take the recent contribution by Hilbourne Watson and Trevor Campbell, `Reparations Campaign Distracts from Challenges facing Caribbean: A Response’, which appeared in the August 11 2014 edition of Stabroek News. They argue that advocates fail to integrate the reparations argument with an analysis of historical capitalism; that the exploitation of surplus labour is the sui generis of capitalism; that European working classes also experienced exploitation and alienation then – as much as they do now with a capitalism that portends jobless growth and positive rates of return. As they put it:

“The historians and others at the forefront of the reparations discourse in the Caribbean completely overlook the fact that the entire history of all class societies dating back to the distant past is the history of exploitation which has been bound up with the appropriation of the surplus labour by the class that owned the means of production…This fact tells us that the producers of the wealth in those societies – slaves from antiquity, serfs, peasants and workers – could justifiably make a claim for reparations, equally with the descendants of enslaved Africans.”

The need to square the reparation claim with the historical tendency of capitalism is a serious one. But first an appendage to the Watson-Campbell argument is important.

I believe that they have opened reflective space for a discussion of who is “the subject” to whom reparations are owed. For them it is primarily `the working classes’, the powerless who face exploitation as a necessary feature in the social and material relations of production. For framers of the reparations case, the subject is presented as generic `African and indigenous descendants’ of enslavement and genocide.

This generic-ness is essentially without name but we know they are `classed’ as downtrodden, ‘raced’ as non-white, mostly black but that they invariably end up without gender. The descendants of both enslaved and indigenous women need to be brought into the liberatory audit of compensation produced by the Reparations Commission, not as an appendage to any of the specific points but critically as a new emphasis within what must now be an Eleven Point plan. Women have never been paid for their caring labour, such is the unacknowledged subsidy of all varieties of capitalism.

And we are aware that historically European women, servants and the colonised were not seen as persons, individuals in their own right (excluded from liberal individuality). But from the accumulation of transgressions, I am sure a specific language of claims-making is possible when considering the rape, domestic servitude, and the sundry power relations brought to bear on the bodies and will of African enslaved women and their descendants – from the Slave Trade through to the end of the Emancipation/Apprenticeship period at least, as well as women survivors of indigenous peoples.

The social and cultural scaffolding of rape and sexual violence today; circulating tropes of African-Caribbean female sexuality as degenerate; and barriers to upward mobility for African-Caribbean women into positions of corporate authority and leadership – these negatively affect Caribbean women’s lives.

The region needs more resources to construct shelters for women experiencing intimate partner abuse; to assist with direct educative interventions; to effect positive discrimination programmes in hiring practices; to provide day care resources at workplaces to ease the domestic double workday; and so on. These needs should also form part of the compensatory claims of the Reparations Commission.

As earlier suggested, Watson and Campbell ask that we reflect on historical capitalism as we consider the ramifications of reparations claims. Formations of world order constitutive of capitalistic economic systems extend back for centuries at least. Imperialism was under constant contest before and since the Europeans, taking haphazard shape from myriad encounters with alternative systems of authority.

The structural economic realities and opportunities facing European powers in the long 16th Century were all to do with their lag behind Asia, particularly their individual trade deficits with China and their internal scramble for pre-eminence. Indeed territorial conquest through plunder and dispossession pre-dated the rise of the West and was largely the means through which empire-making was possible. But how the different European powers inscribed their processes of accumulation by dispossession and how the New World was dragged into this orbit require careful consideration.

The decision in the 16th and 17th Centuries to experiment and then embark upon the African Slave Trade followed unsustainable attempts to extract surplus labour from indigenous and indentured peoples, occurring within a cultural and interpersonal context that legitimised the capture and, later, the commodification of African peoples as ultimately a `civilising gesture’. We learn that by 1850 a westward shift of hegemony from East to West was completed.

The reparations case, I believe, is precisely pitched at how this settlement was reached, the argument being that it was founded on deadly inventions of racial difference with tangible and terrible effects. Let us go back to the `long 16th century’ as touchstone for an understanding of the Beckles Commission’s 400 year timeline.

The long 16th century is necessary for tracking the various ways legal codes were enacted to strip the enslaved Africans of all protection of the law. Chattel slavery was neither an inevitable nor natural capitalist outcome for solving the demand for labour. Indeed Africans who were brought to the slave colonies throughout the 16th century had uncertain legal status; some were indentured servants and some could own slaves themselves.

The Barbados Slave Code of 1661 was the first code establishing the English legal base for chattel slavery in the Caribbean and its adoption in South Carolina in 1696 laid out the guidelines for British North America. So that while for European powers labour was necessary for the sugar, tobacco and cotton plantations, slave labour was unnecessary unless the imperative to extract excess profits coexisted with supremacist ideas.

The invention of chattel slavery in these circumstances was neither historically inevitable nor foreseen in the early rivalry stakes among European powers. This is why it is problematic to equate chattel slavery with all other forms of labour exploitation and to proceed to fold this dehumanising, commodification experience into an analysis of surplus labour extraction. In short, the African Slave Trade and the plantation system arose out of a contingent set of processes that were neither predetermined nor uncontested.

A case for reparations as pursued by CARICOM is legitimate even as care must be taken to explore the dynamics of class and gender. The women-of-colour issue is also central to the claim for reparatory justice while the point of how to locate European working classes in such appeals requires nuanced engagement. But the question of who benefited from the slave trade, slavery and the colonial order involves acknowledgement of the dense web of relations marked by coercion, negotiation, complicity, affiliation and revolt.

Watson and Campbell are correct to direct our attention to historical capitalist relations of power; but it is equally important that we delve into the shifting strategies of accumulation, the rivalry among European powers for material and ideological ascendancy in the global power stakes, and the reaction of social forces to empire and domination all at specific historical conjunctures. Capitalism did not require chattel slavery even as it was most congenial to elite western/southern European imperial ambitions and quests for splendour.

Don D. Marshall is Senior Research Fellow at the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies at the Cave Hill, Barbados, Campus, University of the West Indies

Home Is Where the Hatred Is

Published Date : 2014-08-28 16:55:54

A family in its one-room flat in Chicago, date unknown. (AP)

In “The Case for Reparations,” I tried to move the lens away from the enslaved and focus on their descendants. Narratively, I thought it made a much more compelling read and I it got us past the “but they’re all long-dead” argument. Also, once you understand enslavement as central—not ancillary—to American history, you can then easily intuit that it would have some serious effects on policy 100 years later. When you then consider what directly followed enslavement—disenfranchisement, pogroms, land theft, terrorism, the entire suite of plunder—it seems inconceivable that 20th-century domestic policy would not be awash in white supremacy.

On some vague level, I understood this to be true. Some years ago (before I came here) I read Kenneth Jackson’s Crabgrass Frontier. No one who wants to understand the shape of America’s cities and suburbs can afford to skip this book. I would go so far as to say that you can’t really talk intelligently about urban policy without grappling with Jackson’s work. Crabgrass is ostensibly a history of the suburbs in America, but it ranges from antiquity to the 20th century and puts the American obsession with a front lawn and detached housing in context. That makes for great reading, and then, about halfway through the book, the bombshells start dropping. In painstaking detail, Jackson shows how the Federal Housing Administration and the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation subsidized segregation, and helped author the wealth gap. I’d heard the term redlining before, but Jackson’s book really laid out, in detail, how federal policy worked.

I thought of Jackson’s book years later when I picked up Isabel Wilkerson;s The Warmth of Other Suns. Where Jackson outlines the racist policies of federal, local, and state government toward American cities, Wilkerson’s work (among other things) tells us how black people responded to those policies. More importantly, for my work, she reversed a popular trend to conflate impoverishment with racism, and pretend as though “the black poor” are the “real” problem. If only quietly, Wilkerson builds a strong case that the policy of the American government has not been to encourage a black middle class, but to discourage it and open it for plunder.

Chicago is one of three cities that feature prominently in Warmth. Having had some experience reporting in the city, I began to consider focusing there. The other candidate was Detroit. I wish I could have gotten both. I did a mini deep-dive on Detroit history some years ago, and I strongly suspect that a long, beautiful magazine story about history and could be written from there, if some journalist would take up the challenge. I tried some years ago and failed. (You can read my attempt here.) Two important books featured prominently in that attempt—Robert Conot’s American Odyssey and Thomas Sugrue’s The Origins of the Urban Crisis.

A Narrative Bibliography of “The Case for Reparations”

• Part One: On Race and Racism
• Part Two: On Slavery

Conot’s book has been forgotten, and I don’t really know why. It’s a long, deeply readable, history of Detroit from its earliest origins. In my research, I did not encounter a better one volume history of the city. It shows how examining Detroit’s “crisis” as though it began in the 1960s is a mistake. Sugrue’s book is more recent and has fared a lot better. It localizes much of what Kenneth Jackson discusses and—again—shows just the degree to which racist violence shaped the Detroit we know today.

I decided to focus on Chicago after reading Arnold Hirsch’s essential, if dense, Making the Second Ghetto. Hirsch’s book can be read in conjunction with Sugrue’s, though Sugrue is less in the weeds and more readable. But again, if you want to understand modern Chicago, you can’t do without Hirsch’s work. Every time I hear someone speak about “black on black crime” in Chicago, I want hurl a hardcover of Making The Second Ghetto at them.

The “Making” part is important and here is when the core of my reparations argument began to form (emphasis added):

Ghetto-building does not make for an edifying tale. To speak of agency and policy is, ultimately to speak of responsibility. The ‘Second Ghetto’ did not just happen. It was willed into existence.

As an aside, in each of these books, I thought I saw the dim outline of  an argument for reparations. It was as though the authors were going right up to the edge, and saying “Won’t someone rid America of its troublesome amnesia.”

Having decided to focus on Chicago I went to Beryl Satter’s history of contract lending in the city, Family Properties. The Warmth of Other Suns is the mother of “The Case for Reparations.” Family Properties is the father. No two books were more important to me in my research. Satter’s book is many things at once. It is a history of housing. It is an analysis of relationships between black and Jewish communities. And it is a family memoir (her dad was both a housing activist and a landlord.) But most importantly it is an account of how federal policy was used to fleece people—many of whom are still living. It was in Satter’s book that I first came across the name Clyde Ross. There’s some lovely karma in this, because Ross was profiled in the pages of this magazine in 1972. But I didn’t even know about the 1972 article—nor did my editors—until I read about it in Family Properties.

What I saw in all of these books that was so damning was intent. Government policy toward African-Americans is not an argument for the ineffectuality of government, on the contrary it is an argument for just how effective government can be. The intent of mid-20th-century policy was the elevation of a white middle class and the preservation of white supremacy. The policy was a rousing success. That became apparent reading some of the “place-based” sociology evidence. Patrick Sharkey’s Stuck in Place, Robert Sampson’s Great American City, and Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton’s American Apartheid. I recommend reading these three together. Massey and Denton’s book gives you the national numbers on segregation and its effects on black people. Sharkey’s book shows how those numbers have not changed since the early ’70s and how they are perpetuated in black neighborhoods. Sampson’s book focuses, with laser-precision, on those effects in Chicago.

Each of these books are indebted, somehow, to the work of the great sociologist and public intellectual William Julius Wilson. But there is a shift in each of these. Massey and Denton are directly in debate with Wilson—they believe Wilson downplays segregation. Sharkey and Sampson (I suspect) see themselves building on Wilson’s neighborhood focus. But their work is also in conflict with the view that the black impoverished class is the “truly disadvantaged.” Certainly they are “more” disadvantaged groups, but racist policy continues to be a grievous injury. If I were going to start again I would go like this:

1.) Crabgrass Frontier, by Kenneth Jackson
This gets us grounded and immediately dispenses with the popular notion that our cities and suburbs were unplanned. I can not stress how necessary this book is.

2.) The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson
I would read this to get a more intimate history in the mix early. It’s very important to remember that beneath all of this are the lives of individual Americans. Warmth is the finest piece of journalism I’ve read on America in a very long time.

3.) The Origins of the Urban Crisis, by Thomas Sugrue
This picks up on a lot of the research in Crabgrass around redlining, but zooms in on Detroit. It also adds another feature: pervasive white violence. The thing to understand about racist “policy” is that it existed in consort with racist private policy, racist civic groups, and racist people.

4.) Making the Second Ghetto, by Arnold Hirsch
A tough read, but an essential, granular analysis of how Chicago’s ghettos were “made.”

5.) Family Properties, by Beryl Satter
The perfect compliment to Hirsch. Satter’s book breathes more, and connects all of that policy to actual people in North Lawndale. More disturbing: Satter shows that public policy made private plunder possible.

6.) American Apartheid, by Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton
In a sense, a compilation of the effects of everything you will have read up to this point. Massey and Denton demonstrate that African-Americans are not just another “ethnicity” on the come up, but the most hyper-segregated group in American history.

7.) Great American City, by Robert Sampson
Back to Chicago, one last time. Again, a book about effects. Sampson is no longer in the realm of history. His data is very recent and very depressing.

8.) Stuck In Place, by Patrick Sharkey
By this point, you will likely be thoroughly bummed out. I was. Sharkey finishes us off by critiquing the “progress” made after the Civil Rights movement. Again, we see the enduring and pervasive effects of segregation. A bracing and important read.

 

Editor’s note: This is the third part in a four-part series on the works of history that informed the author’s recent piece, “The Case for Reparations.” Part one, on race and racism, is available here and part two, on slavery, is here.

Slavery Made America

Published Date : 2014-08-28 16:51:58

Frederick Douglass (Library of Congress)

About five years ago, I began a deep dive into the Civil War, most of it chronicled here. That dive culminated in an essay in our commemorative Civil War issue, much like my deep dive on housing and “colorless” policy culminated in The Case for Reparations. The earlier piece built toward the later one. The Civil War revealed to me the price, and the bounty, of enslavement in this country. The things I focus on in the reparations piece—housing and 20th-century policy—all spring from that period of American history. I could not have understood 20th-century discrimination without understanding its 19th-century manifestations. My entry into this period was idiosyncratic and the reading list below reflects that. Again, nothing here is definitive. I can only show you the path I walked.

Before I took the dive into the Civil War, I understood the enslavement as a moral catastrophe. I also had some vague sense that that enslavement had helped shepherd America into being. Finally I knew that the Civil War was somehow related to slavery. All three of these notions ultimately had to be revised. That enslavement in America was somehow more than a moral problem became apparent while reading the grandfather of all Civil War histories, James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom. Battle Cry is ostensibly a history of The Late Unpleasantness, but it is also an expression of the centrality of enslavement in American history.

The first 200 pages or so show that the War was about not only the perpetuation of “African slavery,” but its expansion. McPherson quotes directly from the mouths of secessionists who have no problem laying out bondage as their primary casus belli. McPherson shows the essential place enslavement held in the economy of the South and in America at large. Thus the conflagration that follows does not appear out of thin air. Thus when McPherson begins detailing double-timing and flanking maneuvers you have some sense that you are doing something more than watching people play out a violent football game.

Related Story

A Reading List on Race and Racism in America

Conservatively speaking, 600,000 soldiers lost their lives in the Civil War, two percent of the American population at the time. Twenty percent of all Southern white men of military age died in the War. Until Vietnam, more people had died in the Civil War than all other American wars combined. An interest which compelled that amount of death and suffering must be something more than vague disagreement over a “way of life.”

While I was reading McPherson, I was listening to recordings of David Blight’s course at Yale, The Civil War and Reconstruction. The great thing about this was I could listen to it while I was gaming, cooking, cleaning, or driving. Blight helps me put the economic portions that McPherson’s work talks about in perspective. This stunning quote, for instance, blew me away:

…by 1860, there were more millionaires (slaveholders all) living in the lower Mississippi Valley than anywhere else in the United States. In the same year, the nearly 4 million American slaves were worth some $3.5 billion, making them the largest single financial asset in the entire U.S. economy, worth more than all manufacturing and railroads combined. So, of course, the war was rooted in these two expanding and competing economies—but competing over what? What eventually tore asunder America’s political culture was slavery’s expansion into the Western territories.

I quote that a lot, because it contradicts this idea of enslavement as ancillary to American history, and establishes it as foundational. Blight was pulling from Roger Ransom’s incredible paper, The Economics of the Civil War. Again, the numbers are simply mind-bending—in a state like South Carolina, almost 60 percent of the people were enslaved. Beyond the numbers, Blight’s lectures brought to life the words of the actual people who were enslaved. Pulling from a great number of oral sources, Blight bids us not to forget that there were actual humans, not abstract figures, who were being enslaved.

In understanding the humanity of the enslaved, I don’t know if there is a better book than The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. Because Douglass wrote three autobiographies, and Life and Times is the longest, it tends to get short shrift. But, for my money, it’s the best of the three and one of the most beautiful autobiographies ever written by an American. Douglass’s portrait of slavery is just gripping. Forgive me for quoting at length:

The close-fisted stinginess that fed the poor slave on coarse corn-meal and tainted meat, that clothed him in crashy tow-linen and hurried him on to toil through the field in all weathers, with wind and rain beating through his tattered garments, and that scarcely gave even the young slave-mother time to nurse her infant in the fence-corner, wholly vanished on approaching the sacred precincts of the “Great House” itself. There the scriptural phrase descriptive of the wealthy found exact illustration. The highly-favored inmates of this mansion were literally arrayed in “purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day.”

The table of this house groaned under the blood-bought luxuries gathered with pains-taking care at home and abroad. Fields, forests, rivers, and seas were made tributary. Immense wealth and its lavish expenditures filled the Great House with all that could please the eye or tempt the taste. Fish, flesh, and fowl were here in profusion. Chickens of all breeds; ducks of all kinds, wild and tame, the common and the huge Muscovite; Guinea fowls, turkeys, geese and pea-fowls; all were fat and fattening for the destined vortex…

Alas, this immense wealth, this gilded splendor, this profusion of luxury, this exemption from toil. this life of ease, this sea of plenty were not the pearly gates they seemed to a world of happiness and sweet content to be. The poor slave, on his hard pine plank, scantily covered with his thin blanket, slept more soundly than the feverish voluptuary who reclined upon his downy pillow. Food to the indolent is poison, not sustenance. Lurking beneath the rich and tempting viands were invisible spirits of evil, which filled the self-deluded gormandizer with aches and pains, passions uncontrollable, fierce tempers, dyspepsia, rheumatism, lumbago, and gout, and of these the Lloyds had a full share.

Douglass is a masterful narrator, and one of the things he communicates is that slavery is not a sanitized form of forced labor, but first and foremost, a system of violence, an assault on black bodies, black families, and black institutions. This all gets lost in the talk about economics and robbing people of their work. That robbery was abetted by the destruction of people. For me no book better captures this then Thavolia Glymph’s Out of The House of Bondage. Glymph is specifically interested in the violence that allegedly mild slave-mistresses visited upon their slaves. By focusing on what people think of us as the mildest form of slavery (the domestic) Glymph reveals that enslavement is not violent sometimes, but is, itself, a form of violence.

Picking up from yesterday’s readings on racism as a “done thing,” as a choice, these readings helped me understand why that choice was made and how essential it was to the American project. And if that is the case, if enslavement was essential, how could it be that its effects faded in 1860? Douglass says “a man is worked on by what he works on.” For 250 years, Americans worked on the breaking of people for profit. What I found, going forward, is that enslavement had worked on us too. You can see its ghost all over American policy, especially in the realm of housing.

And so the sources:

1.) Battle Cry of Freedom, by James McPherson
Just a beautiful read. One of my favorite books of all time, and a book that does not entertain Neo-Confederate dissembling.

2.) “The Civil War and Reconstruction,” David Blight’s lecture series
Blight is a great lecturer and covers the essentials of both periods.

3.) “The Economics Of The Civil War,” by Roger L. Ransom
This is a really short but essential read. Perhaps more than any article I’ve read it explains the forces that led us to war.

4.) The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, by Frederick Douglass
Just beautiful. Don’t just read this to understand enslavement; read it because it is an incredible work of literature.

5.) Out Of The House of Bondage, by Thavolia Glymph
I actually came to this after the reparations article was in the queue, but it crystalizes something that Douglass demonstrates–the horrific violence that was slavery. You can not divide the two. The Cliven Bundy fantasy of black people happily picking cotton, and living in two parent homes with food and shelter provided is the exact opposite of what slavery was. You can not plunder a people nonviolently.

 

Editor’s note: This is the second part in a four-part series on the works of history that informed the author’s recent piece, The Case for Reparations. Part one, on race and racism, is available here.

How to Apologize for Slavery

Published Date : 2014-08-07 11:43:16

By Theodore R. Johnson

The “Door of No Return” at the House of Slaves museum on Goree Island, near Senegal’s capital Dakar (Finbarr O’Reilly/Reuters)

In June of 1961, Ambassador Malick Sow of the newly independent African nation of Chad was en route to Washington, D.C. to present his credentials to President John F. Kennedy and stopped for coffee at a diner on Maryland’s Route 40. The diner’s white female owner greeted him with the announcement that black people were not welcome there. When asked about the incident by Life magazine, she felt no need to apologize, explaining, “He looked like just an ordinary run-of-the-mill nigger to me. I couldn’t tell he was an ambassador.”

Sow’s experience was not unusual even for an ambassador. A string of similar incidents had already occurred along Route 40 as Jim Crow rolled out the unwelcome mat for African ambassadors traveling between New York and the nation’s capital. As the embarrassments accumulated, international observers saw duplicity in American claims of liberty and equality, as Cold War competition for influence in Africa made the continent a high priority for the U.S. and Soviet Union. Under the circumstances, the Kennedy administration was forced to offer an official apology to the many offended African ambassadors. Soon afterward, the president appointed a federal task force to enforce desegregation along Route 40.

But where international politics succeeded in securing an apology for the discrimination suffered by a handful of black African statesmen, more than 50 years later, black Americans still haven’t received a state apology for subjugation and discrimination at the hands of their own country. This is not because of some national stance against apologies. In 1988, for example, President Ronald Reagan signed legislation, complete with reparations, extending a formal apology for Japanese-American internment on American soil during World War II. In 1997, President Bill Clinton offered a presidential apology for the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study that the U.S. Public Health Service launched in the 1930s, to study the disease in hundreds of infected black men while falsely claiming to be providing them proper treatment. By contrast, congressional resolutions apologizing for slavery, passed separately by the House in 2008 and the Senate in 2009, were never reconciled or signed by the president. Far from constituting a state apology, they carry all the weight of resolutions passed to congratulate Super Bowl victors.

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s recent article in The Atlantic on “The Case for Reparations” has reignited the debate about the politics of American remorse and forgiveness for its treatment of black people. As Coates and many others have pointed out, reparations are not only—arguably not even mostly—about remuneration, but about unequivocally acknowledging the wrongs the state has inflicted on black people. They’re about apologizing.

In this context, Sow’s experience is instructive for what it reveals about international politics, state apologies, and racial discrimination. Social scientists who study these issues argue that apologizing is an essential component of reconciliation between an offending state and its victims. But apologizing on the state level entails real costs, just as it does on the individual level. In both cases, an apology signals a shift in the power dynamic between offender and victim in favor of the latter. Moreover, as Azuolas Bagdonas of Turkey’s Fatih University has written in a paper on the subject, state apologies “require changes in state identity. … [S]tates refuse to apologize when apologizing would significantly disrupt their self-narratives.” Given America’s narrative of freedom, self-determination, and success for all who work hard, apologizing for the intentional suppression of liberty forces the nation to confront the fundamental truth that we weren’t who we thought we were.

Given these costs, Kennedy apologized only because it would have been more costly not to, given U.S. hopes of preserving its position on a Cold War battleground. In other words, the apology to Sow and others came from a calculation of national interests. It did not arise from a sense of moral obligation—which would have mandated an apology to all black Americans, who had suffered far worse.

So what would it take for the U.S. to see an interest in apologizing for slavery?

***

The experience of several African countries is instructive here. Many West African nations have now acknowledged the role they played in the enslavement of black people in the Americas. Some have apologized on behalf of members of previous generations, who captured black men, women, and children from neighboring tribes and bartered their lives away to European slave traders. But they have offered or withheld apologies for different reasons.

Nigeria, Ghana, and Benin have taken different approaches to the question of apologizing for slavery. The resulting models reveal what interests might compel, or prevent, a U.S. apology for slavery, and how such an apology could get the buy-in of the American people.

If America were ever to apologize for slavery, Benin’s approach would be the most logical to follow.In Nigeria, some tribal leaders have taken the position that since slavery occurred long ago, the perpetrators of the crime own their sins and did not bequeath remorse to their descendants. In 2009, when Nigerian tribal chiefs sought a constitutional amendment formalizing their influential role in the country’s governance, the Civil Rights Congress of Nigeria, a human-rights organization, encouraged them to apologize for their role in the Atlantic slave trade. These efforts failed—in declining to apologize, one elder told a Nigerian newspaper that his people were “not apologetic about what happened in the past,” explaining that the slave trade was “very very legal” when his forebears were involved in it. Henry Bonsu, a broadcaster researching African apologies for slavery, told The Guardian at the time that among those he interviewed in Nigeria, “People aren’t milling around Lagos … moaning about why chiefs don’t apologise. They are more concerned about the everyday and why they still have bad governance.” Public opinion polls reflect this concern. The corruption watchdog Transparency International ranks Nigeria among the most corrupt countries worldwide; in 2013, 72 percent of Nigerian respondents to the NGO’s corruption-perception survey reported that the problem was getting much worse.

Ghana’s 2006 apology to African-Americans for slavery, by contrast, was largely a business decision. It formed part of a strategy to forge a stronger tourism economy, and closer ties to America, by making it easier for black Americans to visit, emigrate, own land, invest, and start businesses in Ghana. The initiative, called Project Joseph after the biblical character sold into slavery by his brothers, sought to portray Ghana to black Americans as Israel presents itself to the Jewish diaspora. Ghanaian tourism companies even offer “ceremony of apology” packages that black Americans can purchase to accompany visits to ancient slave castles. Explaining that healing and reconciliation would play a prominent role in the 50th-anniversary celebrations of the country’s independence in 2007, Emanuel Hagan of Ghana’s Ministry of Tourism and Diasporean Relations told a local news organization that the history of slavery was “something that we have to look straight in the face because it exists. So, we will want to say something went wrong, people made mistakes, but we are sorry for whatever happened.” And Ghana’s efforts worked. Around 10,000 black Americans visit the country every year, and around 3,000 now live in Ghana’s capital—triple the number estimated to have lived in the entire country in 2007.

Mathieu Kérékou, Benin’s former president, shown here with former French President Jacques Chirac, has been the most active among West African leaders in publicly apologizing for his nation’s culpability in the slave trade.Benin, too, apologized for its role in slavery, not only to African-Americans and the black diaspora, but also to the world. The apology coincided with then-President Mathieu Kérékou’s efforts to repair his, and Benin’s, international reputation after a series of corruption scandals that imperiled the country’s access to foreign aid money. In 1999, Kérékou began a global apology tour, including multiple stops in America. He and members of his government appealed to the religious conception of forgiveness to frame the act of reconciliation as a divine pursuit that would make whole the relationship between offending states and the victims’ offspring. “We cry forgiveness and reconciliation,” said Luc Gnacadja, Benin’s minister of environment and housing, on a visit to Virginia in 2000. “The slave trade is a shame, and we do repent for it.” Kérékou didn’t stop there. Benin also convened the Leaders’ Conference on Reconciliation and Development, where speakers from around the world, including two American congressmen, apologized for slavery. Benin’s initiative has been the most cited and revered state apology for slavery to date. And though the government’s motivation for its act of contrition was political, the spiritual terms in which the state delivered its apology lend it an element of sincerity that can’t be matched by other models.

***

If America were ever to apologize for slavery, Benin’s approach would be the most logical to follow. Not only does the model appeal to America’s deeply ingrained religious sensibilities, but it would cost taxpayers virtually nothing. As a result, such an endeavor might prove personally rewarding for citizens and politically palatable because it wouldn’t come across as a race-based entitlement. Most importantly, it would be a confession of wrong in service to a higher belief, and thus devoid of the normal interpersonal implications that attend apologies. Research has shown, as psychology professor Cindi May wrote in Scientific American, that “those who refuse to express remorse maintain a greater sense of control and feel better about themselves than those who take no action after making a mistake.”

Yet embracing the Benin method would require a political impetus for an apology to occur at all. A recent YouGov poll shows that 54 percent of Americans do not support a formal government apology for slavery, and another 18 percent are unsure. Further, 68 percent do not support reparations payments to descendants of slaves, and 57 percent don’t even support reparations in the form of education or job-training. For many Americans, like many Nigerians, the country is facing more pressing concerns than the ills of slavery or racism. Besides, as some thinking goes, voting in a black president twice must count for something.

Slavery itself did not end because of U.S. moral obligation or Lincoln’s sense of guilt, but because a large swath of the country felt it was in the nation’s strategic, and eventually military, interest to emancipate black people. It is not a coincidence that America’s chief European peers and rivals abolished slavery decades before the Civil War. Likewise, even Western nations’ prohibition on international slave-trading was a product of political and economic calculus, not born of moral imperative.

Segregation was not outlawed because the U.S. suddenly felt black people were equals, but because integration was in the national interest.Similarly, segregation was not outlawed because the U.S. suddenly felt black people were equals, but because integration was in the national interest. During World War II, Germany dropped leaflets on black American troops reminding them that they were fighting for a country that subjugated them. Japan established “Negro propaganda operations” that sought to damage America’s international reputation, destabilize the U.S. by deepening its racial divide, and dissuade black soldiers and sailors from fighting in World War II. The Soviet Union utilized racial propaganda during the Cold War; for example, the Russian newspaper Trud circulated a story of a Louisiana lynching where “a crowd of white men tortured a negro war veteran … tore his arms out and set fire to his body,” and “the murderers, even though they are identified, remain unpunished.” As a 1961 issue of the Afro-American noted: “As long as any type of racial discrimination remains in the United States, the world will know about it, for, this senseless and indefensible practice is superb fodder for anti-West propaganda mills.” Over time and in combination, these trends spurred America into action and led to a decade of civil-rights legislation and Supreme Court rulings that served America’s national interests in repairing its image as a nation of liberty and justice for all.

In 1961, after Kennedy apologized, a couple of black newspaper reporters decided to test the desegregation order along Route 40 and dressed as African ambassadors to see if they’d be accepted in the restaurants there. With some consternation from frustrated owners, they were served at each stop they made. However, they were disconcerted to learn that local black college students had been refused service as recently as the night before the reporters’ experiment.

The change, in other words, had only reached as far as the international politics and national interest required. Absent these catalysts for an American apology for slavery, even the power of spiritual reckoning will be insufficient to summon the nation to action.

No, college isn’t the answer. Reparations are.

Published Date : 2014-08-06 12:39:23

By Tressie McMillan Cottom

Education is crucial, but it’s not nearly enough. (Photo by Edmund D. Fountain for The Washington Post)

In case you’ve been living under a rock, Ta-Nehisi Coates has written a thing at The Atlantic making the case for reparations.

For some, reparations to African Americans for enslavement and state-sanctioned apartheid (more benignly known as “Jim Crow”) is a shocking case to make. I am a sociologist whose training has been, in part, with economists like Sandy Darity at Duke University and Darrick Hamilton at The New School. For Darity, Hamilton, and many other serious scholars of race, history, and inequality, the matter of reparations is anything but novel or shocking. Neither is it hyperbolic. There are real programs, with feasibility studies and implementation suggestions, and they move far beyond Coates’ call for a spiritual reckoning of the body politic. If you have never heard of them, that is likely by design. Few powerful persons or institutions have ever been willing to seriously put a reparations program before the American people.

But I wager that you have heard a lot about how education and opportunity can be, through hard work and moral fortitude, the path to greater equality for African Americans. In many ways, when the formerly enslaved asked first for a national program to redress the forced, free labor that made the United States the nation we know it to be, they were given schooling instead of redress; opportunity instead of compensation. It is an attitude that persists in our policy and our cultural lexicon. When the demand is for justice, we are most likely to respond with an appeal, instead, to fairness. And in no institution is that more clearly evident than education. There’s just one problem: It’s not good enough.

When I teach my inequality course to undergraduates, I spend a lot of time on periods of wealth creation in U.S. history and how fundamental enslaved labor was to its distribution. Even my econ majors tend to walk away saying there’s really no redress for inequality that does not begin and end with wealth redistribution. The issue is almost never if reparations is a solution but only if it’s a solution white folks can live with. So, there’s that.

I like Coates’ addendum on his blog. He gives some love to the academics and teachers who slog through survey courses that likely end with many of the conclusions drawn by my students: if we do not use power to redistribute capital there is no racial justice or equality. I like it when teachers get some love.

I like it because I identify as a teacher and also because I’m a bit of an education zealot. I’ve talked about how fundamental public libraries and teachers and those annual scholastic book ordering drives were to my childhood. Because education seems to have worked out fairly well for me and because I am not shy about being a fan of librarians on social media, people are often surprised by my explicit political position that education is not and should not be a social policy solution to inequality. I do not think that higher education “access” is that laudable of a goal. For almost twenty years now there has been a hyper-focus on increasing college “access.” In that time we have produced thousands of University of Phoenixes and exactly zero Harvards. Access is not a panacea.

I am mostly uninterested in political rhetoric about education being the “new” civil rights movement. The old civil rights movement waged a battle for citizenship through school legislation because that was the nearest available political tool. The landmark civil rights case, Brown versus the Board of Education, was initially conceived as a means for justice, not its end. I also think that narrowly focusing on college completion is not a good thing. The job market is volatile for African Americans in the best of times and these are not the best of times. During difficult economic cycles, black workers and students should benefit from the flexibility of moving in and out of college as their life circumstances allow. Without that flexibility, every educational moment becomes a zero sum decision: “If I leave school this semester to take that job or care for a family member, I probably will never be able to return.” We’re poorer as individuals and groups when people least likely to get a call back because of a “black” name or negative credit check or criminal conviction have to make a decision to take a job or opt out of college forever. In short, I’m a heretic about almost every fundamental populist education belief we’ve got.

As the world was waiting for Coates’ case for reparations, Janelle Jones and John Schmitt at the Center for Economic Policy Research were releasing a policy paper on black college graduates and the labor market. In “A College Degree is No Guarantee”, Jones and Schmitt examine the labor market conditions for black college degree holders pre and post Great Recession.

Their findings are only a surprise to those who ain’t living it.

This is not what justice looks like. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill, File)

Jones and Schmitt essentially put forth a forensic accounting of every knee-jerk ideological inequality policy prescription that too often asks of education what education simply cannot do.

When you start talking about poverty and race, inevitably most folks fall back on the usual tropes: blacks should care more about school, go to college, increase their graduation rates, choose the right majors.

Jones and Schmitt’s report looks at black folks who have done exactly that, all of it. They cared enough about school to graduate, go to college, complete a four-year degree and stay in step with their non-black age cohort members (they focus on graduates ages 22-27). A few key findings:

– In 2013 (the most recent full year of data available), 12.4 percent of black college graduates between the ages of 22 and 27 were unemployed. For all college graduates in the same age range, the unemployment rate was 5.6 percent.

– Between 2007 (immediately before the Great Recession) and 2013, the unemployment rate for black recent college graduates nearly tripled (up 7.8 percentage points from 4.6 percent in 2007).

– In 2013, more than half (55.9 percent) of employed black recent college graduates were “underemployed” –defined as working in an occupation that typically does not require a four-year college degree. Even before the Great Recession, almost half of black recent graduates were underemployed (45.0 percent in 2007).

– While some college graduates are finding financial success in the labor market in jobs that don’t typically require a college degree, a growing share have had no such luck. Instead, they are working in jobs that don’t require a four-year degree and don’t pay more than $25,000; this is especially true for young black graduates.

– Black recent college graduates in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors have fared somewhat better, but still suffer from high unemployment and underemployment rates. For example, for the years 2010 to 2012, among black recent graduates with degrees in engineering, the average unemployment rate was 10 percent and the underemployment rate was 32 percent.

No matter what black college grads do, as a group they are the most sensitive to every negative macro labor market trend. (The report has comparative data.) They are more likely to be unemployed, underemployed, and hold low quality jobs even when they have STEM degrees. I point out that last bit because apparently STEM will save us all or something.

How can I revere education as I do and refuse to accept it as the gospel that will save us from persistent, intractable inequality?Actually, it is precisely because I revere education—formal and informal—that I refuse to sell it as a cure for all that ails us.Degrees cannot fix the cumulative effect of structural racism. In fact, over five decades of social science research shows that education reproduces inequality. At every level of schooling, classrooms, schools, and districts reward wealth and privilege. That does not end at college admissions, which is when all that cumulative disadvantage may be its most acute. Going to college not only requires know how that changes from institution to institution and year to year, but it also requires capital. There’s the money to take standardized tests and mail applications and make tuition deposits. But there’s also the money that levels differences in individual ability. An unimpressive wealthy student can pay for test prep, admissions coaches, and campus visits that increases one’s shot at going to the most selective college possible. If education reinforces the salience of money to opportunity, it is money and only money that can make educational “opportunity” a vehicle for justice.

Reparations can do what education cannot do.

When we allow education to be sold as a fix for wealth inequality, we set a public good up to fail and black folks who do everything “right” to take the blame when it goes “wrong.”

Coates has a written a thing about reparations. Ostensibly, it is about the pattern of systematic extraction of black labor, wealth and income to the benefit of institutions that operate to their exclusion. It is a story with a history but one that is not a relic of history. Conservatives may be guilty of rejecting outright their basic faith in fair pay for labor when the issue is labor done by brown people. But white liberals are just as disingenuous when they rhetorically move reparations back in time as redress for slavery when there are countless modern cases of state-sanctioned racist oppression to make the case for reparations.

Like housing and banking, education is a modern debate that sounds like it is a 19^th century one. Reparations are about slavery but also about Jim Crow and white violence’s effect on intellectual property and islands of segregated want in a land of plenty. There remains an entire generation of African Americans alive and well who were legally consigned to segregated schools, neighborhoods, and occupations. The black college graduates with weaker starting positions in the labor market are the children and grandchildren of that generation. No matter how much we might believe in the great gospel of education, it is an opportunity vehicle that works best when coupled with justice and not confused for justice.

Tressie McMillan Cottom is a sociologist and writer. She can be found at www.tressiemc.com.

Reparations Address Delivered By Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, Chairman Of The Caricom Reparations Commission

Published Date : 2014-08-02 12:25:25

HOUSE OF COMMONS, PARLIAMENT OF GREAT BRITAIN    

THURSDAY, JULY 16, 2014

Madam Chair, the distinguished member of Parliament for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, Diane Abbott, other distinguished members of the House of Lords, and House of Commons, Excellencies of the Diplomatic Corp, colleagues at the head table, Ladies and Gentlemen.

I speak this evening, in this honourable chamber of the House of Commons, as Chairman of the Caricom Commission on Reparations. My colleagues of the Commission are tasked with the preparation and presentation of the evidentiary basis for a contemporary truth: that the Government of Great Britain, and other European states that were the beneficiaries of enrichment from the enslavement of African peoples, the genocide of indigenous communities, and the deceptive breach of contract and trust in respect of Indians and other Asians brought to the plantations under indenture, have a case to answer in respect of reparatory justice.

The case of genocide is not only in respect of our decimated native community. It is also important to recognize the genocidal aspect of chattel slavery in the Caribbean.

British slave ships brought 5.5 million enslaved Africans into their Caribbean colonies over 180 years.

When slavery was abolished in 1838 they were just 800,000 persons remaining. That is, a retention/survival rate of 15%.

The regime of enslavement was crafted by policies and attitudes that were clearly genocidal.

Jamaica received 1.5 million Africans. Only 300,000 remained at Emancipation (20%).

Barbados received 600,000 Africans. Only 83,000 remained at Emancipation (14%).

This case is for the Caricom governments to present on behalf of its citizens. I am sure that in its presentation there will be due regard for the principles of diplomacy and development cooperation – for which they have long distinguished themselves. This process will bring honour and dignity to the people of the Caribbean as well as to the people of Great Britain and Europe.

Caricom governments, like the government of Great Britain, represent nations that are independent and equal. As such, they should proceed on the basis of their legitimate equality, without fear of retribution, in the best interest of humanity, and for a better future for us all.

I am honoured to be asked to speak in this historic parliament of the people of Great Britain. Like you I am aware that this Parliament prepared the official political basis of the crimes that defined the colonial past. It is here, in this House, that the evil system of slavery, and genocide, were established. This House passed laws, framed fiscal policies, and enforced the crimes that have produced harmful legacies and persistent suffering now in need of repair.

This House also made emancipation from slavery and independence from colonialism an empowering reality. It is in here, we now imagine, that laws for reparatory justice can be conceptualized and implemented. It is in here, we believe, that the terrible wrongs of the past can be corrected, and humanity finally and truthfully liberated from the shame and guilt that have followed these historical crimes.

We must believe in the corrective power of this Parliament to respond positively to this present challenge, and in the process free itself from the bondage of its own sins and crimes. Without this belief our journey here this evening would be lacking integrity, and without a doubt, would be a useless exercise.

But I speak in this honourable House this evening, not only as chairman of a rightfully constituted commission that is peopled by some of our finest Caribbean citizens, and who have been selected by our distinguished Presidents and Prime Ministers, but as a Caribbean person with an affinity for this country. I was raised and educated here. I came from the Caribbean to this country as a child; I grew to maturity here; and was educated here in a fine university that has distinguished itself in the Liberal-Progressive pedagogy of the nation.

Great Britain, therefore, is my second home and I care for it as I care for my first home, the Great Caribbean. I wish for Great Britain, as I do for the Great Caribbean, peace and prosperity. I wish that their shared past, painful though it has been, will be transformed into a moral force of mutual respect and development cooperation.

It is for these reasons that I have joined the Caribbean and global movement for reparatory justice. I believe we can settle this case within the context of diplomatic initiatives that are consistent with our status as equal nations.

The crimes committed against the indigenous, African, and Asian peoples of the Caribbean are well documented. We know of the 250 years of slave trading, chattel slavery, and the following 100 years of colonial oppression.

Slavery was ended in 1838, only to be replaced by a century of racial apartheid, including the denigration of Asian people. Indigenous genocide, African chattel slavery and genocide, and Asian contract slavery, were three acts of a single play – a single process by which the British state forcefully extracted wealth from the Caribbean resulting in its persistent, endemic poverty.

I wish to comment, as a result, on the 1833 Act of Emancipation, and how this august Parliament betrayed the enslaved people of the Caribbean by forcing them to pay more than 50% of the cost of their own emancipation. This is an aspect of the history long hidden from public view.

We know, for example, that this Parliament in 1833 determined that the 800,000 enslaved people in the Caribbean were worth, as chattel property, £47 million. This was their assessed market value.

We know that this Parliament determined that all slave owners should receive just and fair compensation for the official taking away of their property.

We know that this Parliament provided the sum of £20 million in grants to the slave owners as fair compensation for the loss of their human chattel.

And we know that this Parliament determined that the enslaved people would receive none of this compensation. The argument made in this House was that ‘property’ cannot receive property compensation. This Parliament, in its emancipation Act, upheld the law that black people were not human, but property.

What this Parliament has hid from the world is that it also determined that the remaining £27 million would be paid by the enslaved people to their enslavers, by means of a 4 year period of free labour called the Apprenticeship.

This period of additional free labour by the emancipated represented the enforced extraction of £27 million by the state. It was a cruel and shameful method of legislating Emancipation by forcing the enslaved to pay more than 50% of the financial cost of their own freedom. The £20 million paid the enslavers by this Parliament was less than the £27 million paid by the enslaved to the enslavers as dictated by this House.

I wish now to engage the argument of the British Government that the slavery and other colonial crimes were ‘legal’, and that they took place ‘a long time ago’, and are beyond the border of adjudication.

Allow me, madam Chair, to breach protocol and to interject myself into the discourse, in order to demonstrate how very contemporary and current this exploitation of the Caribbean people is and has been.

Upstairs this chamber sits the Earl of Harewood. He is an honourable member of the House of Lords. But does Lord Harewood know that my grandfather after Independence in Barbados in 1966 labored on this sugar plantation, as did his father and forefathers, going back to the days of slavery? Does the goodly Lord know that as a child I took lunch for my grandfather into the canefields of his sugar plantation? Lord Harewood, and my family, go back a long way, from slavery right into the present.

Take also the very aristocratic and very distinguished Cumberbatch family. It has now produced the brilliant young actor, Benedict Cumberbatch [who I would love to meet one day]. Benedict’s grandfather owned the estate on which my beloved great grandmother worked all her adult life. They enslaved my family on their Cleland plantation in the parish of St. Andrew. My great grandmother, who helped to raise me, and who we all called ‘mammy’, carried the name Adriana Cumberbatch. The actor and academic are joined therefore by a common past and present, and maybe, common blood!

My case is but one of ten thousand such cases. Everywhere across the Caribbean the presence of our enslavers can be identified in our daily domestic lives. This history is not remote. It is alive and pressing upon our daily affairs.

And what have our people and governments been doing with respect to this legacy since we have gained national independence? The truth is, the people of the Caribbean have been very courageous in their effort at self-development and self-help in respect of this terrible history and enduring legacy.

Our citizens have faced this past head on, and have established a vibrant culture of community self-help and sustainable regional development mobilization. We are not beggars! We are not subservient! We do not want charity and handouts! We want justice! Reparatory justice!

When all is said and done, our governments these past 50 years have been cleaning up the mess left behind by Britain’s colonial legacy. Our finest Presidents and Prime Ministers have been devising projects to clean up the awful mess inherited from slavery and colonization. They must be commended for this effort, but the fact is, this legacy of rubble and ruin, persistent poverty, and racialised relations and reasoning, that continues to cripple our best efforts, has been daunting.

Britain, and its Parliament, cannot morally and legally turn their back upon this past, and walk away from the mess they have left behind. This Parliament has to return to the scene of its crimes, and participate as a legitimate parliament, as a legal parliament, in the healing and rehabilitation of the Caribbean.

We cannot, and should not, be asked to do this by ourselves. We have done our part. This Parliament must now return, and do its part, within the context of reparatory justice, and within the framework of development cooperation.

I wish to give two examples of how this reparatory justice can work:

(1) Jamaica, Britain’s largest slave colony, was left with 80% black functional illiteracy at Independence in 1962. From this circumstance the great and courageous Jamaican nation has struggled with development and poverty alleviation. The deep crisis remains. This Parliament owes the people of Jamaica an educational and human resource investment initiative.

(2) Barbados, Britain’s first slave society, is now called the amputation capitol of the world. It is here that the stress profile of slavery and racial apartheid; dietary disaster and psychological trauma; and the addiction to the consumption of sugar and salt, have reached the highest peak. The country is now host to the world’s most virulent diabetes and hypertension epidemic. This Parliament owes the people of Barbados an education and health initiative.

It is the same for all our countries; the Bahamas, the Leewards, the Windwards, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Belize, and beyond.

The Caricom Ten Point Plan for Reparatory Justice addresses these development issues that are central to the case Britain has to answer.

It is an invitation to Great Britain to demonstrate leadership within the legal, moral, and diplomatic culture of the world, within the Commonwealth, and within its relations the Caribbean.

There can be no escaping the importance of this exchange of views about the matter before this honourable chamber tonight.

It took all of the 19th century to uproot slavery from the Caribbean; from Haiti in 1804 to the Spanish sub-region in the 1880s. It took another 100 years to create citizenship, nationhood, and democracy across the Caribbean as a development framework. We have helped ourselves.

This 21st century will be the century of global reparatory justice. Citizens are now, for the first time since they were driven into retreat by colonialism, able to stand up for reparatory justice without fear. Their claim, their just claim for reparations, will not go away. Rather, like the waves upon our beautiful shores, they will keep coming until reparatory justice is attained.

Madam Chair, we call upon you, and all members of this House, to rise to this challenge and to assist Great Britain to be truly worthy of the title “Great”. I urge you to do the right thing, in the right way. There is no other right time, other than right now, in our time. There is so much to gain from your leadership. The Caribbean is counting on you.

In 1823, the honourable Thomas Buxton, M.P. for Weymouth and Melcombe Regis, presented a bill to this House calling for an Emancipation Act with compensation for the enslaved people. His bill and vision were defeated. Instead, ten years later, an emancipation bill was passed, not with compensation for the enslaved, but with handsome and generous compensation for enslavers. Some 40% of the national expenditure of the country was handed over to slave-owners as reparations.

The enslaved people of the Caribbean got nothing. Indeed, they were then called upon by the said Emancipation Act to give £27 million in free labour to their enslavers. The injustice and the cruelty of that Emancipation Act, remain today like a fish bone stuck in our throats.

We urge you, madam Chair, and other members of this Parliament, to rise up and bring the Buxton vision to life. He was a noble warrior for reparatory justice; his spirit can return to this House, in both places, and the 21st century will be ours to forge a new moral order for our collective wellbeing.

On behalf of the Caricom Reparations Commission, all my colleagues across the Caribbean who have worked with our governments in order to bring this case before you, I ask that you respond with humility and openness when your government receives an invitation to meet with our governments in summit in order to discuss this matter.

May the values and the spirit of development cooperation and mutual respect guide us all.

Thank you madam Chair.

(Standing Ovation)

PASCF Statement on Reparations Owed

Published Date : 2014-08-02 01:39:49

 

Revisiting Reparations

Published Date : 2014-07-14 07:39:20

Slaves on a sugar plantation in the West Indies, watched by a white supervisor with a whip. (Illustration via Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

It’s time for a Marshall Plan for black Americans.

BY Salim Muwakkil

Slavery’s damaging legacy continues to endure because strategies for redress have been limited by the conventional wisdom of the time and white resistance to compensatory programs.

Despite this nation’s adamant refusal to address the damaging legacy of 250 years of slavery and another 100 years of Jim Crow apartheid, the issue of reparations has made a decided comeback in American discourse.

The latest jolt of revival began in the Caribbean. On March 10, the 15-nation Caribbean Community (CARICOM) approved a 10-point plan to demand “reparatory justice for … the victims of Crimes Against Humanity in the forms of genocide, slavery, slave trading and racial apartheid from former European colonizers.” According to attorney Martyn Day, of Leigh Day, the British human rights legal firm that represents CARICOM, the firm will file a class-action suit in the International Court of Justice if European officials fail to take the plan seriously.

This surprisingly audacious Caribbean demand was followed by an April rally in Chicago intended to rekindle the enthusiasm that 13 years ago fueled a reparations bandwagon that was ultimately knocked off course by the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

These efforts seek to make the case for reparative justice and compensation based on the horrific crimes of slavery, its legacy of racial oppression and social exclusion, and the unjust enrichment of whites from the structural misdistribution of resources. Slavery, say CARICOM and its fellow travelers in the United States, casts a long shadow.

But that shadow is getting harder to discern for slavery’s beneficiaries. Many Americans now interpret those sordid annals of slavery and Jim Crow as a narrative of triumph. In their minds, the Civil Rights Movement has expunged America of its original sin. It’s time to move on. After all, we’ve got a black president.

Then, in May, Ta-Nehisi Coates flipped the script. In a blockbuster Atlantic cover story, Coates made a case for reparations that focused not on slavery, but on the discriminatory federal programs that denied black Americans access to mortgages and other federal benefits, focusing on people still alive who can personally bear witness to the discrimination they faced.

Coates, whom I also featured in my last column, has emerged as one of the most insightful writers on race in mainstream journalism. His Atlantic story transformed the discussion from an assessment of racial attitudes into a detailed accounting of how biased policies affected the distribution of wealth and poverty. In doing so, he relocates the injury from 19th-century slavery and KKK-style oppression to 21st-century education and housing discrimination.

Many thinkers have weighed in on Coates’ piece; however, even those who praise his research doubt that this nation can muster the national will for such an effort. But Coates argues that the need for a massive national investment is not negated by its current political implausibility.

He’s right. Slavery’s damaging legacy continues to endure because strategies for redress have been limited by the conventional wisdom of the time and white resistance to compensatory programs. But if we are to make real progress in reducing the nation’s growing racial disparities, we have to devise more comprehensive policies. A strategy that has been consistently proposed by experts and activists is a domestic program akin to the Marshall Plan the United States enacted to bring Europe back from WWII. This plan would focus considerable resources on education, housing, job training, business development, etc., for a community chronically underserved.

The notion of reparations provides a historical justification for the massive investment of resources necessary to make a real change. Coates’ essay helps clarify that rationale and thus chips away at the conventional wisdom blocking compensatory policies.

What’s more, the momentum of his logic can further the realization that slavery’s unaddressed legacy cripples this entire nation’s potential. The statistical fact that one in three black men in the United States will be incarcerated in their lifetimes hobbles our economic potential and robs our future. Right now, a number of scavenger industries, like private prisons, are recouping the costs. But that’s a stopgap solution, as the prison-industrial complex is facing diminishing returns from the corrosive social consequences of our culture of criminalization. Soon, the costs of inattention will be too great to ignore.

Salim Muwakkil is a senior editor of In These Times, where he has worked since 1983. He is the host of “The Salim Muwakkil” show on WVON, Chicago’s historic black radio station, and he wrote the text for the book HAROLD: Photographs from the Harold Washington Years.

Brazil's 'Quilombo' Movement May Be The World's Largest Slavery Reparations Program

Published Date : 2014-07-11 01:07:31

By Roque Planas

Luiz Pinto, who has been fighting eviction for decades, at home with his dog. (Carolina Ramirez/The Huffington Post)

When Luiz Pinto was growing up, his parents wouldn’t let the family talk about slavery. The issue raised ugly memories.

Pinto’s grandmother was born into slavery. She threw herself into a river before Pinto was born, taking her own life after the son of a wealthy, white landowner raped her. The subjects of slavery and racism became taboo in the Pinto household, a sprawling set of orange brick homes perched on a hilltop where Rio de Janeiro’s famed statue of Christ the Redeemer is visible in the distance through the trees.

“I only knew her from photographs,” says Pinto, a 72-year-old samba musician.

These days, Brazil’s legacy of slavery takes up much of Pinto’s time. He travels across the state of Rio de Janeiro and back and forth to the capital in Brasília, more than 700 miles away, to lobby for the land rights of people who live in communities said to be founded by runaway slaves. Such communities are known in Portuguese as “quilombos.” According to Brazilian law, residents of quilombos have a constitutional right to land settled by their ancestors — and that right, though rarely fulfilled, is quietly revolutionizing the country’s race relations.

In the past year, as all eyes turned toward Brazil in anticipation of the World Cup, international media offered ample coverage of the country’s staggering inequality. Reports have highlighted the stark contrast between Brazil’s hardscrabble slums and its glittering soccer stadiums. What has received less attention is the civil rights movement gradually gaining momentum throughout the country.

Brazil imported more slaves from Africa between the 16th and 19th centuries than any other country in the Americas. In 1889, it became the last nation in the Western Hemisphere to outlaw the institution. Today, more people of African descent live in Brazil than in any country in the world besides Nigeria. People of color make up 51 percent of Brazil’s population, according to the most recent census.

By and large, black Brazilians live in the worst housing and attend the poorest schools. They work the lowest-paid jobs, and they disproportionately fill the jail cells of the world’s fourth largest prison system. This lopsided state of affairs, Afro-Brazilian intellectuals and the country’s social scientists largely agree, is a result of racial discrimination with roots in the country’s history of slavery.

Brazil has never experienced anything akin to the U.S. civil rights movement or South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle. But the quilombo movement, while still in its infancy, is challenging Brazil’s deeply ingrained racial inequality. Ratified in 1988 after a two-decade-long military dictatorship, Brazil’s constitution states that residents of quilombos are entitled to a permanent, non-transferable title to the land they occupy — something analogous to the United States’ Native American reservations, minus the self-government.

Now, more than 1 million black Brazilians are calling upon the government to honor their constitutional right to land. Among them are Luiz Pinto and his family, who have fended off decades of eviction attempts and managed to remain ensconced in their quilombo, known as Sacopã, in a neighborhood gentrified long ago by wealthier, whiter Brazilians.

The situation in Brazil stands in stark contrast to that of the United States, where, as the author Ta-Nehisi Coates pointed out in a widely read cover story for The Atlantic this May, Congress has repeatedly refused to pass a bill calling for a simple public study on the impact reparations would have on the descendants of slaves. The idea that the U.S. government would even consider handing thousands of tracts of land to black communities is unthinkable.

Few Brazilian conservatives find the idea appealing, either. Many of them have scorned the quilombo movement as an affront to property rights and have tried to overturn the law in court. And despite drafting the quilombo law in the first place, the Brazilian government has been so slow to hand over land titles to the communities in question that many applicants wonder if they’ll ever receive them.

Though they face an uncertain future, Brazil’s quilombos nevertheless contain the seeds of what may well become the most ambitious slavery reparations program ever attempted.

Luiz Pinto at home in quilombo Sacopã. (Carolina Ramirez/The Huffington Post)

Palm trees and towering condominiums flank the cobblestone road that leads to quilombo Sacopã. New Kias and Volkswagens line the street, while gated parking lots protect more valuable SUVs. Virtually none of the residents of this section of Rio de Janeiro’s Lagoa neighborhood, with the exception of the Pinto family, are black.

There was a time when only black people lived on the forested hillsides of Sacopã, huddled together in makeshift houses of mud and bamboo. Pinto’s grandparents traveled to the city by river with roughly 150 other ex-slaves in the late 19th century, he says, and settled among the local indigenous people, far away from the bustling city center to the north or the middle-class residential areas that would later envelop them.

“The quilombos became favelas,” Pinto says, referring to the slums that surround Rio and many other major Brazilian cities.

Developers razed much of Sacopã in the 1970s, when Rio’s growing middle and upper classes pushed into the neighborhood and sent land values skyrocketing. Local authorities expelled or relocated virtually all the black residents, most of whom were considered squatters, from Sacopã’s hillsides, clearing the way for high-rise condominiums populated by wealthier, paler-skinned Brazilians.

Pinto’s nephew, José Claudio, now 50, was 12 years old the first time the authorities visited quilombo Sacopã and threatened to kick the family out because they couldn’t prove ownership of the land. Two military police trucks rolled into the driveway. The cops said the family’s houses would be demolished.

A lucky connection allowed the Pinto family to escape eviction. It happened that the family’s lawyer was married to a high-ranking military officer. In the days of Brazil’s military dictatorship, which lasted from 1964 to 1985, the order of a general carried far more weight than a stack of legal documents.

“I’ll never forget it,” José Claudio told The Huffington Post. “The subtenente, or whoever was in charge of the troops, saluted him and he said: ‘No one’s getting kicked out of here.’ That was our first victory.”

The security afforded by the family’s loose connection to the general lasted only as long as the military dictatorship itself. In 1986, a year after Brazil’s return to democracy, the cops came back to Sacopã, and this time they stayed. For one year, local authorities stationed two round-the-clock policemen outside Sacopã and locked the kitchen shut to keep the Pinto family from hosting parties or playing live music.

“They chained us up here,” José Claudio said, rattling a rusted lock that still dangles from the kitchen window. “We couldn’t do anything.”

Today, visitors to the neighborhood might not even notice the Pinto family’s cluster of houses, hidden behind a towering condo, if not for the sign in the driveway declaring the community’s constitutionally protected status as a quilombo.

The property received quilombo certification in 2004 after undergoing a lengthy application process with the federal government. Instead of trying to kick them out, the authorities now guarantee the group’s right to stay while the government carries out the work of demarcating the land. Still, as is the case with the vast majority of Brazil’s quilombos, a complicated bureaucratic system has prevented the Pintos from receiving the title to their land.

“Nothing happens,” Pinto says. “The headway we’ve made for quilombo land rights in this country is practically nil.”

Without a land title, the Pintos live in a state of limbo, the threat of eviction looming constantly.

José Claudio Pinto holds the lock that was once used to keep the windows of quilombo Sacopã’s kitchen shut. (Carolina Ramirez/The Huffington Post)

Most Brazilians familiar with the term “quilombo” associate it with the country’s past rather than its present. The word has been in use for hundreds of years, dating back to the colonial period — roughly the sixteenth century through 1825 — when runaway slave settlements dotted the Brazilian countryside. The most famous of those settlements, Palmares, grew to more than 15,000 inhabitants and lasted nearly a century before the Portuguese destroyed it in 1694.

Though the term faded from use during the early 20th century, by the 1950s, advocates trying to lend momentum to a nascent black Brazilian civil rights effort began to resurrect it.

The symbolic power of the quilombo appealed to former Congresswoman Benedita da Silva. In 1986, after Brazil’s military dictatorship ended, da Silva was one of 11 Afro-Brazilians among the 594 members of Congress elected to draw up the country’s new founding document. She managed to convince a body of lawmakers composed largely of light-skinned men to lay the framework for a modern-day, Brazilian version of “40 acres and a mule.”

Under da Silva’s law, quilombo members own their land outright. They pay no rent and no one, no matter how rich, can legally kick them out (with the exception of the federal government, which is currently fighting eminent domain battles in the courts with at least two certified quilombos, whose respective claims overlap a Navy base and a space station).

The key to da Silva’s success was the law’s innocuous phrasing. It specifies that descendants of residents of the quilombos have a right to a permanent title to the land they occupy. But the term “quilombo” was left legally undefined for years, implying that it would be necessary for any such community to be able to trace its direct lineage to a runaway slave settlement. Most of the assembly members who voted for da Silva’s article likely viewed it as a symbolic gesture that would affect only a handful of communities.

It didn’t work out that way. In 2003, the left-wing government of President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva expanded the legal definition of the term “quilombo,” issuing a presidential decree that categorized quilombo descendants as an ethnicity. Under Brazilian law, people have the right to define their own ethnicity for the purposes of social policy. With Lula’s new rule, virtually any black community could become certified as a quilombo if a majority of its residents decided to.

When Lula’s decree was issued in 2003, there were 29 recognized quilombos in Brazil. As of 2013, that number had swelled to more than 2,400, comprising more than 1 million people, with hundreds more communities applying that have yet to be recognized.

The government has certified quilombos in all but two of Brazil’s 26 states, from the tropical north to the industrialized south. There are quilombos that encompass thousands of people and quilombos that consist of just a few extended families. There are quilombos in the cities, quilombos along the countryside, quilombos on islands and quilombos in the rainforest. The land claimed by these communities totals about 4.4 million acres, according to the Brazilian federal government — an area roughly the size of New Jersey.

Asked if she knew her proposal would be applied so extensively, da Silva said that was always her intention.

“Of course — that’s what we were working for,” da Silva told HuffPost. “[The article] wasn’t born just because I was at the Constitutional Assembly. It was born because there existed and continues to exist a black movement that includes academics, includes quilombolas, the universities — all dedicated to validating black people’s land rights.”

Yet the Brazilian government has shown little sign that it will deliver the land titles promised by the constitution any time soon. Itamar Rangel of the National Institute for Colonization and Land Reform, the federal agency that carries out quilombo land titling, says the constant delays owe to the necessity of negotiating a settlement and indemnification with property holders. “Brazilian law defends the property rights of any citizen,” Rangel told HuffPost. “Carrying out this policy won’t be cheap.”

As of this year, only 217 quilombos have received land titles. The Brazilian government issued only three land titles in 2013, and another three the year before that — the lowest annual number since 2004.

“The quilombo movement is poorly prepared,” José Arruti, an anthropologist at the State University of Campinas who studies quilombos, told HuffPost. “Their communities began to organize and to understand the political game a very short time ago.”

A sign in at the entrance to Sacopã announces the community’s quilombo status. (Carolina Ramirez/The Huffington Post)

A guitarist and singer with several records under his belt and a following in Rio, Pinto inherited his vocation from his parents. His father played the cavaquinho, a ukulele variation often used in samba, Brazil’s national music, which evolved out of rhythms brought to the country by African slaves. The songs his mother sang as she hung the laundry to dry remain etched in Pinto’s head.

“She was a domestic artist,” Pinto said, smiling as he recalled a tune his mother wrote about the U.S. moon landing in 1969. “I’ve got a lot of her songs in my repertoire that I play at my shows. She didn’t have the courage to record.”

Music has helped Pinto’s land fight in more ways than one. To receive certification as a quilombo, every community must pass through a multi-step process involving three state agencies and a government-commissioned study conducted by social scientists, who document the cultural and historical characteristics that make for a quilombo-specific ethnicity. For the researchers who filed Sacopã’s anthropological report in 2007, one of those characteristics was its music.

“It’s given me a lot of strength in this struggle,” said Pinto. “Being onstage, you’re being heard by thousands of people, so you can explain your situation.”

The heart of the Pintos’ quilombo is a covered space between the families’ houses, nestled among papaya and palm trees. Here adults gather, children play and food is served on red picnic tables bearing the logo for Itapaiva, a local beer. Some of the most legendary names in Brazilian music — Zeca Pagodinha and Beth Carvalho among them — have performed at the monthly parties Sacopã once hosted.

In recent years, though, the local government has squelched those parties. Neighbors in the towering buildings that flank the quilombo have complained about the noise, and said the parking lot the family sets up to earn extra cash is a violation of zoning laws that restrict businesses in the neighborhood.

The open space that once hosted famous names in Rio’s samba scene now sits idle, animated only on Sundays when the family’s 28 members sit down at the red plastic tables to an afternoon meal of feijoada, Brazil’s national dish, a stew of black beans and pork.

Pinto said it’s unfair that the neighborhood is zoned in favor of his whiter, wealthier neighbors. “The argument they always use against us is that this is a strictly residential area,” he said. “So we can’t do these things. But out there they’ve got bakeries, they’ve got bars. It’s a cowardly way for them to destabilize us so they can kick us out of here.”

Luiz Pinto and his grandson in the area of their quilombo that once hosted lively parties. Neighbors’ complaints have since shut down the events. (Carolina Ramirez/The Huffington Post)

Former Brazilian Senator Demóstenes Torres of the Demócraticos 25 party, or DEM, ignited a controversy in 2010 when he called Brazil’s history of racial mixing “beautiful” and expressly denied that black women were raped during slavery, even though rape and other forms of abuse during that era are a matter of historical record. (Torres himself has both African and European ancestors.)

Torres’ comments, however inaccurate, gestured toward some widespread beliefs about race in Brazil. Like the United States, Brazil built its early wealth on the backs of African slaves. But historically, interracial relationships have always occurred far more frequently in Brazil than in the U.S., and modern-day Brazil is a largely mixed-race society where the terms “black” and “white” don’t mean quite what they do in the United States.

Similarly to Latinos in the U.S., many Afro-Brazilians view race on a spectrum where skin color is measured by gradation. In 1976, when Brazil’s census first allowed survey respondents to write in their race rather than picking among the four options of white, black, “yellow” (Asian) and “pardo” (mixed race/mulatto), respondents submitted 135 different terms to describe their skin color. The dozens of self-selected shades included “chestnut,” “dark white” and “regular,” as well as descriptions like “black Indian,” “cinnamonish,” “navy blue” and “toasted.”

The Pinto family itself encompasses a panorama of blackness, with both dark-skinned members like Luiz and lighter-skinned members like José Claudio, who nevertheless identifies as black.

“My mother married a white man,” José Claudio said. “So I hear things. Sometimes white people will say, ‘Oh, that black guy,’ I don’t know what. They don’t know that I’m black too.”

Brazil’s widespread mixing of the races underpins the idea, popular in many quarters, that the country is a “racial democracy” in which members of all ethnicities live in harmony.

Social scientists and Afro-Brazilian intellectuals, on the other hand, have long viewed this idea as wishful thinking, pointing to a growing body of socioeconomic studies and statistics to bolster their case.

According to 2011 census figures, the most recent available, some 51 percent of Brazilians identify as either black or mixed-race — terms that Brazilian statistics agencies often group together as simply “black.” Among the poorest 10 percent of the population, 72 percent are black, according to a 2012 study by the Institute of Applied Economic Research. A 2013 study by the same organization found that 70 percent of homicide victims are black, while another study from 2010 found that 60 percent of the prison population is black.

And reality may in fact be even grimmer than those numbers suggest. A revealing 2011 survey of 2,500 Brazilians led by sociologist Edward Telles asked each participant to identify his or her race and state his or her household income and level of education. At the same time, unbeknownst to the person taking the survey, the researcher would use a palette with 11 shades running from off-white to nearly black to identify the respondent’s skin tone.

Ordering the data by self-reported race yielded mixed results. White Brazilians fared better, but there was significant variation in education and income levels for Brazilians of color. Ordering the data by observed skin color, however, showed a sharp, repetitive pattern of inequality in which education and income plummet as the respondent’s skin gets darker.

“Discrimination is pretty clear,” Telles said, explaining that while Brazil never experienced explicit segregation akin to the United States, the country’s history of slavery has molded a society where racism reveals itself socioeconomically. “You wouldn’t think this is a largely black country if you just looked at advertisements and who’s on the TV screen, unless you were watching soccer. If you look at people in the stands at the World Cup, they’re almost all white. How does that compare to the people playing on the field?”

All of this is obvious to José Claudio. “When someone sees a black guy in an imported car, they say ‘Damn, he must be a soccer player or a singer!’” he said. “What was left over for black people was sports and music. No one thinks, ‘Damn, that guy must be a doctor. Maybe he’s a lawyer or a pilot.’”

Such research, however, has yet to convince many on the Brazilian right that reparations are the way to address racism. In 2004, conservative politicians who would later go on to form the DEM sued the Lula da Silva administration to overturn the presidential decree designating quilombos as an ethnicity, accusing the president of illegally bypassing Congress. (A representative DEM representative declined to comment for this article, adding that the party no longer considers the lawsuit a priority.)

By summer 2010, the lawsuit had made its way up to the country’s Supreme Justice Tribunal, where it has sat waiting for a decision ever since. The suspense weighs like an anvil on people like the Pinto family.
Meanwhile, quilombo certification and land titling continue to inch forward. But overturning Lula’s decree would likely annul them, destroying the movement overnight.

A view of Rio de Janeiro from the city’s famous Christ the Redeemer statue. (Jamie Squire/Getty Images)

The view of Rio’s Christ the Redeemer statue off in the distance is much clearer from Ana Simas’ fourth-floor apartment at the bottom of the hill. A psychiatrist with pale skin and shoulder-length brown hair, Simas has called the neighborhood of Lagoa home since her birth in 1952.

She seems an unlikely adversary for the Pinto family as they pursue their quilombo land claim. Simas takes pride in her progressive politics. She believes racism permeates Brazilian society. And she’s known the Pintos for decades. When she married her former husband in 1989, a samba musician named Jorge Simas, they held the wedding celebration at the Pinto family home in Sacopã.

But the friendship began to fray in 1999, the year Simas was elected head of the neighborhood homeowners association. Shortly after she took her new position, Pinto walked down to her apartment and asked her to make a statement before the court in support of his family’s land claim under Brazil’s squatter right law, which they were using at the time as a defense against authorities who were trying to evict them.

Simas refused. “It was the first time over the years that I’d known him that I sensed something odd in the way he was behaving,” she said. “It’s not up to me to decide if the land is his. It’s up to him to prove if the land is his and it’s the judge’s job to decide.”

As she took greater interest in the case, she found more reasons to oppose it. The Pinto family’s claim extends across an area designated as a nature reserve, which Simas refers to as “the lung of the Zona Sul,” Rio’s ritzy southern section. In 2005, the homeowners association joined a lawsuit filed by the Public Environmental Ministry against the Pinto family and other alleged squatters, accusing them of damaging the environment.

Simas began to doubt whether Sacopã was a quilombo at all. “I’ve never seen a quilombo that was just one family,” she said. “All the other real quilombos, like the quilombo of Jongo de Serrinha, are many families, not just one.”

Curious for information about Sacopã’s origins, she pulled the wedding certificate for Pinto’s parents from the local archives. “Neither one of them was born there,” she said, producing a photocopy of the document, which identifies the birthplace of both of Pinto’s parents as a Rio suburb called Novo Friburgo. “What were they doing being a quilombo here, if they’re from Novo Friburgo?”

Ana Simas, head of the Lagoa neighborhood homeowners association, opposes Sacopã’s quilombo certification. (Carolina Ramirez/The Huffington Post)

Simas is not the only one with questions about what does and doesn’t constitute a quilombo. While Brazilian law tends to assign more importance to a group’s culture than to its history, that idea has yet to trickle down to much of the public.

Claudio Girafa, a white, 57-year-old civil engineer who comes to Pinto’s neighborhood on weekends to watch the soccer games at his brother’s apartment, says it’s important to him that quilombos prove their historical roots. “There’s a lot of questioning in the area about whether [Sacopã] was really a quilombo community,” he said. “I’m not against the idea of preserving quilombos in principle, but I think it has to be very well proven because it affects properties that were acquired later.”

The researchers who filed Sacopã’s anthropological report confirming its quilombo status in 2007 were aware that Pinto’s parents had been born in Novo Friburgo. Pinto’s parents lived an itinerant life, traveling from town to town and farm to farm in search of work before settling in the late 1920s on the hill in Lagoa where the family lives today. Pinto’s father was one of the workers who helped construct Rua Sacopã, the road that snakes up the hill.

But Pinto maintains that his grandparents had already arrived in the approximate area by the late 19th century, taking shelter in a cave lying within territory claimed by the quilombo. And while the researchers couldn’t document the presence of Pinto’s family prior to the 1920s, they wrote that the family’s stories “seem to us very likely from the point of view of historical science.”

What mattered for the anthropologists was that the Pinto family’s collective memory pointed to the existence of a group identity informed by a history of escaping slavery — a quilombo ethnicity.

Still, the importance of this kind of group identity can elude some Brazilians who have no personal stake in the quilombo issue. Like many citizens, when asked if Brazil is a racist country, Girafa is quick to say it’s not. But he believes that programs like the quilombo movement and other forms of affirmative action only exacerbate existing racial tensions by committing injustices against whites. “There’s still discrimination, yes,” he said. “But what’s been done has only made things worse.”

Pinto feels differently. For him, racism isn’t just about being eyed suspiciously in rich parts of town, or being told to enter through the back when he knocks on a door because people assume he’s a servant — indignities that many black Brazilians describe experiencing.

Racism for Pinto means that his ancestors were enslaved, and that once they were freed, his grandmother was raped and his parents pushed into a slum. Racism means that after his parents turned that slum into a home, the authorities tried to make him leave, because now white people wanted to live there.

“Racism in Brazil is institutional,” Pinto said. “It’s everywhere. It’s very difficult to confront.”

For his part, Pinto hopes to use the quilombo movement to shed light on the country’s racial inequities. He said he was disappointed by the lack of Afro-Brazilian participation in the protests against government spending on the World Cup over the last year, which were largely led by light-skinned, middle-class residents.

“The quilombo movement is still very timid,” Pinto said. “We’re practically invisible to society. So if we don’t go out now and show our faces in the street, go out and protest, we’re going to be forgotten. We’re already forgotten.”

Instead, the Pinto family protests by continuing to balk in the face of eviction threats and turning down offers of millions of reais, the local currency, to abandon the place they’ve always called home.

But Pinto often feels invisible in his own neighborhood. On a recent walk with his grandson, he said, the two stopped at a plaza for a break. Looking around, Pinto noticed they were the only two black people there.

“I feel racism much more strongly because I’m in a place where only people with money live, and people with money are white,” he said. “What I understand very well is that we’re black people in a place reserved for white people.”

Students hold signs during a protest demanding better public services and criticizing massive government spending on the World Cup. Pinto said he was disappointed by the lack of Afro-Brazilian participation in the World Cup protests, which were largely led by light-skinned, middle-class residents. (Evaristo Sa/Getty Images)

What We Talk About When We Talk About Reparations

Published Date : 2014-07-04 10:26:10

BY JELANI COBB

A century and a half ago, after the start of the Civil War, the federal government took up the question of reparations for slavery. The matter had been under discussion for years, both in the corridors of power and in the abolitionist movement, but it was only in 1862—with Congress dominated by Republicans after most Democratic members had joined the Confederacy—that it was possible to pass the Compensated Emancipation Act. It was the sole instance in which slavery reparations were authorized—and it compensated slaveholders in Washington, D.C., for the cost of emancipating their human chattel. The enslaved—the cornerstone of the South’s economy, the collateral that allowed Northern lenders to profit from the cotton trade, the involuntary producers of the raw material around which the textile industry was built—were given nothing but a deeply compromised facsimile of freedom.

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s magisterial essay in this month’s Atlantic has reintroduced the subject of reparations. But it would be a mistake to assume that it ever completely disappeared between that earlier episode, when the federal government disbursed funds to whites to offset the inconvenience of democracy, and our present moment, in which white families earn on average two dollars for every dollar earned by black ones. Coates’s sixteen-thousand-word story is a tour through the economic consequences of discrimination, which have compounded, over decades, into a kind of racial windfall for white Americans—so securely possessed that it is all but invisible, and incapable of being revoked by anything short of a massive redistributive program.

During an interview earlier this week at Buzzfeed, Shani Hilton asked Coates why he thought the essay had attracted so much attention—it set new records for traffic at the Atlantic’s Web site. Coates basically shrugged, and tossed the question to the audience. (“Because you wrote the hell out of it,” came one response.) But it is not a coincidence that this piece has resonated at this particular point in our history. As we near the end of the Obama administration, it has become possible to estimate the yield of the first black Presidency—and the dividends are far smaller than many had hoped.

Consider the fact that when the President unveiled his My Brother’s Keeperinitiative, designed to help “young men and boys of color facing tough odds reach their full potential,” he took pains to explain that its funding would come entirely from private sources. It’s not an indictment of Obama to observe that philanthropy, in this context, is effectively the opposite of reparations: it’s money given voluntarily for social betterment, not issued as recompense for a wrong. But it does say a great deal about the moment he inhabits, defined in part by the ersatz sincerity of our repeated calls to “move beyond race,” even as the President is dogged by ludicrous charges that his health-care reform was an attempt at stealth reparations.

Even in early 2008, at that heady moment when the thought of a black President became a real possibility, there was a cynical murmur among African-Americans that Obama’s election—like so many other examples of putative racial progress—would be widely understood as a kind of gift to black people. Jonathan Chait, of New York, betrayed that tendency earlier this spring, in the midst of a heated debate with Coates on the subject of black pathology. Chait argued, from on high:

It is hard to explain how the United States has progressed from chattel slavery to emancipation to the end of lynching to the end of legal segregation to electing an African-American president if America has “rarely” been the ally of African-Americans and “often” its nemesis. It is one thing to notice the persistence of racism, quite another to interpret the history of black America as mainly one of continuity rather than mainly one of progress.

This kind of rhetoric is akin to an abusive husband who cites the number of times he stopped beating his wife as a testament to his own high character. The tendency, in selective recollections of history, is to choose the version that looks most like an alibi—and it is for this reason that the conversation Coates has restarted is not really about reparations. It is, more fundamentally, about acknowledging the bastard history that would warrant reparations in the first place.

The unspoken divide between black people and white people—whether over reparations, affirmative action, or the question of paying N.C.A.A. athletes—comes down to a question of history. In one version, that history appears as an incremental movement toward equality after a long night of discrimination; in the other, history looks like a balance sheet, and the cumulative debits of sanctioned theft, enforced poverty, and scant opportunity far outweigh the inconsistent credits of good will. Few whites recall, for instance, that General William Sherman, during his March to the Sea, issued orders mandating the redistribution of land seized from Confederates, in forty-acre parcels, to newly emancipated black families. But within black America, that fact—and the fact that the orders were revoked following Lincoln’s assassination—is common knowledge, recalled with the bitterness of an outstanding debt.

Absent an understanding of this past, it’s possible—even entirely reasonable—to conclude that affirmative action represents a full recompense for the social engineering that produced a disproportionately black underclass in the United States. To the extent that the history remains obscured, the narrative looks like a lineage of failed handouts to a feckless and troublesome population, never quite capable of pulling themselves up, and mired in their own self-defeating ways. These deletions in our own history deliver various national oddities, like an overwhelmingly white Tea Party movement that is fixated on government encroachment on liberty and yet has almost no regard for the concerns of African-Americans, whose history is defined by the government-sanctioned theft of their freedom.

Congressional Republicans were certainly satisfied with themselves after passing the 1862 Emancipation Act: they had leveraged the power of government to end the scourge of slavery, and achieved it so cleverly that the phantom hope for compensation might entice slaveholding states to remain within the Union. Lincoln’s reputation as the greatest American President has much to do with his eloquence, fortitude, and foresight—but a portion of the esteem for him is derived from the fact that his Emancipation Proclamation enabled generations of Americans to focus on that singular act of ending slavery, not the two and half centuries in which this government and the colonies that preceded it had allowed human bondage to persist. Michele Bachmann’s statement that the founders “worked tirelessly” to end slavery was only factually wrong; emotionally it was a perfect rendering of the past to which most Americans—even those who know otherwise—subscribe out of emotional necessity.

Barack Obama is also a tall and thin attorney who served in the Illinois legislature, but this isn’t the only reason he can’t escape a comparison with Lincoln. There is, in his two terms, a similar volume of work left undone, despite the apparent racial hallmarks of his Presidency. From the vantage point of 2014, history was seemingly lying in wait for Obama from the moment he was sworn in. The pattern established by emancipation—in which black progress was valued chiefly in proportion to its ability to assuage white unease, in which self-congratulation became a national motif—remains with us.

The battles of the civil-rights movement were enormously contentious and divisive until they began to achieve victories; at that point, they became a useful means of allowing the country to forget its complicity in the state of affairs that had made the movement necessary in the first place. We know, or ought to know, how this story invariably ends. It’s worth recalling that Lincoln, in his initial draft of the Emancipation Proclamation, sought the repatriation of the freed slaves—thus rewarding black people who had helped save the Union with exile, while granting continued residence to the Confederates who tried to overthrow the government. In 2005, the United States Senate offered an apology for the decades during which it did nothing to halt the tide of lynchings that claimed the lives of nearly thirty-four hundred black people between 1880 and 1920. Yet that apology—which was tied directly to government inaction that facilitated terrorism directed at a subject population—was not accompanied by any order for compensation to the descendants of those victims. Once again, the point was not contrition, merely the appearance of it.

We are discussing reparations at this moment because in two years Barack Obama will leave the White House, having repaired the economic collapse that greeted his inauguration, but with African-Americans still unemployed at a rate twice that of whites, and struggling to see how this world differs from the status quo ante. Those who saw Obama’s election as redemption for slavery were off by fourteen decades: his election was supposed to expiate sins much closer to the surface, and therefore far more difficult, and far too expensive, to confront.

The point of Coates’s essay—and, ultimately, the point of this conversation, despite the political impossibility of enacting reparations—is a broader understanding of black poverty as the product of public policy and private theft facilitated by racism. The belief that blacks have been given too much is made possible by the refusal to countenance how much was actually taken away in the first place.

Photograph by Christopher Anderson/Magnum.

FACING THE TRUTH: THE CASE FOR REPARATIONS (with Ta-Nehisi Coates)

Published Date : 2014-07-04 10:23:00

The Case for Reparations: An Intellectual Autopsy

Published Date : 2014-07-04 10:21:56

By Ta-Nehisi Coates

1The best thing about writing a blog is the presence of a live and dynamic journal of one’s own thinking. Some portion of the reporter’s notebook is out there for you to scrutinize and think about as the longer article develops. For me, this current article—an argument in support of reparations—began four years ago when I opposed reparations. A lot has happened since then. I’ve read a lot, talked to a lot of people, and spent a lot of time in Chicago where the history, somehow, feels especially present. I think I owe you a walk-through on how my thinking evolved.When I wrote opposing reparations I was about halfway through my deep-dive into the Civil War. I roughly understood then that the Civil War—the most lethal conflict in American history—boiled down to the right to raise an empire based on slaveholding and white supremacy. What had not yet clicked for me was precisely how essential enslavement was to America, that its foundational nature explained the Civil War’s body count.  The sheer value of enslaved African-Americans is just astounding. And looking at this recent piece by Chris Hayes, I’m wondering if my numbers are short (emphasis added):

In order to get a true sense of how much wealth the South held in bondage, it makes far more sense to look at slavery in terms of the percentage of total economic value it represented at the time. And by that metric, it was colossal. In 1860, slaves represented about 16 percent of the total household assets—that is, all the wealth—in the entire country, which in today’s terms is a stunning $10 trillion.

Ten trillion dollars is already a number much too large to comprehend, but remember that wealth was intensely geographically focused. According to calculations made by economic historian Gavin Wright, slaves represented nearly half the total wealth of the South on the eve of secession. “In 1860, slaves as property were worth more than all the banks, factories and railroads in the country put together,” civil war historian Eric Foner tells me. “Think what would happen if you liquidated the banks, factories and railroads with no compensation.”

As with any economic institution of that size, enslavement grew from simply a question of money to a question of societal, even theological, importance.

I got that in 2011, from Jim McPherson (emphasis again added):

“The conflict between slavery and non-slavery is a conflict for life and death,” a South Carolina commissioner told Virginians in February 1861. “The South cannot exist without African slavery.” Mississippi’s commissioner to Maryland insisted that “slavery was ordained by God and sanctioned by humanity.” If slave states remained in a Union ruled by Lincoln and his party, “the safety of the rights of the South will be entirely gone.”

If these warnings were not sufficient to frighten hesitating Southerners into secession, commissioners played the race card. A Mississippi commissioner told Georgians that Republicans intended not only to abolish slavery but also to “substitute in its stead their new theory of the universal equality of the black and white races.”

Georgia’s commissioner to Virginia dutifully assured his listeners that if Southern states stayed in the Union, “we will have black governors, black legislatures, black juries, black everything.”

An Alabamian born in Kentucky tried to persuade his native state to secede by portraying Lincoln’s election as “nothing less than an open declaration of war” by Yankee fanatics who intended to force the “sons and daughters” of the South to associate “with free negroes upon terms of political and social equality,” thus “consigning her [the South’s] citizens to assassinations and her wives and daughters to pollution and violation to gratify the lust of half-civilized Africans…”

This argument appealed as powerfully to nonslaveholders as to slaveholders. Whites of both classes considered the bondage of blacks to be the basis of liberty for whites. Slavery, they declared, elevated all whites to an equality of status by confining menial labor and caste subordination to blacks. “If slaves are freed,” maintained proslavery spokesmen, whites “will become menials. We will lose every right and liberty which belongs to the name of freemen.” 

Enslavement is kind of a big deal—so much so that it is impossible to imagine America without it. At the time I was reading this I was thinking about an essay (which I eventually wrote) arguing against the idea of the Civil War as tragedy. My argument was that the Civil War was basically the spectacular end of a much longer war extending back into the 17th century—a war against black people, their families, institutions and their labor. We call the war “slavery.” John Locke helped me with that.

This was all swirling in my head about the time I saw this article in the Times:

On Saturday, more than 15,000 students are expected to file into classrooms to take a grueling 95-question test for admission to New York City’s elite public high schools. (The exam on Sunday, for about 14,000 students, was postponed until Nov. 18 because of Hurricane Sandy.)

No one will be surprised if Asian students, who make up 14 percent of the city’s public school students, once again win most of the seats, and if black and Hispanic students win few. Last school year, of the 14,415 students enrolled in the eight specialized high schools that require a test for admissions, 8,549 were Asian.

Because of the disparity, some have begun calling for an end to the policy of using the test as the sole basis of admission to the schools, and last month, civil rights groups filed a complaint with the federal government, contending that the policy discriminated against students, many of whom are black or Hispanic, who cannot afford the score-raising tutoring that other students can. The Shis, like other Asian families who spoke about the exam in interviews in the past month, did not deny engaging in extensive test preparation. To the contrary, they seemed to discuss their efforts with pride.

I was sort of horrified by this piece, because what the complaint seemed to be basically arguing for was punishing a group of people (Asian immigrants) who were working their asses off. It struck me that these were exactly the kind of people you want if you’re building a country. Even though I am arguing for reparations, I actually believe in a playing field—a level playing field, no doubt—but one with actual competition. It struck me as wrong to punish people for working really hard to succeed in that competition.

This paragraph, in particular, got me:

Others take issue with the exam on philosophical grounds. “You shouldn’t have to prep Sunday to Sunday, to get into a good high school,” said Melissa Santana, a legal secretary whose daughter Dejanellie Falette has been prepping this fall for the exam. “That’s extreme.”

I was stewing reading this. It offended some of my latent nationalism—the basic sense that you want everyone on your “team” to go out there and fight. But as I thought about it I felt that there was something underneath the mother’s point. In fact there are people who don’t “have to prep Sunday to Sunday, to get into a good high school.” But they tend to live in neighborhoods that have historically excluded children with names like Dejanellie. Why is that? Housing policy. What are the roots of our housing policy? White supremacy. What are the roots of white supremacy in America? Justification for enslavement.

A few days later I sent the following rambling memo to my editor, Scott Stossel:

> Hey Scott. I have an essay that’s starting to brew in me that I’ve been thinking a lot about. Are you at all interested in a piece that makes the case for reparations? This is totally pie in the sky, but it’s my take on the Atlantic as a journal of “Big Ideas.” There’s this great piece in the Times a few weeks back about selective schools in New York and how Asian immigrants are dominating the process. I found myself really compelled by a lot of the stories and actually in more sympathy with the Asians (now Asian-Americans) than with the blacks who were protesting. A lot of what they were saying reminded me of the sort of stuff my own parents said.
>
> And then something occurred to me. The reason why a lot of these black parents are upset is because the schools are basically credentialing machines for the corridors of power. By not going to a Stuyvesant you miss out on that corridor, so the thinking goes. And moreso the feeling is (though never explicitly said) that black people deserve special consideration, given our history in this country. The result is that you have black parents basically lobbying for Asian-American kids to be punished because the country at large has never given much remedy for what it did to black people.
>
> I’ve thought the same before in reference to gentrification. The notion that DC should remain “black” has always struck me as really bizarre. Very little in America ever stays anything. Change is the nature of things. It only makes sense if you buy that black people are “owed” something. I.E. Since we never got anything for slavery, Jim Crow, red-lining, block-busting, segregation, housing and job discrimination, we at least deserve the stability of neighborhoods and cities we can call home.
>
> I’m thinking about it with the Supreme Court set to dismantle Affirmative Action. Isn’t the “diversity” argument actually kind of weak? Isn’t the recompensation argument actually much more compelling? Except this was outlawed with Bakke. What I am thinking is right now, at this moment, American institutions (especially its schools) are being asked to answer for the fact that country lacked the courage to do the right thing. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision coming down, in the wake of (what looks like) a second Obama term, we could make a really strong case that now is the time renew a serious discussion about Reparations.
>
> And we could move it beyond “Check in hand” discussion to something more sophisticated. Does this interest you? I actually could see us arguing that Obama has nothing to lose, and should explicitly support such a policy. He ain’t gonna do it. But we might–might–be able to make a good faith argument for it.
>
> Any interest?

All of this did not stick. (I don’t, for instance, think it would be a good idea for Obama to support reparations. That would actually be a horrible idea.) But by then I had it fully established in my head that we are asking other institutions to answer for something major in our history and culture.

The final piece of this was the uptick in cultural pathology critiques extending from the White House on down. There is massive, overwhelming evidence for the proposition that white supremacy is the only thing wrong with black people. There is significantly less evidence for the proposition that culture is a major part of what’s wrong with black people. But we don’t really talk about white supremacy. We talk about inequality, vestigial racism, and culture. Our conversation omits a major portion of the evidence.

The final thing that happened was I became convinced that an unfortunate swath of  popular writers/pundits/intellectuals are deeply ignorant of American history. For the past two years, I’ve been lucky enough to directly interact with a number of historians, anthropologists, economists, and sociologists in the academy. The debates I’ve encountered at Brandeis, Virginia Commonwealth, Yale, Northwestern, Rhodes, and Duke have been some of the most challenging and enlightening since I left Howard University. The difference in tenor between those conversations and the ones I have in the broader world, are disturbing. What is considered to be a “blue period” on this blog, is considered to be a survey course among academics. Which is not to say everyone, or even mostly everyone, agrees with me in the academy. It is to say that I’ve yet to engage a historian or sociologist who’s requested that I not be such a downer.

This process was not as linear as I’m making it out to be. But it all combined to make me feel that mainstream liberal discourse was getting it wrong. The relentless focus on explanations which are hard to quantify, while ignoring those which are not, the subsequent need to believe that America triumphs in the end, led me to believe that we were hiding something, that there was something about ourselves which were loath to say out in public. Perhaps the answer was somewhere else, out there on the ostensibly radical fringes, something dismissed by people who should know better. People like me.

Get Ready for a National Debate About Slavery Reparations Ta-Nehisi Coates makes his case in The Atlantic's new issue

Published Date : 2014-07-04 10:19:56

By Isaac Chotiner @ichotiner

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s long cover story in the June issue of The Atlantic is about reparations for slavery. Indeed, the piece is titled ‘The Case For Reparations.’ (It isn’t online yet. UPDATE: LINK HERE.) The story has been buzzed about for a while now, and while I recommend that everyone get their hands on the essay and read it at once, Coates’s argument shouldn’t be too controversial. But it will be—which is another sign of the sorry state of racial discourse in America.

Coates was wise to focus the essay less on the evils of slavery and more on the systemic and institutional ways in which African Americans have been beaten down, discriminated against, and terrorized over the past 150 years. Rather than being left to their own devices—something America prides itself on doing for its citizens—blacks were forcefully kept down by government and private institutions, federal laws and private banks. (The piece closes with Bank of America’s recent behavior.) It is a powerful argument with some superb storytelling.

But prescriptively? Here is Coates, with some big ideas that really shouldn’t sound all that earth-shattering:

What I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices—more than a handout, a payout, hush money, or a reluctant bribe. What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal. Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage. Reparations would mean the end of yelling “patriotism” while waving a Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history.

Coates adds that he believes “wrestling publicly with these questions matters as much as—if not more than—the specific answers that might be produced,” and says he supports a John Conyers bill that would merely call for a “Congressional study of slavery” and make recommendations for “appropriate remedies”.

The fact that such measures will no doubt prove to be controversial is what makes this subject so depressing. The best argument against Coates’s proposals is simply that they will prove to be more trouble than they are worth, i.e. that their practical effect will be a negative one. Perhaps white people will feel that they are being attacked, as a mere 95 percent of Fox News segments imply. Or perhaps this will weaken support for the social safety net, because African Americans will sound ungrateful. (The focus of the remaining 5 percent of Fox segments.) But then Coates will have been proven doubly right. If we can’t even have the conversation he wants because people are so defensive or unwilling (or plain racist), it’s just more evidence for what his essay rightfully bemoans.

The Economics of Reparations: Why Congress Should Meet Ta-Nehisi Coates's Modest Demand

Published Date : 2014-07-04 10:19:14

By Danny Vinik @dannyvinik

In the newest issue of The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates makes the case for slavery reparations. “The idea of reparations is frightening not simply because we might lack the ability to pay,” Coates writes. “The idea of reparations threatens something much deeper—America’s heritage, history, and standing in the world.” The piece is provocative, but short on details: It doesn’t put a number to what black Americans are owed, and it doesn’t provide a specific prescription for how to make reparations. Rather, Coates simply recommends that Congress pass Representative John Conyers’s bill for a “Congressional study of slavery.”

But now that Coates has re-ignited this debate, it’s worth considering the practical implications. How much money, for instance, is due to black America? How should that money be distributed? Who should be eligible for it? Perhaps those are questions that a Congressional study could answer. What academic evidence we have provides an incomplete but sobering assessment of the costs of centuries of slavery, Jim Crow, and state-sanctioned discrimination.

How much should reparations be?

As Coates explains in his piece, reparations must compensate African Americans for more than just the centuries of slavery in the United States. After slavery was abolished, whites frequently lynched black Americans and seized their property. A 2001 Associated Press investigation, which Coates cites, found 406 cases where black landowners had their farms seized in the early-to-mid 20th century—more than 24,000 acres of land were stolen. Housing discrimination, which has been one of the largest obstacles to African Americans’ building wealth, still exists today.

Larry Neal, an economist at the University of Illinois, calculated the difference between the wages that slaves would have received from 1620 to 1840, minus estimated maintenance costs spent by slave owners, and reached a total of $1.4 trillion in 1983 dollars. At an annual rate of interest of 5 percent, that’s more than $6.5 trillion in 2014—just in lost wages. In a separate estimate in 1983, James Marketti calculated it at $2.1 trillion, equal to $10 trillion today. In 1989, economists Bernadette Chachere and Gerald Udinsky estimated that labor market discrimination between 1929 and 1969 cost black Americans $1.6 trillion.

These estimates don’t include the physical harms of slavery, lost educational and wealth-building opportunities, or the cost of the discrimination that persists today. But it’s clear the magnitude of reparations would be in the trillions of dollars. For perspective, the federal government last year spent $3.5 trillion and GDP was $16.6 trillion.

What form should reparations take?

In a 2005 article, economists William A. Darity Jr. and Dania Frank proposed five different ways to make reparations. The first approach is lump-sum payments. This is the most direct form of reparations, but it does not correct for the decades of lost human capital. The second is to aggregate the reparation funds and allow African Americans to apply for grants for different asset-building projects. These projects could promote homeownership or education, for instance. Under this thinking, reparations should be more than one-time payments, but should build the human and wealth capital that black Americans struggled to gain over the past few centuries.

A third approach would be to give vouchers for a certain monetary value to black Americans. This mirrors the goal of the second approach, but with a focus on building financial assets. “Thus reparations could function as an avenue to undertake a racial redistribution of wealth akin to the mechanism used in Malaysia to build corporate ownership among the native Malays,” Darity and Frank write. “In that case, shares of stock were purchased by the state and placed in a trust for subsequent allocation to the native Malays.”

Fourth, the government could give African Americans in-kind reparations—free medical insurance or guaranteed college education, for instance. Finally, the fifth approach “would be to use reparations to build entirely new institutions to promote collective well-being in the black community.” Darity and Frank don’t elaborate on the potential structure for those institutions. Congress could also combine any or all of these approaches.

Who should be eligible to collect reparations?

Darity and Frank set out two criteria for eligibility: “First, individuals would have to establish that they are indeed descendants of persons formerly enslaved in the United States. Second, individuals would have to establish that at least 10 years prior to the adoption of a reparations program they self-identified as ‘black,’ ‘African American,’ ‘Negro,’ or ‘colored.’” These standards would undoubtedly create significant controversy for African Americans trying to prove their ancestry, but any eligibility criteria will be difficult to outline.

In researching the literature on reparations, I realized why Coates did not provide more details: He couldn’t. Economists simply have not made many estimates. That’s reason enough for Congress to pass Conyers’s bill. We can debate reparations all we want. But we can’t decide whether to make reparations until we know exactly what doing so would entail.

Letter from N'Cobra to IBW on the April 19th Reparations Rally

Published Date : 2014-07-04 10:18:39

Dear Dr. Ron Daniels:
 
On behalf of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations In America (N’COBRA) and its Chicago Chapter, under the leadership of Brother Kamm Howard, I take this moment in time to express for all freedom seeking and freedom struggling Africans of the world, our profound acknowledgment, appreciation, and respect for your leadership and that of the Institute of the Black World in developing and coordinating the collaborative event “Revitalizing The Reparations Movement” held at the Chicago State University on Saturday, April 19, 2014.
 
This event was far reaching and deeply rooted in the fundamental human values necessary for radical change in our thinking and approach to fulfilling the expansive vision of reparationists past and present and providing a firm foundation for those in the future who will defend, protect and secure all of our human p possibilities.
 
We share the vision of the IBW and CARICOM as demonstrated by the theme of our 2012 National Conference in  the city of Philadelphia. As you very well know every movement needs an engine. Consequently we are ready to demonstrate our collective work and responsibility.
 
In today’s economic, political, and social environment the challenge continues to be the ability of an organization to change and change quickly. Organizations face two types of changes, evolutionary and revolutionary. Evolutionary change is change that happens over time to ensure the survival of the organization. Evolutionary change is typically change brought about by either pressure or new resources.  “Revitalizing The Reparations Movement” provided the pressure and the incentive for the reparations movement in America to have tangible linkages to CARICOM and produce measurable outcomes to reconstruct, restore, renew our demand for reparations in our life time and be victorious.  This event accomplished this, and good work produces more work.
 
Thank you!
 
In contrast, revolutionary change occurs when organizations make radical transformations to their structure, and strategy of engagement  in an effort to fulfill their divine mission and maintain dignity.  “Revitalizing The Revolution Movement” was a vital point in revolutionary transformation and of the evolution of the reparations movement in America. 
 
Again, we thank you. Really, we can’t thank you enough! 
 
This letter of acknowledgement is only our effort to do so. Our real appreciation can only be demonstrated as we continue daily in activating and operationalizing the reparations movement in America by maintaining and advancing our dignity in the world as self-authorizing and self-determining people.
 
In closing, we appreciate the depth and breadth of your  collaborative insight you offered at this monumental event. Your leadership got us all energized about the road ahead and is just the kind of innovative thinking we needed to push our organization to the next level.  Please share this letter to all who were involved with every step.
 
Hotep! Ase!
 
Brother Ari, as ever
 
Mzee Ari S. Merretazon, M.S.CED
N’COBRA Northeast Representative
Former N’COBRA National Male Co-Chair
Never forget, Reparations is the crossroads solution to our human capital infrastructure in the context of a Reparations Accord for Blacks in America as a matter of public policy.
===========================================

No Greater Love–Internal Reparations Education: A process of acknowledging the human capital within the individual, family, and community, then designing, instructing, and educating youth and adults with information which draws out and activates their understanding of what happened to us in furtherance of a Reparations Accord for Blacks in America as a matter of public policy.

Bob Marley & Bunny Wailer Performances

Published Date : 2014-07-04 10:17:18

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpfxD0yY6f8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKUHgPXYLWs

Minister Farrakhan Says He Is Ill

Published Date : 2014-07-04 10:13:14

Caribbean Reparations Initiative Inspires a Revitalization of the US Movement

Published Date : 2014-07-04 09:47:14

By Don Rojas

Picture this scene. It was almost surreal, improbable just a few years ago: a room filled with presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers from the 15-nation Caribbean Community (CARICOM), all listening with rapt attention, several nodding in agreement, as one of the region’s most distinguished academics, and perhaps the Caribbean’s most prominent public intellectual, gave a riveting report on the recent work of CARICOM’s Reparations Commission.

Yes, “reparations”, as in compensation for the crimes of slavery and indigenous genocide at the hands of former European colonizers—reparations, as in reparatory justice for the horrific consequences of two of the greatest crimes against humanity in the history of this planet—the 400 years of the African Slave Trade and the systematic and calculated extermination of the indigenous peoples of the Americas—reparations, as in fundamental and comprehensive social, economic and political justice, indeed, historical justice for the descendants of African slaves and native American peoples.

This scene played out in the conference room of the beautiful Buccament Resort on the Eastern Caribbean island of St. Vincent on March 10, 2014; the occasion—the 25th Inter-Sessional Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community. Contrary to what a casual observer could conclude, this was not some gathering of flaming radical black nationalists demanding reparations from white society.

There was applause at the end of the professor’s report. Not a single dissenting voice was heard from a group of leaders whose politics ranged from conservative through liberal to progressive. The CARICOM heads of government then proceeded to unanimously adopt a ten-point program for reparatory justice for the region.

This breakthrough plan calls for a formal apology for slavery, debt cancellation from former colonizers and reparation payments to repair the persisting “psychological trauma” from the days of plantation slavery.

“For over 400 years Africans and their descendants were classified in law as non-human, chattel, property, and real estate. They were denied recognition as members of the human family by laws derived from the parliaments and palaces of Europe.

This history has inflicted massive psychological trauma upon African descendant populations. This much is evident daily in the Caribbean. Only a reparatory justice approach to truth and educational exposure can begin the process of healing and repair. Such an engagement will call into being, for example, the need for greater Caribbean integration designed to enable the coming together of the fragmented community,” stated the CARICOM Reparations Commission.

The plan also calls for assistance to boost the region’s technological capacity and to strengthen its public health, education and cultural institutions such as museums and research centers. It even calls for the creation of a “repatriation program”, including legal and diplomatic assistance from European governments, to potentially resettle members of the Rastafarian spiritual movement in Africa. Repatriation to Africa has been a cardinal belief of Rastafari for decades and their followers have consistently advocated for reparations.

Collectively, the economies of CARICOM member states totals about $78 billion which would place the region 65th in the world if it were a single country. Clearly, this is a region that can’t claim much in the way of economic clout yet its demands for reparations possess enormous moral authority having suffered over 400 years of slavery and colonialism at the hands of European powers, mainly Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands and Sweden.

Strong support for CARICOM’s reparations claims was voiced in late January by the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) at their summit in Havana, Cuba. In a “Special Declaration” on the issue of reparations for slavery and the genocide of native peoples, CELAC said it supported wholeheartedly “a swift, action-oriented and good-faith engagement with those colonizing states responsible for the genocide of native peoples and African enslavement in the region, with the sponsorship and organization of the State with a view to identifying just and effective means to provide reparations for the impact of those serious violations of human rights that are a crime against humanity, to which they are morally obliged.”

If the European powers fail to publicly apologize and refuse to come to the negotiating table, the CARICOM nations said they will file a lawsuit against the European powers at the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

The sheer audacity of this ten-point program for ‘reparatory justice’ in the Caribbean deserves the solidarity and moral support of social justice lovers in the US and around the world.

Now, fast forward to April 19, 2014. On a stage at Chicago State University, this same academic, Prof. Sir Hilary Beckles, chief architect of CARICOM’s ten-point reparations plan, is delivering the keynote speech to hundreds assembled and thousands around the world viewing the live Webcast of a Reparations Rally organized by the Institute of the Black World 21st Century.

Sitting on the stage listening to the professor is a stellar row of other speakers including Min. Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam; Cong. John Conyers, dean of the Congressional Black Caucus and author of HR-40, the landmark reparations bill he introduced in Congress some 15 years ago; Dr. Ron Daniels, founder and president of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century; Ambassador Rhonda King, permanent representative to the United Nations from St. Vincent & the Grenadines; Dr. Wayne Watson, president of Chicago State University; Dr. Iva Carruthers, general secretary, Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference; Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, pastor emeritus of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ; Senator Donne Trotter representing the 17th District in the Illinois House of Representatives; Joann Watson, former Councilwoman, City of Detroit and Kamm Howard, co-chair, National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America.

In his one-hour address, the audience sat in rapt attention, listening to Prof. Beckles give a veritable history lesson about slavery in the Caribbean, one that would never be taught in U.S. classrooms or appear on movie screens. He articulated a well-documented argument about how Britain and other European countries used slavery to build their empires on the backs of Africans, proud human beings who were worked to death, and not paid a cent for their hundreds of years of labor servicing the economic interests of white supremacy.

He noted how British slave ships transported 3.3 million Africans to the plantations in the new world, and discussed how France abolished slavery in 1794, but reinstated it in 1812.  He cited David Macey’s whose biography of Frantz Fanon spoke about Josephine, a white Creole from Martinique, who became Napoleon’s wife and Empress of France, successfully pushing to have France reinstate slavery to assist her family’s failing sugar plantation.

In the 1990s, supporters of Martinique’s independence removed the head from Josephine’s statute in a Fort-de-France park and poured red paint, symbolizing her blood, on the statue’s base. The head was replaced but the red paint was never removed.

Bexkles discussed the Zong massacre, which occurred aboard the slave ship Zong, how the crew became lost at sea in 1781 and in order to conserve food and water, they threw 142 slaves overboard. The slaves were eaten by sharks, Beckles said.

The Zong’s owners, who were based in Liverpool, England, sought compensation from insurance companies for the slaves eaten by sharks. The insurance companies refused to pay, but a British court ruled that ship’s owners must be compensated because slaves were not human. They were property, the court ruled.

In a powerful speech following Professor Beckles’s lecture, Minister Farrakhan called Beckles’ book “Britain’s Black Debt: Reparations for Caribbean Slavery and Native Genocide” a blueprint for the reparations movement in the Caribbean because it details the history and the inhumane treatment of Africans, a subject whites and many blacks don’t want to know about. He noted further that many blacks today dismiss the idea of reparations.

Farrakhan told attendees to buy and read the professor’s book. He said he would advertise it in The Final Call, the Nation of Islam’s newspaper, and he urged blacks in the United States to support the Caribbean’s reparations movement, which he predicted would be a long, hard battle that will pit whites against blacks and blacks against blacks.

Reparations for centuries of brutal oppression and exploitation of enslaved African people in the Americas is, undoubtedly, the great moral imperative of our time. The so-called pragmatists who argue that the question of reparations is impractical, unachievable, utopian, a waste of time and energy are those who are ignorant of the moral power of a cause whose time has come.

Today, throughout the Caribbean region, discussions of reparations are starting to alter the political narrative, re-formulating analysis of economic history, linking the challenges of future socio-economic development with the need for reparatory justice, indeed, re-shaping the very fundamentals of public discourse in the region.

Here in the United States a revitalized reparations campaign can and must become a critical component of the civil and human rights movements of the 21st Century. Reparations is not history, a thing of the past. It is about historical justice and until justice is done reparations will always be relevant, will always be a struggle for today and for tomorrow.

We are beginning to witness a huge intellectual paradigm shift in the Caribbean and in other parts of the African diaspora and one of the most prominent figures driving this shift is Sir Hilary Beckles.

To view the archive of the Reparations Rally Webcast, read reports on the presentations by other speakers and study the CARICOM Ten-point Reparations Program please visit this page on the Web site of the Institute of the Black World (IBW)..http://ibw21.org/reparations/

Don Rojas is the Director of Communications for The Institute of the Black World 21st Century. He was a former executive editor of the New York Amsterdam News and the first director of communications of the NAACP.

Ta-Nehisi Coates and the boundaries of legitimate debate

Published Date : 2014-06-16 11:48:04

At the Sixth and I synagogue in Washington on Thursday night, people were reselling tickets out on the street as if a playoff game was taking place inside, rather than a talk by Ta-Nehisi Coates, a national correspondent for the Atlantic. The subject of the event was Coates’s recent cover story for the magazine, “The Case for Reparations,” which has broken traffic records and vanished from newsstands.

(The Atlantic)

While the piece is popular, the turnout for Coates and the reception he received in the sanctuary reflected something larger than the enthusiasm for a single article. “The Case for Reparations” managed to revive and reframe a major policy debate about race in the United States. But the piece is part of a larger project, a redefinition of what counts as a legitimate conversation about race in the United States and an attempt to define what intellectual credentials are required to enter that debate.

At Sixth and I, Coates recalled what the standards were when he was in college.

“Being a student at Howard University and reading the New Republic … picking up this magazine which does what you hope to one day do, opinionated, long-form articles with reporting, and watching them talk about black people, and having no black people on staff, having no black people in the room … Do you think they’re genetically stupid?” he mused, remembering a fabricated piece that magazine published that suggested African Americans were uninterested in blue-collar jobs like driving taxis and its role in advancing Charles Murray’s work on race and intelligence.

Coates has had a long career in journalism, but he made his debut in the Atlantic in 2008 with a feature on Bill Cosby’s gospel of black male responsibility that is really a long meditation on the persistence, and persistent inefficacy, of respectability politics — the idea that a minority group can evade structural disadvantages and ingrained prejudice through self-improvement.

“Racism is a kind of fatalism, so seductive, that it enthralls even its victims,” he wrote this January after the Seattle Seahawks’ Richard Sherman, a Stanford graduate, was labeled as a thug after giving a fired-up sideline interview. “But we will not get out of this by being on our best behavior—sometimes it has taken our worse. There’s never been a single thing wrong with black people that the total destruction of white supremacy would not fix.”

The campaign to eradicate respectability politics is not yet complete. The first question put to Coates at Sixth and I was why he had not written about fatherlessness in “The Case for Reparations.” But when the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, who was moderating the panel, posed the question of black culture, Coates’s response laid out the case for a major shift in focus.

“It was policy that got us redlining,” Coates argued. “It was policy got us housing segregation. There’s policy behind all of it. The slave trade was policy. When that becomes a substitute for something, I don’t know, I have a problem with it.”

“The other thing is,” he continued, “we have tons of academic research on the impact of redlining, on the impact of not being able to get the G.I. Bill, on the impact of lynching, on the impact of terrorism. We have tons of research on what that did and what that does to community. Culture not so much. Not so much. It’s a little harder to quantify. So why do we spend so much time talking about the thing that we have the hardest time quantifying, and so little time talking about the thing that we know?”

In a debate with New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait and in discussing “The Case For Reparations,” Coates has repeatedly discussed his own education in this history of policy, with bows to historians Nell Irvin Painter and Isabel Wilkerson. And he emphasizes the need for anyone who wants to engage seriously on these issues to do the same.

“The most common response I get from white people is ‘I had no idea. I had no idea. I had no idea.’ I think that’s a sincere reaction,” Coates told Goldberg. What he did not need to say is that such sincerity is a starting point from which his interlocutors can begin to remedy their ignorance.

If pushing respectability politics to the margins, and perhaps even beyond them, of the political conversation was the first salvo in Coates’s project, “The Case for Reparations” is an attempt to enlarge the territory of debate. One of the significant critiques of the piece has been the question of feasibility.

Coates’s initial proposal, in keeping with his focus on study and debate, is an oft-introduced bill that would require a study of reparations, but that has shown little chance of advancing in Congress. On Thursday, Goldberg raised the possibility that President Obama might take up the cause, a prospect Coates suggested would be wildly divisive in advance of any major shift in the American polity.

As Andrew Beaujon notes at Poynter, Coates was very clear that he has no intention of quitting journalism for activism or politics. But in a sense, the role he outlined for himself is even more ambitious: “I think there has to be some respect for a journalist’s or a writer’s role in a democracy,” Coates told Goldberg. Writers may not be the people organizing bus boycotts or mobilizing for women’s suffrage, but they do help define what is “too radical” and what is not.

Heated discussions about what counts as acceptable sentiment are critical to many of our present political debates. From the discussion of sexual assault playing out in the pages of this newspaper to the fight for the rights of transgender people, the stakes are not just policy, but the boundaries of legitimate conversations. As much as we might wish it to be true, the American public has reached no agreement on what counts as outlandishly cruel and what is productive in many areas of public life.

The extent to which Coates has been able to re-position the goalposts in his own area of focus and repaint lines on the field to set new markers of progress toward racial equality is rather remarkable. Those victories may be hard to preserve, and they may be even more difficult to replicate. They may not even translate into policy. But as Coates put it last night, “Somebody’s got to work on the edge of imagination.”

America’s Moral Debt to African Americans

Published Date : 2014-07-04 09:18:22

By Lonnie Bunch

Barbados prime minister explains unemployment through Caribbean slave history

Published Date : 2014-06-09 20:10:09

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, Monday June 9, 2014, CMC – Prime Minister Freundel Stuart has cited traditional high Caribbean unemployment as a reason for current challenges to the National Insurance Service (NIS) fund that pays relief benefits to workers who lose their jobs.

Derek Osbourne, an actuary at the Bahamian company, Horizonnow Consultants, who conducted an actuarial review of the NIS Unemployment and Severance Funds in 2013, was last week reported to have warned in his submission that unless government urgently injects money into the NIS Unemployment Fund, it would struggle to pay benefits in two years.

“Employment has always been an issue here in the Caribbean. One of the features about Caribbean history after about 450 years to 500 years, is that we’ve only had full employment in the Caribbean during the days of slavery,’ Stuart said.

He added that the region has struggled to create economies capable of absorbing its available workforce through employment.

He said for this reason, “the unemployment fund has always been the most challenged of our funds because unemployment, in these islands in the Caribbean, Barbados included,  has always been a challenge.

“There has never been a time in the history of the Unemployment Benefit Fund in Barbados when it was not under challenge.”

The Barbados leader contended that however all is well because the other NIS funds are not in jeopardy.

“Our severance fund is healthy. The National Insurance department administers a number of funds and those funds are all in a state of robust health.

“So far as the National Insurance Fund is concerned, no need to worry at all,”

Conyers to Re-introduce Legislation to Study Reparations

Published Date : 2014-07-04 09:12:12

Reparations Conference at Chicago State University

by Frederick H. Lowe 
U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr. said he will re-introduce in the 113th Congress legislation that calls for a seven-member commission to study reparations for African Americans.

“It is the most important piece of legislation I have ever introduced, and I will re-introduce HR40 in the 113th Congress,” Conyers (D., Mich.) told the 400 attendees at the “Revitalizing The Reparations Movement” conference on Saturday at Chicago State University. The 113th Congress first met Jan. 3, 2013.

He made his comments in the wake of 14 Caribbean nations demanding reparations and apology from Britain and other European countries for the trans-Atlantic slave trade. If the countries fail to negotiate with the Caribbean nations, they will sue them in the World Court, which is located in The Hague, The Netherlands. Thus far, Sweden is the only country that has indicated a willingness to negotiate reparations.

Conyers said the actions by the Caribbean nations will revitalize the reparations movement in the United States. “I think it is going to be a springboard for reparations,” he said.

Conyers first introduced the legislation, titled “Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act,” in 1989 during the 101th Congress. The bill was referred to the House Judiciary Committee, where Conyers is the ranking member.

The eight-page piece of legislation, which was co-introduced by U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott (D., Va.), said the 4 million Africans and their descendants were enslaved in the United States and colonies that became the United States from 1619 to 1865.  The government sanctioned slavery from 1789 through 1865, enabling it to flourish. At the same time, it deprived Africans of life, liberty, citizenship rights, and their cultural heritage. In addition, slavery denied
them the fruits of their own labor.

The Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act would study the lingering negative effects of slavery and discrimination and recommend appropriate remedies in consideration of the Commission’s findings.  In addition, the Commission would examine defacto discrimination against freed slaves and their descendants from the end of the Civil War to the present, including economic, political, and social discrimination.

The Commission will hold hearings and submit a written report.

Conyers said he wants to hold hearings in Washington, D.C., about reparations for African Americans.”If the Republican Congress blocks the hearings, I will hold them throughout the country,” he said.

FDA To Evaluate Marijuana For Potential Reclassification As Less Dangerous Drug

Published Date : 2014-06-24 20:36:44

With Atlantic article on reparations, Ta-Nehisi Coates sees payoff for years of struggle

Published Date : 2014-06-21 19:59:02

By Manuel Roig-Franzia  

Africans Have Apologized for Slavery, So Why Won’t the US?

Published Date : 2014-06-18 20:19:53

By: Theodore R. Johnson III

Five years ago I stood in a slave castle on Senegal’s Gorée Island at the infamous Door of No Return. Our guide told us that once Africans walked through this doorway, which opened right into the Atlantic Ocean, they were gone forever. During the slave trade, shackled blacks were led out the door and forced onto ships that waited on the other side. If a slave tried to turn back, he could be shot and fed to the sharks that loitered nearby.

After the group had moved on, I lingered a few minutes and wondered if any of my ancestors walked through this door on the way to a life of brutal enslavement. Just then, a Senegalese man walked up to me and asked if I was American. When I told him I was, he put his hand on my shoulder and, with his voice cracking with emotion, said, “I’m sorry, brother.”

Five years ago this week, just months after President Barack Obama took office, the Senate unanimously passed a resolution apologizing for slavery. The Senate acknowledged “the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery” and apologized “to African Americans, on behalf of the people of the United States, for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery.”

The House of Representatives had passed a similar measure the previous year. But Congress could not resolve the two apologies because of differing views on how the resolution would be used in any discussion of reparations. The Senate version was insistent that an apology would not endorse any future claims. The House could not agree. Significantly, the office of the president of the United States has never issued an apology.

In other words, the United States has never given an unconditional apology for slavery. For a nation that can’t even agree on an apology, the recent conversation around reparations could be seen as little more than an exercise in oratory.

It’s a little absurd that I had to travel across the Atlantic Ocean to West Africa to hear the words “Sorry, brother.”

As it turns out, mine was not a singular event. Many West African nations and tribes have issued apologies for their role in the transatlantic slave trade to black Americans, and even to specific African-American individuals who have traced their ancestry to certain locales and who would otherwise have never received an apology.

In 1999 the president of Benin, a neighbor of Nigeria, apologized for his nation’s role in slavery. In 2006 Ghana apologized to American descendants of slaves. A few months ago a Cameroonian chieftain apologized to an African American who’d traced his lineage to a couple of local clans. Other West African tribal leaders have done the same.

The reason for these apologies is the role that some West African tribes and clans played in trading away people from neighboring tribes that they’d captured in war or kidnapped. Though this may appear to have been Africans selling Africans into slavery, it was not that simple. As many scholars have noted, calling all participants “African” presumes a unified identity among captors and captives that did not exist during the transatlantic slave trade. Different tribes saw themselves as completely distinct and held no inherent loyalties to one another, just as people today in Montreal, Mexico City and Washington, D.C., do not see one another as American brothers simply because they sit on the same continent.

However, many West African nations now feel compassion and a sense of responsibility for the descendants of those taken from African soil. They recognize the atrocity and the complicity of some of their ancestors in allowing it to occur. And so they have apologized—without condition.

The United States, on the other hand, has not. Though it has formally apologized for the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and for subjecting black men to syphilis research during the Tuskegee Experiment, the nation has not mustered the will to do the same for slavery.

And it’s not just the government. In a recent Huffington Post/YouGov poll, only 28 percent of Americans thought that slavery warranted an apology, while 54 percent thought the country should not apologize (18 percent had no opinion). In other words, it is not the will of the American people or of the government to apologize for slavery. This is a significant declaration and communicates to black Americans what the nation thinks of their story.

As a black man and military officer, I was especially proud to see President Obama and the first lady stand in the Door of No Return when they visited Gorée Island last year. The visual of our first black president standing in the spot which symbolizes the victimization and subjugation of generations of black people was incredibly powerful. But for me, what is just as significant is that on the very spot where my commander in chief stood, a man from another country said the words that the nation I love and defend will not say.

Here’s hoping the incentive to apologize will take the same course from Africa to U.S. shores as many blacks did centuries ago.

Theodore R. Johnson III is a writer, naval officer and former White House fellow. His writing focuses on race, society and politics. Follow him on Twitter.

Watch Ta-Nehisi Coates lay out the inescapable math of American racism

Published Date : 2014-06-17 13:41:43

America's Moral Debt to African Americans

Published Date : 2014-06-10 11:06:13

Lonnie Bunch is the Director of the National Museum of African-American History & Culture.

The Past Isn't Past: The Economic Case for Reparations

Published Date : 2014-06-08 19:27:08

June 6, 2014  |

“The past is in the past; it’s time to move on.”

That’s a common response to Ta-Nehisi Coates’ eloquent essay in The Atlantic, “The Case for Reparations,” and his recent discussion with Bill Moyers.

But that sentiment betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of how the legacy of hundreds of years of slavery and the American-style apartheid known as Jim Crow continue to hurt the economic prospects of African-American babies born today.

“The average black family has about one-tenth of the wealth of the typical white family — that’s ten cents on the dollar,” says NYU sociologist Dalton Conley, author of Being Black, Living in the Red: Race, Wealth and Social Class in America. “Income doesn’t explain the gap,” he adds. “African-Americans make about 77 cents on the white dollar, on average — the gap in income is much smaller than the gap in net worth.”

Even poor white households — those hovering around the poverty line — have $10,000 or $15,000 in accumulated wealth, according to Conley. But “the typical black family at that income level will have zero net worth, or even negative net worth, which means they’re paying interest on top of all their other bills.”

Conley studied how differences in household wealth impact the next generation’s economic prospects. While much of the discussion of black outcomes has centered around family structure, Conley’s research shows that only two family background measures really have an impact in terms of kids’ performance in school and future placement in the job market: the parents’ levels of education and wealth. “Nothing else seems to matter,” he says.

While the rate of African-Americans who complete college has increased dramatically since the Civil Rights era, the children of whites who are of college age today are around 50 percent more likely to have parents with at least a bachelor’s degree than blacks.

This is the reality that often gets lost in our heated debate over whether America has truly moved beyond its racist past — the argument over whether or not we live today in a “post-racial society.” For most of our history, blacks have been deprived of the opportunity to build wealth — through both legal and illegal means, and often with a lot of violence. It wasn’t until the mid-1960s that African-Americans became full citizens of the United States.

“Wealth,” says Conley, “more than any other socio-economic measure picks up long-term historical legacies that are being passed on from generation to generation. Given this large wealth disparity between whites and blacks, there really is an unequal playing field.”

Wealth Matters

Having some net worth impacts families in several important ways.

Wealth provides a cushion against economic shocks. “It’s a risky economy, and everybody needs a buffer,” says Rachel Black, an expert in asset-building at the New America Foundation. “That’s especially true for those living on the financial margins, where a small dip in their income or an unexpected expense could leave them either making material sacrifices — like skipping meals — or not being able to repair the car that they need to get to work.”

About one-third of all welfare recipients are African-Americans, a fact that helps perpetuate vicious and bigoted stereotypes about blacks being lazy and “dependent.” But the reality is that hundreds of years of structural discrimination have left black families without the same cushion that even poor white households tend to have, so when things go wrong they’re less likely to be able to get by without turning to public assistance.

But the most important way that a family’s wealth affects kids’ chances of getting ahead is through what’s known as “intergenerational assistance.”

“Wealth matters in terms of passing on a family business or helping your offspring with a down payment on a home or financing a job search,” says Dalton Conley. “Simply paying for college is a big part of it — if you have a buffer and don’t have to work two jobs to pay for college, you’re much more likely to graduate in four years.”

Because chances for young African-Americans to get their degrees diminish without such a buffer, most of today’s proposals for reparations include some sort of college fund to give young blacks the same opportunity to get an education that many white people take for granted.

Place Matters

The wealth gap holds down entire neighborhoods. Ta-Nehisi Coates told Bill Moyers that a black family “that has an income of $100,000 a year, on average, actually lives in a neighborhood that’s comparable to a white family that makes $30,000 a year.”

That’s another manifestation of the black-white wealth gap. Even after the crash in the housing market, most American families hold the lion’s share of their wealth in housing.

What’s more, home values are a good indicator of the quality of the local schools. That’s a result of a virtuous cycle — neighborhoods with more expensive real estate have healthier tax bases to fund their schools. Excellent schools then attract buyers and drive up home values.

The fact that poorer neighborhoods tend to have worse schools is yet another way that the black-white wealth gap creates an uneven playing field. A modern reparations scheme could help level it.

Coates makes an historical and moral case for reparations. The wealth gap is the basis for a practical, unsentimental one. ”Even if you could wave a magic wand and make all other forms of inequality disappear today,” says Conley, “it would take a very long time for that wealth inequality to naturally dissolve.”

Forty Acres and a Mule

But what would a modern program of reparations really entail? It wouldn’t consist of the 40 acres and a mule many blacks expected to receive at the end of the Civil War. Fortunately, we have more recent models to look at.

After World War II, the US invested a huge number of dollars to build a (largely white) middle class with the GI Bill. Veterans returning from the war were eligible to purchase homes with low-interest loans and no down payments, get cheap loans to start businesses and have their tuition and expenses covered if they decided to get an education.

At the same time, overseas, the US implemented the Marshall Plan, investing billions to bring Europe out of the ruins. ”We might consider the equivalent of a Marshall Plan to uplift black America in the same way the European countries were rejuvenated in the aftermath of World War II,” says William Darity, Jr., a professor of African-American studies and economics at Duke University.

“I’ve talked about a portfolio of reparations, where four or five different components co-exist, and these could include what people classically think about when they hear the word ‘reparations’ — direct payments to eligible recipients. But they could also include college scholarships and funds that would allow people to start small businesses. They could include some form of long-term financial assets. There are a variety of things that could be done to address these huge racial wealth disparities.”

But Harvard legal scholar Charles Ogletree asks, “Where do you start? It’s hard to figure out.” He thinks the issue has to be resolved with a worldwide reparations scheme.

Ogletree opposes paying restitution to individuals. He would dedicate a pool of money to the basics: health care, housing and jobs. He says, “There has to be, at a minimum, a [universal] program of education — to make sure that the newborn children of people of African descent have access to a high-quality education.”

“If you look at the state of people of African descent centuries after slavery, you still see a high number of African-Americans who are willing to work but are unemployed, who are looking for housing but can’t afford it because of gentrification and other factors, who want their children to get a better education than they had, but can’t do it if they live in communities with poor school systems.”

Ogletree points out that the federal government issued an apology to Japanese-Americans interned during World War II — and paid reparations to the survivors (even if it was a small sum paid out more than 40 years after the war was over). But as William Darity notes, “no such apology ever has been made by an official entity of the US federal government either for slavery or for the Jim Crow practices that followed slavery.”

There are other questions: Who would be eligible for a reparations program? What about someone of mixed race — with a black parent whose family suffered the harms of white supremacy and a white parent whose family profited from it?

“We’re not going to count people’s fractions,” says Darity. “That’s a ridiculous exercise.” Rather, he would use two criteria for eligibility: tracing an ancestor who was enslaved in the US, and having self-identified as “black, colored, negro or African-American” on official documents at some point during the ten years prior to the establishment of a reparations program.

Darity acknowledges that it may be difficult for some people to demonstrate that they had an enslaved ancestor 200 years ago. “This would give a lot of business to the genealogists,” he says. But there is a more subtle way. “If an individual’s family appears in the 1870 census, but didn’t appear in the 1850 or 1860 census, and they were negro, then it is very likely that they had an enslaved ancestor.”

Helping Black America by Closing the Wealth-Gap

These ideas face a significant obstacle. Sixty years of public opinion research reveals an obvious if uncomfortable truth: Most Americans are highly supportive of anti-poverty programs in the abstract, but they take a dim view of those they perceive as helping blacks. (For more on that, see BillMoyers.com’s interview with Martin Gilens, author of Why Americans Hate Welfare.)

But there’s a way to pay our bills that might be an easier lift politically: Closing the wealth gap between the haves and the have-nots. After all, people of color make up a disproportionate share of the have-nots.

Right now, American public policy runs in the opposite direction. “I think that one thing a lot of people don’t understand is the extent to which we subsidize savings for families that are already wealthy,” says the New America Foundation’s Rachel Black. “We spend about half a trillion dollars a year subsidizing the wealth of people who already have it rather than creating new wealth for families that don’t.” Black says that mismatch is “one of the major drivers of the wealth gap.”

The biggest asset subsidy in the US is the home mortgage deduction, 77 percent of which is captured by upper-middle-class households making between $75,000 and $500,000 per year, according to the National Priorities Project. “Rather than helping more families purchase homes,” says Black, the credit only “ends up inflating the size of homes that people buy and inflating the cost of homes, which makes them even less accessible for low-income families.”

After housing, we spend the most subsidizing people’s retirement savings, and the top 20 percent of earners capture two-thirds of that money. As Black notes, “The people who need this kind of investment — and the ones who benefit the most — are almost entirely left out. This is the exact opposite of effective policy-making.”

We could rationalize these policies. A number of ideas for helping poorer people build wealth have been around for years. We could offer universal 401(K)s to everyone, with the government subsidizing the savings of low-wage workerswith two dollars for every dollar taken out of their paychecks.

Black points to the ASPIRE Act, which would give every baby born in the US a savings account with $500. That number would be doubled for poorer kids, and the government would then match whatever a low-income family socked away dollar-for-dollar. The fund would then be restricted to paying for college, a first home, a business, or retirement. They’ve had a similar scheme in the UK for years, and it’s considered a huge success.

“There’s been some compelling research showing that just having a savings account in a child’s own name, regardless of how much money is in it, can increase the likelihood that the child will attend college by about six times,” says Black.

Whether we focus on the wealth-gap between rich and poor or whites and blacks, we have to acknowledge that, as Ta-Nehisi Coates writes in The Atlantic, “Plunder in the past made plunder in the present efficient,” and that these huge disparities in net worth make it impossible to achieve an even playing field on which Americans are limited only by their innate skills and appetite for hard work. Without that, the historic inequities that plague our economy will only persist.

Joshua Holland is Senior Digital Producer at BillMoyers.com, and host of Politics and Reality Radio. He’s the author of The 15 Biggest Lies About the Economy. Drop him an email or follow him on Twitter. 

The Radical Practicality of Reparations

Published Date : 2014-06-04 14:58:38

President Ronald Reagan signs the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. The Act granted reparations to Japanese-Americans interned during World War II. (Ronald Reagan Presidential Library And Museum)

David Frum has posted a rebuttal to my argument in favor of reparations. I appreciate David’s engagement with the issue. I often miss the old days when The Atlantic‘s writers would engage each other in running debate, so I’m happy for the chance to get back into that kind of conversation here.

On y va.

David grounds his rebuttal in The Philadelphia Plan, an affirmative action program which David believes qualifies as reparations. I disagree. The Philadelphia Plan was an attempt to end job discrimination among firms doing business with the federal government. Originally it was isolated to the building trades in Philadelphia. This was not a mistake. “The NAACP wanted a tougher require; the unions hated the whole thing,” said White House aide John Ehrlichman. “Before long, the AFL-CIO and the NAACP were locked in combat over one of the passionate issues of the day and the Nixon administration was located in the sweet and reasonable middle.”

The Plan’s proprietors showed little stomach for any kind of historical reckoning. President Richard Nixon’s Assistant Secretary of Labor Arthur Fletcher, who helped create the Plan, targeted not just blacks, but “Orientals, American Indians and persons with Spanish surnames.”

More importantly, The Philadelphia Plan was focused on ending present racist discrimination, not compensating for the past. In Philadelphia, a city that was 30 percent black, there were 12 minority unionized ironworkers and three black pipe-fitters. There was no black unionized work among the sheet metal trades, elevator constructors, or the stone-masons. From the perspective of reparations, one might calculate how much this discrimination had cost Philadelphia’s black community and then attempt to compensate them. The Philadelphia Plan did not do this. Indeed Fletcher went so far as to declare himself neither interested in compensation nor “a fruitless debate about slavery and its debilitating legacy.” The Philadelphia Plan was no more reparations than school busing was reparations.

The White House’s appetite for these “reparations” proved short lived. In 1970, Nixon took The Philadelphia Plan national, expanding beyond the trades. In 1972, he ran against his own plan. Fletchers was forced out. The Democrats were tarred as the “quota party.” “The zip went out of that integration effort,” said then aide William Safire, “after the hard hats marched in support of Nixon on the war.” So much for “reparations.”

And so much for history. David goes on to assert that reparations for one group must necessarily lead to reparations for all groups:

With any program of reparations, likewise, other claimants will come forward. If African Americans are due payment for slavery and subjugation, what about Native Americans, who lost a whole continent? What about Mexican-Americans, who were deprived by the Mexican-American war of the right to migrate into half their former country? Japanese Americans, interned during World War II? Chinese Americans, the victims of coolie labor and the Oriental Exclusion Acts? Members of these groups may concede that they were not maltreated in the same way as African Americans—and may not be entitled to exactly the same consideration. But if black Americans are entitled to almost a trillion dollars in compensation (Coates suggests a figure of $34 billion a year “for a decade or two”) surely these other maltreated groups must be entitled at least to something?

This argument carries the virus of its own destruction. In fact reparations paid to Japanese-Americans for internment has been American policy for over 20 years. No reparations for African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, or Chinese-Americans followed. Even German-Americans and Italian-Americans who were also interned received no reparations.

The Japanese-American struggle for reparations is significant and important, not just for our present discussion, but because it serves as useful corrective for hagiographers of war. And it is not an obscure episode. Indeed, Japanese-American reparations were in the news this week, with the death of activist Yuri Kochiyama, one of the principal advocates of the cause. David treats Japanese-American reparations as an open question or a thought experiment. But it isn’t. It’s American history—and people charged with analyzing America should know it.

People who take up reparations arguments should especially know it because it presents us with some provocative questions.  The collective ills of housing segregation—block-busting, redlining, segregated public-housing, the G.I. Bill, terrorism—continued long after Japanese-American internment. A serious interlocutor of reparations can not thoughtlessly muster a melange of historical wrongs, but must directly explain why the Japanese-American case is compelling, but the more recent African-American case is not.

Slippery slopes will not do. The “If we give them one, they’ll all have one” argument is demonstrably false. This is as it should be. The argument for black reparations is not simply “Hey guys, we did it for the Japanese-Americans so it must be right.” A claim must stand on its arguments. Nothing would please me more than to read a 15,000 word “Case for Native American Reparations.” I say this because we can’t evaluate particular claims without understanding particular history. David, like many who believe reparations to be “impossible,” is anxious to skip the history and leap to implementation. But the questions, themselves, prove that we are not prepared.

“Does a mixed-raced person qualify?” David asks. Probably so, given that there are very few “pure raced” black people who were injured by racism. Indeed, the lack of “purity” is parcel to the injury. Perhaps David wants to ask “Do black people with direct ‘white’ ancestry qualify?” The correct reply to this is “Were black people with direct ‘white’ ancestry victims of racist housing policy?” The answer to that question is knowable. But it is not the question we ask. Instead we focus on the myth of “race,” while ignoring the demonstrable fact of injury.

This species of ignorance—of looking away—is old. In 1884, Harvard scientist Nathaniel Shaler assessed “The Negro Problem” in the pages of this very magazine. Shaler concluded that:

It was their presence here that was the evil, and for this none of the men of our century are responsible … The burden lies on the souls of our dull, greedy ancestors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, who were too stupid to see or too careless to consider anything but immediate gain …

There can be no sort of doubt, that, judged by the light of all experience, these people are a danger to America greater and more insuperable than any of those that menace the other great civilized states of the world. The armies of the Old World, the inheritance of medievalism  in its governments, the chance evils of Ireland and Sicily, are all light burdens when compared with this load of African negro blood that an evil past has imposed upon us.

At the very moment that Shaler was disowning American responsibility for enslavement, there were thousands, perhaps millions, of freedmen alive as well as their enslavers. It had barely been 20 years since enslavement was abolished. It had not been ten years since the rout of Reconstruction. In that time, sensible claims for reparations were being made. The black activist Callie House argued that pensions should be paid to freedmen and freedwomen for unpaid toil. The movement garnered Congressional support. But it failed, largely because, the country believed as Shaler did, that “none of the men of this century” were “responsible.”

A similar moment finds us now. Even if one feels that slavery was too far into the deep past (and I do not, because I view this as a continuum) the immediate past is with us. Identifying the victims of racist housing policy in this country is not hard. Again, we have the maps. We have census. We could set up a claims system for black veterans who were frustrated in their attempt to use the G.I. Bill. We could then decide what remedy we might offer these people and their communities. And there is nothing “impractical” about this.

The problem of reparations has never been practicality. It has always been the awesome ghosts of history. A fear of ghosts has sometimes occupied the pages of the magazine for which David and I now writes. In other times banishment has been our priority. The mature citizen, the hard student, is now called to choose between finding a reason to confront the past, or finding more reasons to hide from it. David thinks HR-40 commits us to a solution. He is correct. The solution is to study. I submit his own article as proof of why such study is so deeply needed.

---

* The following books were essential to this piece:

• Terry Anderson’s The Pursuit of Fairness is a thorough review of the history affirmative action, a policy which many people talk about but fail to understand. Quotes of Fletcher and Ehrlichman are taken from Anderson’s book.
• Mary Francis Berry’s My Face Is Black Is True, is a chronicle of one of the earliest efforts, post-enslavement, for reparations led by the remarkable Callie House.
• Khalil Gibran Muhammad’s The Condemnation of Blackness, is a useful corrective to the deceptive invocations of “black on black crime.” Muhammad demonstrates that much of rhetoric around “black crime” is old and has its roots in our racist past.

The Case for American History

Published Date : 2014-06-03 14:59:34

A reply to National Review’s Kevin D. Williamson

By Ta-Nehisi Coates

A 1939 Home Owners’ Loan Corporation “Residential Security Map” of Chicago shows discrimination against low-income and minority neighborhoods. The residents of the areas marked in red (representing “hazardous” real-estate markets) were denied FH (Frankie Dintino)

I wanted to take moment to reply to Kevin Williamson’s Case Against Reparations. I wanted to do that, primarily, because his piece covers many of the most common objections to my piece, but also because I’ve always been an admirer of Williamson’s writing, if not his ideas. Among those ideas is a kind of historical creationism which holds that “race” is a fixed thing. The problems with this approach are many, and duly apparent from the outset.

Williamson says he is opposed to “converting the liberal Anglo-American tradition of justice into a system of racial apportionment.” He then observes that, in fact, that tradition, itself, has always been deeply concerned with “racial apportionment.” Thus within the second paragraph, Williamson is undermining his own thesis—if the Anglo-American tradition is what he concedes it to be, no “converting” is required. We reverse polarity for a time, and then we all live happily ever after.

Or probably not. That is because Williamson’s entire framing is wrong. Reparations are not due because black people are black, but because black people have been injured. And the Anglo-American tradition has never been a system of “racial apportionment,” but of racist apportionment. Like most writers and public intellectuals (liberal and conservative) Williamson’s reply is rooted in the idea of “race” as constant—i.e. there is a “black race” that can be traced back to Africa, and a “white race” that can be traced back to Europe. There certainly is such a thing as African and European ancestry, and that ancestry is not entirely irrelevant to our world. But ancestry is tangential, and sometimes wholly unrelated, to racism, injury, and reparations.

We know this because there is no constant idea of “black” or “white” across time or space. We know this because Charlie Patton fathered the blues, and Alessandro de Medici ruled in Venice. Black in America is not black in Brazil, and black in modern America is not even black in 18th-century Louisiana. Nor are people we consider “white” today any sort of constant. Throughout American history it has been common to speak of an “Italian race,” an “Irish race,” a “Frankish race,” a “Jewish race” even a “Southern race.” One might take a hard look at Williamson’s agreeable portrait, for instance, and note the problem of assigning anyone to a race. “Race,” writes the imminent historian Nell Irvin Painter, “is an idea, not a fact.”

In this country, at this moment, “African-Americans” are an ethnic group comprised of individuals of varying degrees of direct African ancestry. Nothing about this fact necessitated plunder or injury, and it is the injury—through red-lining, black codes, slaves codes, lynching, ghettoization, fraud, rape, and murder—with which reparations concerns itself. The point is not “racial apportionment,” which is to say giving people things because they are black. It is injury apportionment, which is to say restoring things to people who have been plundered.

Racism, and its progeny white supremacy, is concerned with dividing human beings, on the basis of ancestry (which is very real) and slotting them into a hierarchy (which is an invention). “Race” is that hierarchy—and any study of the word across history bears out its relationship to assigning value and scale across humanity. In polite society we’ve moved past overtly hierarchal ideas about “race,” but the problem of imprecise naming remains with us. Let us bypass that imprecision—the Anglo-American tradition which Williamson extolls has, as he concedes, sought to erect and uphold a racist hierarchy. Reparations seeks its total and complete destruction.

Williamson believes that reparations must either boil down to a “symbolic political process”  or a series of polices that helps America’s poor and disproportionately aids African-Americans. How, Williamson asks, can one make a claim on behalf of Sasha and Malia Obama, in a world of poor whites? In much the same way that a factory which pumps toxins into a poor neighborhood is not indemnified because a plaintiff rises to become a millionaire. Taking Williamson’s argument to its logical conclusion, a businessman brutalized by the police should never sue the city because, well, homelessness.

People who are injured sometimes achieve great things—this does not obviate the fact of their injury, nor their claim to recompense. Warren Moon achieved more than the vast majority of white quarterbacks. Had racism not forced him into the CFL for the first five crucial years of his career, he might have had more success than any quarterback to ever play the game. Satchel Paige enjoys an honor which the vast majority of white baseball players shall never glimpse—induction in the Hall of Fame. What might Paige achieved had he not been injured by white supremacy for the vast majority of his career? Mr. Clyde Ross is a homeowner, and considerably better off than many of his North Lawndale neighbors. To achieve this he worked three jobs and lost time that he should have been able to invest in his children. What might Mr. Ross have been had he not endured racist plunder from Clarksdale to Chicago?

The problem of racism is not synonymous with the problem of the poverty line. Indeed, it is often in the fate of the most conventionally successful African-Americans that we see the full horror of a corrupt social contract.  The injury of racism means many things, virtually all of them bad. It means making $100,000 a year but living in neighborhoods equivalent to white people who make $30,000 a year. It means belonging to a class whose men comprise some eight percent of the world’s entire prison population. It means, if you do go to college, still enjoying lesser employment prospects than white college graduates. It means living in a family with roughly a 20th of the wealth of those who do not suffer your particular ailment. In short, it means quite a bit—and these effects do not merely haunt the poor. My heart bleeds for the white child injured by the departure of parents. But God forbid the injury of racism be added to the burden.

The pervasive effects of the injury should not surprise—the injuring and exploitation of black people regardless of economic class has been one of the dominant themes of American history. It is only the obviation, or ignorance, of history that allows us to escape this. The result must be an especially tortured specimen of reasoning:

Some blacks are born into college-educated, well-off households, and some whites are born to heroin-addicted single mothers, and even the totality of racial crimes throughout American history does not mean that one of these things matters and one does not. Once that fact is acknowledged, then the case for reparations is only moral primitivism.

Williamson’s “fact” can not be acknowledged because, even by Williamson’s crude measures, it is artifice. There are—at most—1.5 million people who use heroin in this country. The ranks of the African-American poor are roughly eight times that. More importantly, the claim of reparations does not hinge on every individual white person everywhere being wealthy. That is because reparations is not a claim against white Americans, anymore than reparations paid to interned Japanese-Americans was a claim against non-Japanese-Americans. The claim was brought before the multi-ethnic United States of America.

There seems to be great confusion on this point. The governments of the United States of America—local, state and federal—are deeply implicated in enslavement, Jim Crow, redlining, New Deal racism, terrorism, ghettoization, housing segregation. The fact that one’s ancestors were not slave-traders or that one arrived here in 1980 is irrelevant. I did not live in New York when the city railroaded the Central Park Five. But my tax dollars will pay for the settlement. That is because a state is more than the natural lives, or occupancy, of its citizens. People who object to reparations for African-Americans because they, individually, did nothing should also object to reparations to Japanese-Americans, but they should not stop there. They should object to the Fourth of July, since they, individually, did nothing to aid the American Revolution. They should object to the payment of pensions for the Spanish-American War, a war fought before they were alive. Indeed they should object to government and society itself, because its existence depends on outliving its individual citizens.

A sovereignty that dies with every generation is a failed state. The United States, whatever its problems, is not in that league. The United States’ success as a state extends out from several factors, some of them good and others not so much. The mature citizen understands this. The immature citizen claims credit for all national accolades, while disavowing responsibility for all demerits. This specimen of patriotism is at the core of many (not all) arguments against reparations. Everyone claims to love their country, but considerably fewer know their country. This is true even among those charged with analyzing it:

Even assuming that invidious racism were an entirely negligible factor, it is likely that economic development will tend to proceed along broad racial channels if, for example, people of various ethnicities tend to largely marry within their ethnic group, live in neighborhoods largely populated by co-ethnics, and engage in other social-sorting behavior that is racial at its root but not really what we mean by the word “racism.” If that is the case — and it seems that it is — then initial conditions will be very important for a very long period of time.

This works if you believe in history as creationism. It does not work if you value research and evidence. Even at a time when people believed in separate European races, intermarriage rates among European ethnic groups were quite high. It’s tough to assess intermarriage rates among blacks and whites in early America, partially because the very racial terms Williamson embrace did not have the same connotation. Nevertheless, the historian Ira Berlin notes that:

On the Eastern shore of Virginia, at least one man from every leading black family—the Johnsons, Paynes, and Drigguses—married a white woman. There seems to have been little stigma attached to such unions: after Francis Payne’s death, his white widow remarried, this time to a white man.  In like fashion, free black women joined together with white men. William Greensted, a white attorney who represented Elizabeth Key, a woman of color, in her successful suit for freedom, later married her. In 1691 when the Virginia General Assembly ruled against such relationships, some propertied white Virginians found the legislation novel and obnoxious enough to muster a protest have researched the history of American ethnicity.

What we term as “interracial” marriage did not just exist among the “propertied” but among the workers. In her book Sex Among The Rabble, the historian Clare Lyons quotes a Philadelphia minister denouncing “these frequent mixtures.” The minister feared that “a particoloured race will soon make a great portion of the population of Philadelphia.” The “particoloured race” did indeed come to be. It is us—black people. That unions between blacks and whites in America have historically been driven into the shadows is not a matter of “social sorting that is racial,” “primitivism,” nor “tribalism.” It is a matter of Thomas Jefferson, in 1769, seeking to pass a law banishing any white woman from Virginia who had a child by black man. In short, it is a matter of racist policy pushed by intelligent, and otherwise, sage men.

And racist policy is at the heart of our beloved country. Ignoring this leaves us intellectually poor, and finds us devolving into bizarre thought experiments:

Imagine, for example, that rather than having been brought to the colonies as slaves, the first Africans to arrive in the New World had come as penniless immigrants in 1900.

Williamson then posits that black people would still be poor because they’d be far behind the native white population. Williamson never considers that the two groups might intermarry—because he believes in “race,” which is to say creationism. For that same reason he ignores the fact there was no “New World” with “native whites” to come to without the labor of African-Americans. Europeans did not purchase enslaved Africans because they disliked the cut of their jib. They did it because they had taken a great deal of land and needed bonded labor to extract resources from it. Africans—aliens to society, existing beyond the protections of the crown—fit the bill.

“The people to whom reparations were owed,” Williamson concludes. “Are long dead.” Only because we need them to be. Mr. Clyde Ross is very much alive—as are many of the victims of redlining. And it is not hard to identify them. We know where redlining took place and where it didn’t. We have the maps. We know who lived there and who didn’t.

This was American policy. We have never accounted for it, and it is unlikely that we ever will. That is not because of any African-American’s life-span but because of a powerful desire to run out the clock. Reparations claims were made within the natural lifetimes of emancipated African-Americans. They were unsuccessful. They were not unsuccessful because they lacked merit. They were unsuccessful because their country lacked the courage to dispense with creationism.

So it goes.

White supremacy is alive and well: Ta-Nehisi Coates and the case for reparations

Published Date : 2014-05-23 09:00:51

By Bill Moyers, 

Bill Moyers is managing editor of the new weekly public affairs program, “Moyers & Company,” airing on public television.

Reparations Are Imperative: The Stagnate “State of Black America”

Published Date : 2014-05-05 12:57:47

Reparations Are Imperative

The Stagnate “State of Black America”

[For publication the week of May 5, 2014]

I recently attended the release of the National Urban League’s Annual State of Black America Report at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.   The Report is an extremely important document because it provides key indicators of Black progress in a number of social and economic areas in relationship to White Americans.  This year’s Report, One Nation Underemployed:  Jobs Rebuild America, focuses on the critical issues of joblessness, the wealth gap and economic inequality in Black America. The data explodes the myth that, because the United States has a Black President, we now live in a “post-racial” society — “race still matters” in America.  According to the Report, the Median Household Income for Whites is $56,565 compared to $33,764 for Blacks; 11% of Whites live below the poverty line, 28.1% for Blacks; unemployment among Whites is 6.5%, 13.1% for Blacks; and, the critical “wealth-building” indicator of home ownership, Whites own their homes at a rate of 73.5% compared to 43% for Blacks — stunning disparities for a “post racial” society.

Even more alarming is the persistence of an enormous wealth gap between Blacks and Whites. According to a study co-authored by Dr. Thomas Shapiro, who spoke at the release of the State of Black America Report, the median wealth for White families in 2009 was $113,149 but only $5,677 for Blacks! The study defines wealth as “what we own minus what we owe.”  Not surprisingly, Dr. Shapiro and his associates draw a direct correlation between homeownership and wealth accumulation.  Obviously the gap between Black and White home ownership is a major contributing factor to the abysmally low wealth accumulation in Black America.  And, for those who think race is inconsequential, as George Fraser and many Black analysts have pointed out, huge amounts of wealth was loss during the “Great Recession” when African Americans were deliberately targeted for toxic sub-prime mortgage loans.  Racism in the mortgage industry led to the loss of Black wealth.

What is sobering and alarming about this data is that in relative terms it hasn’t changed very much in the past decades if not generations.  Though I have not taken time to do the research, I am confident that a survey of past State of Black America Reports would show that the status of Blacks in comparison to Whites has remained relatively the same. For example, though income has increased for both groups, it is highly likely that the gap in the median income has remained about the same. Moreover, despite an expanded upper and middle class, the astonishing wealth gap between Blacks and Whites has not changed significantly.  The other startling reality is that if the Black upper and middle classes have expanded and there is still a significant gap between the races, this suggests that those stuck at the bottom in Black America (poor and working people) have not progressed but stagnated. These are the Black folks who are imprisoned in America’s “Dark Ghettos.” As Malcolm X might put it, they are catching more hell than ever before!

Though the State of Black America Reports are important, given the unchanging status of Blacks relative to Whites, it’s almost as if you could just say ditto on the data year after year. What accounts for the stagnate state of Black America? I believe it is the legacy of the intergenerational deficits of enslavement and the persistence of structural/institutional racism.

The cold fact is that Africans in America never received a substantial stake in terms of land or capital for the generations of free labor that produced incredible wealth for plantation owners, the shipbuilding, textile manufacturing, whiskey distilleries and a range of related industries and occupations — industries and occupations that thrived off the European slave trade and cash crop production, e.g. cotton, rice, sugar, indigo.

In addition, there was the “Jim Crow” system in the South which “set-aside” certain jobs for Whites and paid higher wages to Whites in jobs where Blacks and Whites did the same work.  These material incentives were designed to ensure that White poor and working people would always fare better than their Black counter-parts. In modified form, this system of “affirmative action” for Whites existed all across the nation well into the 20^th century. The benefits of “White privilege” were intended to drive a permanent wedge between Black and White poor and working people to prevent unified opposition to the manipulative, self-serving White ruling elites.  By and large the system has worked well. In no small measure the relative gap between Blacks and Whites in terms of income and wealth is a legacy of enslavement and structural/institutional racism.  And, large numbers of White poor and working class people still see Blacks as enemies instead of allies in the struggle to achieve a better quality of life.

The question is, how is it possible to ever erase the income and wealth gap between Blacks and Whites without dealing with the root cause of persistent inequality – the failure to provide compensation to the formerly enslaved Africans for the centuries of free labor and cultural, spiritual and physical destruction that have severely hampered the quest for justice, socio-economic equity/parity, freedom and self-determination.  The answer is clear, Reparations for the damages done to the sons and daughters in America are imperative if we are to achieve justice, equity/parity in the U.S. and the world for that matter. So, as we mobilize/organize to overcome the stagnate state of Black America, it is imperative that the demand for Reparations be an integral part of the agenda!

***

Dr. Ron Daniels is President of the Institute of the Black World 21^st Century and Distinguished Lecturer at York College City University of New York. His articles and essays also appear on the IBW website www.ibw21.org and www.northstarnews.com. To send a message, arrange media interviews or speaking engagements, Dr. Daniels can be reached via email at info@ibw21.org.

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Revitalizing the Reparations Movement

Published Date : 2014-04-23 18:47:45

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2NYDwFlO0k

Reparations: A global struggle after a global crime

Published Date : 2014-04-23 13:43:10

By Ashahed M. Muhammad -Assistant Editor- The Final Call

Freedom cannot be compromised Nation of Islam minister tells a Chicago gathering focused on justice for the descendants of survivors, victims of trans-Atlantic slave trade

Photos: Haroon Rajaee and Tim 6X

CHICAGO (FinalCall.com) – The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan told a group of political leaders, researchers and activists that true commitment and a firm unwavering demand for real justice is required, if the call for reparations is ever to be taken seriously by the governments of the earth.

“Nothing is more important than the liberation of our people,” Minister Farrakhan told those gathered at the Emil Jones Convocation Center on the campus of Chicago State University April 19. “If you really want freedom, you cannot compromise with slave makers, slave masters and the collaborators,” he said.

Although he had not been feeling his best, the Minister wanted to be with the “thinkers, warriors and soldiers” in the fight for the reparations and the liberation of oppressed people all over the world.

“We have a responsibility to our ancestors,” said Minister Farrakhan during remarks lasting about 30 minutes. “What kind of generation will we be to have ancestors that have gone through what our ancestors have gone through and we’re sitting here today talking about the revitalization of a movement that should never have had to be revitalized?” he asked.

Minister Farrakhan spoke on the subject of “Revitalizing the Reparations Movement” on the campus of Chicago State University April 19.

The meticulous research and documentation of scholars lays the base for movements to build upon and propels movements forward, noted Min. Farrakhan. “You cannot proceed for justice on assumptions. You can proceed for justice on actual facts.”

“When they speak—we act! It is not about applause, it is about acting now because the talk has been done and we talk too damn much and we do too little towards our own liberation!” said the Minister.

Revitalization suggests some have lost the spirit of reparatory justice, but, this it is not a quick and easy journey, it is a lifelong struggle until justice is achieved, he noted. Part of the problem is the weak approach of those sometimes sent to speak for the oppressed but who really desire favor with an enemy who only makes promises to deceive and never honors agreements, Min. Farrakhan added.

“When you talk to power, you can’t go to power just with a cry for justice; you’ve got to have power backing your cry! You should never think that the enemy is going to give you the justice that you seek. We’ve been crying at his feet for too damn long! We’ve got to have the power to force justice!”

Cowards will always need revitalization and slaves always want to be accepted by their former slave masters, he added. White governments know the truth about what they did during the slave trade and continue to reject the call for reparations from their former slaves, he said.

“What is our response? To go back and beg some more? That’s what got you in the shape you are in! You’re litigating your damn self into poverty and want! It’s not litigation it is revolution that is needed!” the Minister thundered.

Only men and women who aren’t afraid to die for reparatory justice and who are not seeking the friendship of their former slave masters will remain steadfast, he said.

Calling European governments “criminals,” the Minister said he realizes strong talk scares those who aren’t courageous and fully committed. But, he continued, the time has arrived for direct talk about the Black condition and what is required to change it.

“The situation is radical and it needs a radical solution,” said the Minister. “I’m not leaving the Earth as a squirming punk! I speak for the dead who have no voice today!  I speak for the living who are voiceless! I speak for the unborn generations who need a voice! That’s the kind of men and women that will make reparatory justice real.”

New life for the reparations movement?

Observers and activists agreed that the reparations movement in the United States has continuously hovered between lifeless and moribund for the last decade. Many key movement leaders, such as Hannibal Afrik, Imari Obadele and recently Chokwe Lumumba, have died. There have been real questions as to whether the reparations movement is even viable, or, simply an anachronism that has aged along with its leaders.

But in early March, the heads of the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) met in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and heavily discussed reparations for a global crime against humanity—the African slave trade.

The governments of Britain, France and the Netherlands are primarily being targeted to pay compensation to Blacks throughout the African Diaspora hurt and destroyed by what is commonly called the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, prime minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, has been at the forefront of the CARICOM effort. He was scheduled to be the day’s keynote speaker but was unable to make it. In his stead was Rhonda King, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines ambassador to the United Nations, and Professor Hilary Beckles, who serves as chair of the CARICOM Reparations Commission. Mr. Beckles, pro vice chancellor of the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies, wrote the book “Britain’s Black Debt: Reparations for Caribbean Slavery and Native Genocide.”

The trading of enslaved Africans lies at the foundation of the wealth inequality that exists not only in the United States but worldwide. The Western world was built through the work done, and profits generated by Blacks scattered across the globe and deposited wherever free labor was required by Europeans.

Calling reparatory justice “the greatest political movement of the 21st century,” Prof. Beckles explained reparations from responsible governments is more than just economics and finances—though both are important. It is a matter of pride, dignity, and self-respect for the victims of the slave trade to seek reparatory justice for the harm done, he said.

He went over a 10-point plan covering all aspects of what is needed for reparatory justice—ranging from formal apology, to curbing an “explosion of chronic diseases,” such as hypertension and diabetes, which grips Blacks in the Caribbean and the U.S., to debt cancellation.

There has been some tacit and direct admission of wrongdoing by European nations in recent years: The British agreed to issue a “statement of regret” and award $21.5 million to surviving Kenyans detained and tortured during the Mau Mau rebellion decades ago. In 2007 to mark the 200th anniversary of the British prohibition of slavery, then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair “expressed regret” for suffering caused by Britain’s role in the slave trade. The Haitian revolution of January 1, 1804 effectively ended slavery in that territory, but the equivalent of economic sanctions was used against Haiti as a penalty for her successful efforts at throwing off the chains of slavery and colonialism. Following the January 2010 earthquake, then French President Nicolas Sarkozy reportedly acknowledged the “wounds of colonization,” and quickly approved a financial aid package said to include millions in budgetary support for the Haitian government.

Activists say a mere “statement of regret” will not be sufficient for the horrific trafficking and enslavement of Black human beings around the world.

“It is a global struggle for a global crime,” said Prof. Beckles. “They must be held accountable for it. Our plan is to call for that justice.”

If they do not respond to the request for justice, these Western European nations will be taken to the International Court at the Hague, said activists.

“Slavery is over, but we are now in the jet stream of the consequences,” said Prof. Beckles.

During brief comments, Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, pastor emeritus of Trinity United Church of Christ, said although it is a term widely used in activist and academic circles, he feels it is inaccurate to refer to a trans-Atlantic slave trade because “the Atlantic Ocean never enslaved anyone.” The slave trade was a European endeavor, he said.

Dr. Conrad Worrill, a stalwart in the reparations movement, said no matter what happens, Africans in America and abroad must continue to fight for reparations.

“There is no statute of limitations on crimes against humanity,” said Dr. Worrill, of the Center for Inner City Studies, who helped organize the Chicago State forum alongside Dr. Ron Daniels of the Institute for the Black World 21st Century. Dr. Worrill was also among those who traveled to Durban, South Africa for the World Conference Against Racism in 2001. He witnessed Israel and the United States walk out of the conference when the question of reparations was brought up. While returning to the U.S. to discuss what took place in South Africa, the World Trade Center attack Sept. 11, refocused attention and changed the global landscape activists found. While many continued to fight to keep reparations in public view, the movement struggled to attract the masses of the people, especially young people. Despite the challenges, said Dr. Worrill, those who truly want justice cannot be weak in their call for justice.

“A strong people will never give up fighting for justice and repair from those who damaged you,” he said.

Rep. John Conyers, Jr., who first introduced HR-40, the Reparation’s Study Bill, in 1989, vowed to continue to pursue the legislation no matter how long it takes. He first introduced the bill in the 101st Congress of the United States. It is now the 113th Congress.

“This is one of the most important pieces of legislations I have ever produced,” Rep. Conyers told the audience.

A global struggle, a global crime

Don Rojas, communications director for the Institute of the Black World, said President Obama has recently talked about income and wealth disparity. That discussion represents an “intellectual paradigm shift,” said Mr. Rojas, who also served as press secretary for the late Grenada Prime Minister Maurice Bishop. The revolutionary was removed from power and executed in a mercenary coup orchestrated by political rivals and Western nations before a U.S. invasion of the small country in 1983.

The reparations movement is “the great moral imperative of our time” and those who line up against it, or perhaps think it is a misguided waste of effort, are “ignorant of the moral power of an idea whose time has come,” argued Mr. Rojas.

Dr. Iva E. Carruthers, general secretary of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, Inc., an ecumenical group that represents a cross section of progressive Black faith leaders across the country, called the April 19 gathering a “sacred assembly.” The Proctor Conference also helped organize the Chicago State program.

“When you call a sacred assembly, you have to take the risk of hearing from the prophets, and when prophets speak, it may not be comfortable,” said Dr. Carruthers. “I think we were in the hands of master prophets in the form of Minister Louis Farrakhan and Reverend Dr. Jeremiah Wright and I think we’re in the hands of a master teacher in the form of Dr. Beckles. And if we listen to our prophets and our teachers—if we would just be still enough to feel the power of God and the righteous authority upon which we stand to speak truth, to stand on truth and to organize ourselves at any cost with those who share the vision—then this day will be fulfilled.”

Dr. Kelly Harris, director of Chicago State University’s African-American Studies Dept., enjoyed the perspectives offered by Min. Farrakhan and Prof. Beckles.

“Minister Farrakhan really gave us the charge tonight and Professor Beckles was excellent,” said  Dr. Harris. “I think Minister Farrakhan did what he always does, he made sure that we stood up and had steel in our back and that’s what we need.”

Dr. Ron Daniels called the mission of the gathering a success as the goal was to “give a spark and deliver a jolt” to the U.S.-based reparations movement. Since there’s power in the fact that Caribbean nations unanimously agreed to the 10-point program, there is now added power, he said.

(Top left) Min. Farrakhan and Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI). In all photos clockwise, Min. Farrakhan greets students from Chicago State University as the college’s president Wayne Watson looks on.

According to Dr. Daniels, the Institute of the Black World is creating a reparations resource center on its website and will continue to help educate the public on reparations. Asked about the next generation of leaders for the movement, Dr. Daniels said that remains to be seen, but agreed “there’s a need for new blood.”

“We have to see who emerges,” said Dr. Daniels. “Like anything else you have a wave, the people who are involved in it, they tire, they thin, they pass on. The question is will there be someone to pass the torch on to? So I think we need to be focusing on increasingly going at young people; teaching them, giving them history, giving them the background so they can pick up the torch and become the new wave because we need some new troops, but we also need to change the mentality. We need to be able to use some economic sanctions and other modalities to let people know we’re not playing.”

“We have to go to the universities and get them. It is there where—especially young Black men—see the contradictions, they see the differences. If there’s not massive change … even with the education they’re seeing, that’s not a ticket to a lifestyle that they’ve been promised,” said Kamm Howard of the National Coalition of Blacks For Reparations in America, or N’COBRA.

“I think once we build the connections on the university campuses with our young brothers and sisters who can also speak the language of the streets—because a lot of them are coming from the streets and that’s their ticket out—then we can begin to build a movement among the youth. We’re seeing the young people are interested … they’re asking what they can do because they’re looking for some guidance.”

Minister Farrakhan “put it in plain English” that this is a revolutionary struggle that must be fought if the current generation cares about the sacrifices of their ancestors, Mr. Howard continued. “We have to be able to stand before our ancestors and say ‘I fought for this life that you made sure that I have.’ But are we deserving of this life? And if we say we are deserving of it then we must fight to ensure that our future generations have a better life than we had.”

Slavery, Mass Incarceration and Capitalism

Published Date : 2014-04-05 15:02:54

Slavery, Mass Incarceration and Capitalism

COIP backs reparations initiative

Published Date : 2014-04-04 08:20:38

Callie House and the Struggle for Reparations

Published Date : 2014-04-01 14:44:17

By William Reed

Under President Barack Obama, the concept of affirmative action has fallen flat. Those who thought their fortunes would be better under a Black president are advised to support a role model such as Callie House. On the other end of the continuum, Callie House was a pioneering African-American political activist who sought to gain reparations for Blacks.

Only a special kind of school will teach of House. Born into bondage in 1861 in Rutherford County, Tenn., as Callie Guy, she married William House in 1883. Hardly a mere “housewife”, House reached hundreds of thousands of people with a movement claiming government compensation for labor performed during slavery. In the years after emancipation, freedmen and women felt betrayed when they were given nothing to begin their lives in freedom.

In 1890, a White Southern Democrat, Walter Vaughan, produced a pamphlet that strongly recommended that ex-slaves be awarded pensions, similar to the pensions Civil War veterans were eligible to receive. House and a former employee of Vaughan’s, Isaiah Dickerson, liked the idea. Their vision was to organize poor Blacks throughout the South on how to get pensions due them. Both Blacks and Whites found favor with the concept of giving pensions to millions of ex-slaves because it would help improve the economic conditions of the South in general.

House and Dickerson formed The National Ex-Slave Relief, Bounty and Pension Association in 1884. The two traveled throughout the South promoting the idea of reparations or “pensions” for ex-slaves. They organized and formed local affiliate groups everywhere they went. The organization sustained itself through dues from its members. At local levels, The National Ex-Slave, Relief, Bounty and Pension Association functioned as a mutual aid organization providing burial expenses and support for the sick and infirmed. The organization was unique in its focus and political clout and accomplishments. They agitated for reparations but also supported candidates and paid lobbyists to push for legislation on behalf of African Americans.

Blacks caught up in contemporary American politics would do well to recognize, honor and celebrate America’s reparations movement. Active through the late 1880s, The National Ex-Slave, Relief, Bounty and Pension Association is an example of what today’s Blacks need. The Association was well organized. It held national and local conventions and spread the word about reparations to Blacks involved in grassroots organizations. Blacks readily took to the notion that the government should pay them for the years they labored without pay. But, the Association’s demise began when the federal Pension Bureau became alarmed by the excitement House’s movement was generating and persuaded the U.S. Postal Service to ban the National Ex-Slave Relief, Bounty and Pension Association from using the mail service.

The Association House and Dickerson started relied largely on the use of the post office to communicate and receive dues to fund itself and the national campaign. A logical and legal movement was doomed when the post office denied the Association use of the mail, claiming it was duping “ignorant” ex-slaves in a fraud scheme.

The reparations movement has always been opposed by the government. In 1916 four Blacks sued the U.S. Treasury for $68,073,388.99 in cotton taxes traced to Texas slave labor. The suit was subsequently dismissed on the grounds of government immunity.

As House and Dickerson raised the profile of the reparations movement the government countered with the Comstock Act of 1871, and claimed House was using the U.S. Postal Service to defraud the public. (A tactic they later used successfully against Marcus Garvey). In 1916 charges were brought against House claiming she defrauded ex-slaves. An all-White male jury found her guilty. Dickerson was also framed, but his conviction was later overturned. The organization dissolved when House and Dickerson became overwhelmed defending themselves against charges the government brought against them. Callie House served nine months of her one year and a day sentence and was released for good behavior.

House is a reminder and impetus to Black Americans to sign up for reparations legislation with the same fervor as they are for Obamacare.

William Reed is publisher of “Who’s Who in Black Corporate America” and available for projects via the BaileyGroup.org.

Africa's Slave Trade to Colonialism to Liberation

Published Date : 2014-03-28 15:52:15

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Czj-YIdQG4
Africa’s Slave Trade to Colonialism to Liberation / The history behind Africa’s slave trade, how it started, and where in Africa it began first. African chiefs used to sell their own people in exchange for valued goods, or treasured assets. Then, when the Europeans arrived they began trading with them. The Europeans offered what they had in exchange for slaves and the slave trade became a widely known, and relevant phenomenon in most parts of the world. America and Europe needed people who could do hard labor, who could do their work for them which were rigorous tasks. Slave traders came along the African coast, which was the Sub-region (South of the Sahara) to acquire slaves. They would get them in large numbers and pack them inside the ships they came with. Then, in the 1800s the slave trade was abolished by Abraham Lincoln and then European colonialism/imperialism became the new system in which mainly the Europeans created to strengthen their nations. The necessity of raw materials, namely natural resources, led to European colonization. Also, to establish colonies which were brought up in the ways of the colonial powers, particularly Britain, France, Belgium, Portugal, Germany, among others in order to extend their influence both culturally, politically, socially, and religiously. The geographic borders one sees on the map today of Africa, were designed by the European colonial powers who wanted to divide the continent into sections whereby it would be clear who’s colony was where, and that each colony would stay within boundaries. This was carried out in 1884 in Berlin, Germany. Africa’s resources were being exported immensely to the nations which ruled over certain colonies there, thus being distributed out to the rest of the world. After World War 2 and the establishment of the United Nations, nationalists movements began which internal self government came into focus and practice, thus leading to independence, sovereignty, and the emancipation /liberation of the African continent. Pan Africanists/nationalists/freedom fighters like Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Sekou Toure, among others came into being and agitated for independence.

We must not apologize for reparations demands

Published Date : 2014-03-27 14:58:42

CARICOM Reparations ten-point plan

Published Date : 2014-03-27 13:19:49

Ten Point Action Plan

Introduction

• Were owners and traders of enslaved Africans • Instructed genocidal actions upon indigenous communities
• Created the legal, financial and fiscal policies necessary for the enslavement of Africans
• Defined and enforced African enslavement and native genocide as in their ‘national interests’
• Refused compensation to the enslaved with the ending of their enslavement
• Compensated slave owners at emancipation for the loss of legal property rights in enslaved Africans
• Imposed a further one hundred years of racial apartheid upon the emancipated
• Imposed for another one hundred years policies designed to perpetuate suffering upon the emancipated and survivors of genocide
• And have refused to acknowledge such crimes or to compensate victims and their descendants

Context

CRJP: Ten Point Action Plan

1. FULL FORMAL APOLOGY

2. REPATRIATION

3. INDIGENOUS PEOPLES DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM

4. CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS

5. PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS

6. ILLITERACY ERADICATION

7. AFRICAN KNOWLEDGE PROGRAM

8. PSYCHOLOGICAL REHABILITATION

9. TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER

10. DEBT CANCELLATION