I saw this via LJ, and I must say I’m shocked at this trite shit. They cannot seriously be suggesting black people go out and fucking panhandle for reparations. But it’s true. Damali Ayo has declared 10 October Panhandling for Reparations Day. She discusses this in depth on her LJ here.
I’m appalled. Just appalled at this stupid shit. Make no mistake about it, I am not on the side of” the gimme money cause my ancestor’s may have been slaves almost 300 years ago. ” crowd.
I cannot abide by the idea that I’m owed something just because I may or may not have been descended from slaves many moons ago. I’ve earned what I have and it’s not because of quota’s or any other such foolishness.
I wish people would stop this shit… stop begging for free money that will be wasted on rims, booze, bitches and drugs. Get off your asses and get a goddamned education, learn some shit, see the world. As Bomani D’Amite said Read A Book, Read A Book, Read a Motherfuckin Book!
Some of my previous writings on the subject of Reparations are here and under the cut.
evildamsel posted this earlier, and I’m reposting with her permission. My comment follows… the topic is open to debate, but keep in mind I will not tolerate the following:
<u>flame wars, drama mongering, name calling, petty antics & most importantly uninformed, stupid comment trails for the mere sake of stirring shit up.</u>
Now that we are clear, it goes:
The lovely EvilDamsel’s well worded thoughts on reparations:
If you are kidnapped, tortured and forced to serve your abuser, you are horribly wronged. You deserve a chance for a criminal trial and a civil litigation.
But what happens when the person in that situation is your ancestor and you are an African American living in the United States who is demanding reparations from the government?
The answer to that is: nothing.
Some people are outraged by that nothing, some people think it’s the correct response and some people just don’t care.
You care of course. And you are outraged. But should you be?
The answer to that is simple really. No, no you shouldn’t be.
Slavery was a tragic economic policy undertaken by the Western world. In some cases it was endorsed by governments but mostly it was private companies that engaged in slavery for profit.
That isn’t nice and it isn’t fair and it isn’t pretty. What is it is a lack of basis for demanding money from our government. Slavery was conducted in the colonies as a trade matter by private companies. Certainly when the Constitution came into existence, it did not abolish slavery. Certainly, a black was defined cruelly as only a portion of a human being. That was wrong. It was morally and ethically bankrupt. But it wasn’t a policy for creating slavery or even one for managing it. It was merely a bone to the South to ensure the foundation of a country that was already beginning to limit and outlaw the continuation of the slave trade.
It was the foundation of a country, that some 90 years later went to war to ensure no person was ever enslaved again. The country that would have codified slavery, been responsible for it, was destroyed by that war. That was the Confederacy and it is dust.
The United States is not a perfect nation. It is not always an ethical nation. It mistreated the Native Americans. It interned the Japanese during WWII. It destroyed legitimate governments in Central and South America thereby creating chaos. But what it did not do was create slavery and endorse the poor treatment of slaves.
Here I am sure you would cry out in indignation and tell me I am depriving the souls of your ancestors from justice.
Ah, but I am not done yet.
When we speak about money for damages in this country, we are speaking about tort law. Any individual has the right to take any other individual to court for any legitimate matter in order to obtain monetary compensation for injury.
We could never deny that slavery is a legitimate matter that resulted in injury. So the issue at hand is finding the right individuals.
The people who can file suit for damages are those who are injured personally or those who represent estates of those people, in case they are deceased. The descendants of the slaves are every bit entitled to give their ancestors a day in court, to pay tribute to those whose line they sprang from by attempting justice on their behalf.
Here I suppose you would stop me and demand to know who is left to sue for justice if I claim the government innocent of guilt. That is not a hard question to answer.
The slave owners were guilty. Their estates, the wealth built on the sweat and blood of innocently kidnapped and abused Africans, owe a duty to the people they used up as cattle. That wealth belongs to those who created it.
So file suit. Take the descendants of slave owners to court. Take any material benefits that slavery brought to their ancestors and let your ancestors rest in peace.
Certainly it would not be easy. It would take tracing your heritage to a specific person and then finding their owner and his progeny. It would also take determining how much of the wealth is inheritted from slavery profits and then accounting for inflation or for moral damages. It would take patience and civility and working together to truly resolve who is owed how much from whom.
So no, it wouldn’t be easy.
What it would be is just and legal.
And that’s truly moral and ethical.
Yes I was listening to radio on my way to school…
My comment to her: *applauds* Whenever I say such things I am tagged a race traitor, as well as someone who must not give a damn about all the pain and suffering my ancestors went through as slaves. Two things: (1) I’m an American, not a hyphenated American… an African American is someone who came here from Africa and has become a naturalized citizen. I hate the term and how its now ok to define Black people as African American. (2) Not all American Blacks are descended from African slaves, and not all American Blacks even have African ancestry.
I wish people would just shut up about Reparations and stop whining about how they are owed for their ancestor’s suffering, when slavery has been over for quite some time now, and unless I missed something no Black people in the US are currently under the thumb of a slave master, there is nothing holding them back from success other than a slave mentality that prevails to this day, but not actual slavery.
In short, I wish people would stop trying to blame “THE MAN” and get their shit together and oh I don’t know, do something for themselves.
I’m not going to your website, and why are you replying to something almost a year old?
Greetings. Reparations is about much more than money – or what you seem to perceive as begging. You started to get real when you got to the part about those efforts that you would consider “just”, “legal”, “moral” and “truly ethical.” In the Black American community some of us have been doing exactly this research for years. Pls visit Afrigeneas.com for an example. In fact, “repair” – reparations is firmly based in the need for documentation of the actual facts and a CESSATION of the lies – the white supremacist “Gone w/ the wind” versions carefully cultivated, and recorded in most official versions of U.S. “history,” to take the place of the sad, horrific truth of what happened to our people, our families, all over New England & the Northeast USA as well as the South and Midwest. And that’s only the long period before later injustices that extended further West. Have you watched Marco Williams’ documentary, “BANISHED: American Ethnic Cleansings”? That covers 1860s up to 1920s or so. And earlier, chattel enslavement was so much more than about “work.” Otherwise at least SOME Black Americans would have SOME African surnames from our families, and most definitely we do not. That is a U.S. sociological-anthropological fact. Don’t believe me; please research the U.S. Census starting 1870, the first year Black Americans were enumerated as persons. As a case in point, Barack Obama, bearing his father’s Kenyan name, does not come from this same “American Negro” ethnic population. Thank you anyway.