Posted on 07/14/2007 12:12:45 PM PDT by Altura Ct.
In speeches demanding government reparations for 400 years of American slavery to ruminations on the revolutionary nature of a rose in a woman's hand, black activists Friday took up the the thorny topic of how best to "resurrect" the African-American family.
Chicago activist Conrad Worrill urged those gathered at the Shape Community Center for the 28th convention of the National Black United Front to continue to push for government compensation for centuries of slavery.
"It's clear they owe us for 400 years of free labor," he said. "They owe us."
Worrill, United Front national chairman, was the opening speaker for the organization's three-day conference. Founded in Brooklyn, N.Y., the group was active in opposing the white-led government of South Africa, supporting Harold Washington's election as Chicago's first black mayor and participating in the Nation of Islam's 1995 Million Man March in Washington, D.C. In the 1990s, the group lodged allegations of U.S. genocide with the United Nations.
Houston Nation of Islam Minister Robert Muhammad, also on Friday's program, called the United Front the "hardest of hard-core" activists. "We say, 'No justice, no peace,' and mean it," he said.
Today, delegates will tour the Fourth Ward — Houston's "Freedman's Town" — then discuss strategies and experiments in African-centered education.
In an earlier interview, Worrill attributed many of the problems facing contemporary black families to the legacy of slavery, which he said "disrupted, decimated and shut down" black family life for centuries.
Blacks bear the responsibility of "repairing the family internally," he said, but must not stop demanding that government address social ills.
'Apologies aren't enough' Citing ex-slave Callie House's decades-long, early 20th-century crusade to glean government pensions for former bondsmen as a model, Worrill said blacks must push for reparations with the tenacity they exhibited in seeking the end of legally sanctioned segregation. "What we're seeing unfold is that many states have now offered apologies," he said. "Apologies aren't enough.
"Why are blacks any different than the Japanese?" he said, alluding to reparations paid Japanese-Americans held in World War II internment camps.
Ajamu Webster, of the United Front's Kansas City chapter, told delegates about the Fathers for Life program, which provided peer counseling sessions for adult men. The program also endeavored to "lift up brothers," publicizing examples of highly successful fathers.
An effort to "take back Father's Day" resulted in large numbers of men spending the day in the park with their children. In a related campaign, children were encouraged to write essays about their fathers, which they then read over the radio.
Muhammad told delegates that activists in their zeal sometimes "have not taken care of business at home." Citing the teachings of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, Muhammad said family is "second only to God."
The power of love He admonished the men in the audience to "feel your woman's pain," and to exhibit patience and loyalty. "What's wrong with flowers?" Muhammad said. "Nothing is as revolutionary as a rose in a woman's hand. Nothing is as revolutionary as taking her out to dinner and a movie. Nothing is more revolutionary than going to the park. ... Nothing more revolutionary than a rowboat ride.
"Black power is love power. Black power is family power."
Cause the Japanese survivors of the camps were still alive?
I'm of the Jewish faith, yet I was born a couple of decades after Germany's defeat. Do I get anything from the German use of Jews for slave labor? Nope. I'm not entitled.
Other than that, imagine how this would play out. Each "slave descendent" gets a check for $10K, $50K, $100K - whatever.
Knowing what we know about sudden wealth, not to mention ignorant as dirt welfare recipients, combined with human nature, where do you suppose that instant money will go? A new house, new cars, vacations, jewelry, lotto tickets, and drugs.
And then the money is gone. And they will be no better off than before. They will NOT have used the money for education, for investments, for business start ups, or simply for saving for the future.
And the "it wasn't fully funded" drumbeat will begin.
Jesse Jackson must be running out of money and ideas in his dotage.
Teach the shorties:
1.Stay in Skewl...even though it’s not kewl to be smart.
2.You poke it, you impregnate it, you father it, you own it.
3. For G_ds sake, stop blaming whitey and take some personal responsibility with your life.
Ha, well, only problem is that you’d just be creating more illegal aliens. Would have to secure the borders first.
The other nine have an uncle in the house.Uncle Sam.and on the first day of each months he sends at least one check "home" to support his "nieces and nephews".
Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell have repeatedly written articles that refute the assertions that the legacy of slavery continued to disrupt the black family. They have shown that the black family was quite strong until the advent of the socialistic “Great Society” crap of LBJ kicked in with the govt taking over the role of the black husband and father.
... There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts "native" before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French o before the hyphen.
Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance. But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else.
The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans, or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic.
The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every good American. There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else."
Excerpt
Theodore Roosevelt, 1915
http://www.rpatrick.com/USA/americanism/
Where do they get 400 years from?
May 14, 1607, the Virginia Company explorers landed on Jamestown Island and there wasn't a single black slave on board.
hahahahaha, ‘finding out who the fathers are.’ You are BAD. Evidently you have not been re-educated??
1619 to 1865 = 246 years.
Even if you accept his dubious logic.
We're still 12 years short of blacks having been here (under English or US governments). Black slaves were present in NM and FL prior to this under Spain.
Wait a minute, I’m part German. My great-grandmother’s feelings were hurt, being here and being called a Kraut. They owe ME.
owe us? Who’s us? What this person is seeking here, is reverse slavery, non-black forever subject to slave tax
This happens in white housholds too. I think I once figured that a single mom with three illegitmate kids can get 35K a year from uncle sam in benefits if all benefits are applied for properly. This is assuming she works and has a good reccord, financial and criminal.
Payable in Zimbabwe Dollars.
Wait a minute, I was merely asking him to pass the sauer.....kraut.
Ok. I don't apologize.
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