Posted on 07/30/2013 6:15:22 AM PDT by YourAdHere
PHILADELPHIA--The stench of injustice has spilled over with the nauseating smell of institutional murder once again. Left unchanged, this injustice will linger until the next injustice, and the next case…until we finally get it: public policy, in the form of reparations, is the solution to all of our social ills and the injustices that frame our existence. It’s time to rethink our demands and actions.
Reparations is a word to describe what can be done to help victims of chattel enslavement overcome the horrific generational damage that they suffered and the means to give them back their dignity and to make sure that these abuses do not happen again. I’m talking about development-centered reparations in which individuals and communities take control and ownership of the development of their own communities.
For those of you who are waiting for the “great by and by,” God is not going to step in until we step up. God is not going to protect and defend us until we protect and defend ourselves.
There is no one organization that is going to make “Master” change his/her evil ways. Only a mass social movement…will. That social movement of our time is the extant reparations movement.
Our protests for the injustice of the murder of Trayvon Martin, and the release of his killer, must be strategically and logically linked to reparations. As the demand for reparations goes forward, here are some starting proposals to…repair the damage done to descendants of Africans enslaved in America. We need to:
Demand the repeal of all “stand your ground laws.” Demand a war on the import of weapons in urban communities with bounties and rewards. Demand divestment from financial institutions with a history of financing chattel slavery with investments, loans, and accepting deposits of enslavers. Demand that funding for education exceeds funding for prisons. Demand free, quality healthcare and insurance.
Unless and until we make these demands and proposals measurable and available for all African descendants enslaved in America…we will continue to engage in and promote generational insanity.
Minister Ari Sesu Merretazon is co-chair of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America. My Take is a social commentary feature that allows AFRO readers to share their insight into a range of topics. Please submit your 250-450 word entries, with My Take typed into the subject field, to editor@afro.com. Include your name, age, occupation and daytime phone number. The AFRO reserves the right to edit or reject any entry.
I guess I understand how we got so messed up, but not why we stay that way. It seems so obvious that we just do better seeing with our hearts, rather than using just our eyes.
I'll be glad when our evil era/epoch is over and hope I live to see the other side of the transition.
Agreed.
“As the demand for reparations goes forward, here are some starting proposals to…repair the damage done to descendants of Africans enslaved in America. We need to:
Demand the repeal of all “stand your ground laws.” Demand a war on the import of weapons in urban communities with bounties and rewards. Demand divestment from financial institutions with a history of financing chattel slavery with investments, loans, and accepting deposits of enslavers. Demand that funding for education exceeds funding for prisons. Demand free, quality healthcare and insurance. “
No, sorry, that’s not how it works. You don’t get to stand there with your hand out demanding money AND telling us how we should run our country. You can only pick one or the other.
If you want reparations, I am more than willing to chip in and give them to you, but only with the string attached that you pick up your check as you turn in your citizenship and leave this country forever. Then, you can try to tell your new home, wherever that is, how to run their affairs.
Let’s take Reparations at face value.
Okay, now subtract payments already made in the form of all varieties of welfare.
Then subtract costs of the criminal incarceration for those who committed acts of wanton violence.
Looks like the recipients of Reparations actually owe the rest of the country billions of dollars.
REMF
“They’ll never give up on their enslavement.”
This.
Reparations have been given many times over.
600,000 lives given.
“40 acres and a mule.”
The founding of Liberia.
Trillions in welfare.
Even God lets go of retribution for sin after the third or fourth generation.
” Sounds like Obama.
We need this guy out there front and center. “
Using SOL logic, the GOP should pay this guy 10,000/mo + expenses, and let him take his message all over the country. But since the GOP has about 1/10th the “street brains” of Democrats, it won’t happen.
Put them back on actual slave plantations - they seemed happier back then...
Well if we are going to pay him then he has to tell everyone that he met with Obama and Rev Wright and they are with him 100%.
Clearly you have not watched the two Roots series enough times as your white guilt and shame is not showing. Maybe its time for a Roots # 3 to take us up to Trayvon.
Being a white man (and even worse not gay) you are partially responsible for every sin against a black man-woman from Kunta Kinte to Trayvol Martin, even for the black on black crimes.
Its collective guilt, you have benefited from ‘white privilege’ and now you have to pay.
Even better : )
” Being a white man (and even worse not gay) you are partially responsible for every sin against a black man-woman from Kunta Kinte to Trayvol Martin, even for the black on black crimes.
Its collective guilt, you have benefited from ‘white privilege’ and now you have to pay. “
Not me! In 1979 I sold LeVar Burton my used BMW for about 1200 more than it was worth. HE paid!
“...as your white guilt and shame is not showing....”
Any trace of White guilt was erased by 600,000 dead white men from 1861-1865.
Book, case, and story closed brother.
Closed is right. I never had any guilt anyway : )
Do not even think of asking me for reparations. My family arrived in the Caribbean in 1650, BEFORE slaves got there, and did the heavy work of tree felling, stump pulling, ground clearing so that sugar and tobacco could be planted. And then the relatives moved to Maryland and started all over again.
Your family paid its dues. Let American blacks earn theirs.
The white man in the North only invaded the South to steal the slaves and make them instead work for Walmarts and McDonalds for slave wages and no health care. Ha,
The fact that you can read and write is a result of white privilege.
As Dr Zaus said in Planet of the Apes (the USA in another 50 years) :
” You are right, I have always known about man. From the evidence, I believe his wisdom must walk hand and hand with his idiocy. His emotions must rule his brain. He must be a warlike creature who gives battle to everything around him, even himself. “
He stole my hubcaps....
Me neither.
I never owned nobody, not no how!!!
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