Posted on 09/25/2002 5:08:08 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
In 1969, a black Harvard MBA by the name of Richard America wrote a provocative piece for the Harvard Business Review. Titled "What Do You People Want," it suggested ways that the government could transfer control of large businesses - say a division of General Motors - from whites to blacks.
A year earlier, in Detroit, Richard Henry, a technical writer with the Army's Tank-automotive and Armaments Command, changed his name to Imari Obadele and helped found the Republic of New Afrika with the goal of wresting control of five Deep South states and creating a separate black nation.
To most, these are far-fetched ideas, then and now, propounded by two rather obscure people. But in the last third of a century, America and Obadele each played pivotal roles in lifting the idea of reparations for the descendants of slavery from the realm of the fanciful to the merely improbable, pushing the issue from the fringe to the forefront of the black agenda.
For a cause that has been around since the moment of emancipation, the reparations movement's newfound prominence and respectability represent a remarkable turn of events. Together, America and Obadele, the button-down bureaucrat and the revolutionary nationalist, show the extraordinary breadth of the idea's appeal within the black community. That range is the source of the movement's internal tensions and power.
Now 72, Obadele has been indispensable in channeling the free-floating fervor about reparations into a national grass-roots crusade.
At 64, America has in books, papers and articles carefully calculated "What White America Owes Black America," to borrow the subtitle of his 1993 book, "Paying the Social Debt." He has detailed ways that the debt, which he then put at between $4 trillion and $10 trillion, might be paid over time.
America served 20 years in the U.S. Commerce Department and Small Business Administration, beginning in the Carter administration, developing policies to energize distressed communities, even as he thought and wrote about restitution theory and encouraged other intellectuals to do the same. He now teaches in the business school at Georgetown University.
Obadele served five years in Mississippi jails and three different federal prisons after a 1971 raid on the Republic of New Afrika's headquarters and residence in Jackson, Miss., ended in the shooting death of a police officer. Obadele, as president of the Republic, was found to be conspiratorially culpable for the crime. After his release from prison, Obadele got his bachelor's, master's and doctorate at Temple University and ended up teaching political science at Prairie View A&M University, a historically black college near Houston, retiring last spring. He lives in Baton Rouge, La.
Obadele considers himself a citizen of the Republic of New Afrika, of which he is now minister of foreign affairs, and for which even now is looking to buy land in Louisiana or Mississippi. He believes that when slaves were freed, they should have been offered a choice of returning to Africa, creating a new nation in America or becoming U.S. citizens instead of having that citizenship forced upon them with the 14th Amendment.
America, who as near as he can determine is descended from an America who escaped to freedom on the eve of the American Revolution, frames reparations as an act of justice but also an act of healing that will make the nation whole. He says the vast majority of Americans must support reparations for it to take place.
Despite their different trajectories, Obadele and America started out in very much the same place, Philadelphia. Obadele grew up in South Philly and America in North Philly, but both attended Central High School, so renowned for its academics it was known as the "People's College." Obadele graduated in 1946, one of six blacks in his class, and America in 1956, one of five blacks in his class.
Their paths have crossed occasionally. Most notably, on Sept. 11, 1987, they were both on a reparations panel at a symposium of the National Conference of Black Lawyers held at Harvard to mark the 200th anniversary of the U.S. Constitution. That discussion led Obadele and his RNA comrades to launch N'COBRA - the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America.
Historically, the reparations movement has inhabited a cathartic, hard-edged emotional space distant from the practical politics of the day.
Only four years ago, leading President Clinton's Initiative on Race, historian John Hope Franklin said it was pointless even to discuss reparations, a "subject that's so lacking in support." But, this summer, appearing on a C-SPAN call-in show, Franklin defended the cause.
In each session of Congress since 1989, Rep. John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, has introduced legislation to create a national commission to study reparations. It has gone nowhere but now has nearly 50 co-sponsors and in recent years has been endorsed by city councils in Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Detroit, Baltimore, St. Louis and Nashville, Tenn., and, last spring, in an unusual two-day editorial, by the Philadelphia Inquirer.
In 2000, Randall Robinson, who spearheaded the movement in the United States to end apartheid in South Africa, published "The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks." Together with Harvard Law Professor Charles Ogletree, Johnnie Cochran and others, Robinson formed the Reparations Coordinating Committee to develop litigation against both private companies and the government.
America, who has completed work on his next book, "Unjust Enrichment: Solving the Race Problem," was brought on board.
To some, the movement was spurred to new seriousness when in 1988 Congress passed legislation apologizing to Japanese-Americans interned during World War II, paying each of them $20,000 in restitution.
In 1998, Obadele and two other RNA officials filed their own claims, arguing that what had happened to blacks was far worse and that equal justice required that they and others like them also be paid. They were turned down and went to court.
In an April 24 decision, Chief Judge Lawrence Baskir of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruled against them. But, he wrote, "Make no mistake, the plaintiffs have made a powerful case for redress" that could form the basis of "future legislation providing for reparations for slavery." Obadele's attorney (his great-nephew Maynard Henry Sr. of Alexandria, Va.) has appealed Baskir's decision.
To America, the Japanese case is not a particularly useful precedent because the black experience, with slavery and 100 years of legal discrimination thereafter, is so much broader. America also does not think the rhetoric and histrionics of many reparations advocates is helpful.
"There's a lot of goofy discussion, which makes people crazy," he said. He tried to work with the N'COBRA legal team for a while but found it a bad fit.
"They are good people, they have big hearts, they want justice," America said. "But I don't think they have got an analytical handle on this. They're outraged at what happened. I understand that." But, he said, "I'm trying to reach the gray flannel folks."
Wringing the anger out of his analysis, he said, eliminates the defensiveness that anger inevitably provokes. "I can make this presentation to any audience and we can have a grown-up discussion."
sorry ,, "Duke",, can't find any humor here,, i was in chat room couple weeks back,, not sure if paltalk or e4 but there was no humor to be found,,
if the chat there was anything close to the results of a reperations package enacted by the law slayers in congress,, the war on the south would look like a stroll in the park
by the way "Duke",, great to cya back on the board,, your wit and wisdom have been sorely missed here and in the chat rooms,
VSM
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