Reparations

Before Thinking about Reparations, Read This…

Before any meaningful justice or reparations can really start, the harm has to stop. This is obvious and logical. When you click “read more” you will see an article “Sociology’s Race Problem”. It is essential that people understand the concepts in this article before reparations can be made real. All too often white people, people with power, especially those with good intentions, negate the fully lived experience of individuals and communities. And it is far too easy for white intellectuals to pathologize Black (and other people of color) lives and also incorporate this into training or other educational programs. Another stumbling block is the ulterior motives, sometimes not know fully even by the person, the do-gooder themselves, whether it be for recognition, academic achievement or the ever present white savior persona.

Actually REPARATIONS already did happen… only to the Slaveowners!

Read the wikipedia article here…

Excerpt

The Slave Compensation Act 1837 (1 & 2 Vict. c. 3) was an Act of Parliament in the United Kingdom, signed into law on 23 December 1837. It authorised the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt to compensate slave owners in the British colonies of the Caribbean, Mauritius, and the Cape of Good Hope in the amount of approximately £20 million for freed slaves. Based on a government census of 1 August 1834, over 40,000 awards to slave owners were issued. Since some of the payments were converted into 3.5% government annuities, they lasted until 2015.

People have talked about reparations for slavery in the US for centuries. Sometimes it was vocal and attempted such as 40 acres and a mule. Sometimes it was spoken about in whispers. Below is a fabulous idea from 1963 that if put into practice would have dramatically changed the trajectory of race relations. Perhaps it is still an idea to encourage as a part of a fuller plan to address this debt.

Reparations demand from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Herschel

TO PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY, THE WHITE HOUSE, JUNE 16, 1963.
I look forward to privilege of being present at meeting tomorrow. Likelihood exists that Negro problem will be like the weather. Everybody talks about it but nobody does anything about it. Please demand of religious leaders personal involvement not just solemn declaration. We forfeit the right to worship God as long as we continue to humiliate Negroes. Church, synagogue have failed. They must repent. Ask of religious leaders to call for national repentance and personal sacrifice. Let religious leaders donate one month’s salary toward fund for Negro housing and education. I propose that you Mr. President declare state of moral emergency. A Marshall plan for aid to Negroes is becoming a necessity. The hour calls for moral grandeur and spiritual audacity.

Imagine if this actually had happened! Imagine if, for the last 57 years, every religious leader in the US donated one month’s salary toward a fund for “Negro housing and education.” It’s not that we didn’t know…

Slavery’s lasting legacy on the Central Mass. economy by Devina Bhalla |September 28, 2020

Read the article here…

Excerpt

T he modern Massachusetts economy has been growing for 400 years since settlers first landed in Plymouth in 1620.

And for 245 of those 400 years – more than 60% – the Massachusetts economy was tied to the legal institution of slavery, first as Massachusetts legalized and profited from slavery. Then, after Massachusetts abolished the practice, businesses still benefited right up through the Civil War from the use of free labor in the American South, particularly surrounding the proliferation of slave-grown cotton and its use by mills in the Blackstone Valley. …

Even though slavery was abolished throughout America in 1865, the lingering effects of the practice have led to Black people struggling to gain equal economic and societal opportunity ever since, right up through the 21st century, wrote Ronald Waters, the director of the African American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland, in an article for the “Journal of African American History” published posthumously in 2012.

“Whites enjoyed a monumental head start as slaveholders and the creators of a society built on the wealth the enslaved workers produced,” Waters wrote. “Thus, whites were the arbiters of African Americans’ entrance into that society.”

How to: Reparations from Various Sources

Strategies: “Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.” Simply put, reparations are due to the millions of black Americans whose families have endured generations of discrimination in the United States.

Reparations: Through my Black Eyes to Your White Minds

America used the cruelest most inhumane system of slavery to build the richest most powerful nation. America, the land of the free, the home of the brave, but at what cost in human life, pain, cruel inhumane treatment, the effects of which are still being felt today? Does America owe a debt to black Americans, the descendants of African slaves: You bet! America owes a huge debt.

What Do Quakers Owe Blacks?

Quakers may not have slandered, persecuted or denounced blacks, but there was a coziness with racism that was certainly within the pivotal degrees of cooperation with the status quo. Racism is a virus that quietly lurks in the Society of Friends. … racism is a disease or disordered cause agent so deeply rooted in the fabric of our country that it has ruptured some of our religious and cultural cohesiveness.

Reparations Toolkit by THE MOVEMENT FOR BLACK LIVES |

The full download of Toolkit from THE M4BL website is here…

Excerpt from the description of Toolkit…

T his toolkit explores the long history of struggles for reparations for Black people, lays out key facts, concepts, and international human rights law underlying reparations demands, and provides case studies of struggles for reparations at the institutional, local, state, and international levels.

We are Tired!! -Author Unknown

Black people are so tired. 😓
We can’t go jogging (#AmaudArbery).
We can’t relax in the comfort of our own homes (#BothemJean and #AtatianaJefferson).
We can’t ask for help after being in a car crash (#JonathanFerrell and #RenishaMcBride).
We can’t have a cellphone (#StephonClark).
We can’t leave a party to get to safety (#JordanEdwards).
We can’t play loud music (#JordanDavis).
We can’t sell CDs (#AltonSterling).
We can’t sleep (#AiyanaJones)
We can’t walk from the corner store (#MikeBrown).
We can’t play cops and robbers (#TamirRice).
We can’t go to church (#Charleston9).
We can’t walk home with Skittles (#TrayvonMartin).
We can’t hold a hairbrush while leaving our own bachelor party (#SeanBell).
We can’t party on New Years’ (#OscarGrant).
We can’t get a normal traffic ticket (#SandraBland).
We can’t lawfully carry a weapon (#PhilandoCastile).
We can’t break down on a public road with car problems (#CoreyJones).
We can’t shop at Walmart (#JohnCrawford).
We can’t have a disabled vehicle (#TerrenceCrutcher).
We can’t read a book in our own car (#KeithScott).
We can’t be a 10yr old walking with our grandfather (#CliffordGlover).
We can’t decorate for a party (#ClaudeReese).
We can’t ask a cop a question (#RandyEvans).
We can’t cash our check in peace (#YvonneSmallwood).
We can’t take out our wallet (#AmadouDiallo).
We can’t run (#WalterScott).
We can’t breathe (#EricGarner).
We can’t live (#FreddieGray).
We’re tired.
Tired of making hashtags.
Tired of trying to convince you that our #BlackLivesMatter too.
Tired of dying.
Tired.
Tired.
Tired.
So very tired.