(Atlanta Blackstar) If you were to guess how much the United States owes Black people in economic damages for slavery, how much would it be?
In the part of the “I Have A Dream” speech that no one seems to remember, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. declared: “It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’”
While some people would conclude that no dollar amount can make up for the centuries that Black people were kidnapped, enslaved and forced to work without pay, the fact remains that our misfortune made America wealthy. Slavery built the system of U.S. capitalism. Moreover, some people have estimated what the nation actually owes Black people.
Showing posts with label slavery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label slavery. Show all posts
June 6, 2015
May 22, 2015
Black artist will burn, bury the Confederate flag across the South on Memorial Day
(theGrio) Can you think of a better way for a black man to spend Memorial Day than to burn a Confederate flag?
As was reported in the Orlando Sentinel, an artist will do exactly that, with plans to make it happen in all the states throughout the former Confederacy.
John Sims, an artist from Sarasota, Florida, is honoring the constitutional right of self-expression by staging burnings and burials of the Rebel flag, that troublesome symbol of the Old South that many, particularly African-Americans, associate with slavery, white supremacy and state-sponsored terrorism and lynchings.
“We are in America, and people have the right to fly whatever flag [they want],” Sims said. “And I have the right to bury whatever flag, and to burn whatever flag.”
As was reported in the Orlando Sentinel, an artist will do exactly that, with plans to make it happen in all the states throughout the former Confederacy.
John Sims, an artist from Sarasota, Florida, is honoring the constitutional right of self-expression by staging burnings and burials of the Rebel flag, that troublesome symbol of the Old South that many, particularly African-Americans, associate with slavery, white supremacy and state-sponsored terrorism and lynchings.
“We are in America, and people have the right to fly whatever flag [they want],” Sims said. “And I have the right to bury whatever flag, and to burn whatever flag.”
April 18, 2015
Is the policing of black men a new sport for wealthy donors?
(theGrio) Is the policing of black men the new sport for white officers and wannabe cops?
This is a question worth asking, in light of this season of police killings, particularly the April 2nd fatal shooting of a black man named Eric Harris, 44, by Reserve Deputy Robert Bates. After officers brought Harris to the ground, an officer yelled “Taser” twice, after which Bates shot Harris with his gun and said, “Oh! I shot him. I’m sorry.” Apparently, Bates meant to shoot the man with his Taser rather than his gun.
This is a question worth asking, in light of this season of police killings, particularly the April 2nd fatal shooting of a black man named Eric Harris, 44, by Reserve Deputy Robert Bates. After officers brought Harris to the ground, an officer yelled “Taser” twice, after which Bates shot Harris with his gun and said, “Oh! I shot him. I’m sorry.” Apparently, Bates meant to shoot the man with his Taser rather than his gun.
September 25, 2014
Beating our black children furthers the legacy of slavery
If it can be said that real men don’t hit women, then we should also say real men don’t beat children.
Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson was indicted on a felony charge for beating his four-year-old son with a switch — a tree branch — in an act that exceeded “reasonable discipline” according to the Montgomery County, Texas, District Attorney’s office. The NFL player punished his son for pushing another one of his children off of a motorbike video game, and Peterson said the whooping was not unlike the discipline “heexperienced as a child growing up in East Texas.”
The boy reportedly suffered from numerous injuries, including cuts and wounds to his ankles, legs, hands, back, buttocks and scrotum. The child also said his father hit him with belts and put leaves in his mouth while he was being hit, pants down, with the switch.
As a black father with a four-year old-son, I cannot imagine ever beating my beautiful child. I cannot and will not treat my son like a slave.
January 23, 2013
Slavery, civil rights and gun control
From theGrio:
Actor and human rights activist Danny Glover has created controversy for comments he made on the Second Amendment. Speaking at a recent event at Texas A&M University, Glover said the purpose of the amendment was to preserve slavery and keep down Native Americans.
“I don’t know if you know the genesis of the right to bear arms,” Glover said during his campus visit. “The Second Amendment comes from the right to protect themselves from slave revolts, and from uprisings by Native Americans. So, a revolt from people who were stolen from their land, or revolt from people whose land was stolen from, that’s what the genesis of the Second Amendment is.”
Similarly, responding to the argument that a gun control measure lacks the votes to pass through Congress, Fox News’ Shepard Smith compared guns and slavery. Smith offered, “If we stuck with the polls, though, we’d have had slavery a lot longer than we did.”
Glover and Smith are not the only people to make a comparison between gun control and social movements such as the struggle to abolish slavery. For example, others have made references to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Whether appropriate or not, slavery and civil rights have become part of the debate over gun control.
With regard to slavery, there is evidence that the Founding Fathers had that institution in mind when drafting the Second Amendment.
Go HERE for more
April 2, 2010
140 years after the 15th Amendment, more progress must be made on voting rights
From the Progressive:
It has been 140 years since the 15th Amendment was ratified, but we still have a ways to go to ensure the right to vote.
The 15th Amendment became part of the U.S. Constitution on March 30, 1870. It states: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” And it adds: “The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
With voting rights granted to former slaves, the change to the American political landscape was dramatic. There were more than 1,500 black political officeholders during Reconstruction, all of them Republicans. They included a governor and a lieutenant governor, state legislators and members of Congress and the Senate.
Despite the new voting rights protections guaranteed under the 15th Amendment, there was considerable Southern white resistance to black participation in American civic and political life. Groups such as the Ku Klux Klan were formed to intimidate blacks. And as federal troops left the South and Reconstruction came to a close, the South descended into an era of Jim Crow segregation. States engaged in the wholesale disenfranchisement of blacks, wiping them off the political map.
It was not until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that full citizenship rights would be restored to black people. During the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, dozens of people died securing that right.
And sadly, now, in 2010, remnants of Jim Crow remain.
An estimated 5.3 million Americans are denied the right to vote because of felony convictions, including 4 million who are out of prison. A third of them are black. That means one in eight black men can’t vote.
“As of 2004, more African-American men were disenfranchised (due to felon disenfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the 15th Amendment was ratified,” says Michelle Alexander, author of “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.”
Some politicians want to return us to the days of Jim Crow laws. At a Tea Party convention in Nashville, Tenn., in February, former Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo told an audience he lamented that “we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country.” He added, “People who could not even spell the word ‘vote’ or say it in English, put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House.”
Tancredo’s objectionable statement was a not-so-subtle reference to literacy tests, a weapon of choice used by Jim Crow states to disenfranchise black voters.
On the 140th anniversary of the 15th Amendment, Tancredo and others would have us turn back the clock, and return to a time when people of color were denied the right to vote.
Let’s expand democracy rather than shrink it.
February 27, 2010
Tiger Didn't Apologize for Dubai's Slave Labor
From BlackCommentator.com and Huffington Post:
When golf giant Tiger Woods made his public apology recently, he said he let a lot of people down. Personally, I cared very little about his personal dalliances and extracurricular activities. With an economic and political crisis afoot in this crumbling empire, it seems that this salacious celebrity gossip is nothing more than that--a media-created distraction to help us forget how bad things really are in America. This is a sideshow, like the gladiator games in Rome, or feeding the Christians to the lions.
A personal matter, the subject of Tiger's apology really was not intended for the general public, though it was made before an audience of millions. Rather, his plastic, controlled, manufactured pseudo-press conference, no doubt the creation of some well-paid public relations firm, was intended for the people closest to him. And more importantly, it was meant for his corporate sponsors who have backed out and bailed out on him, or those who are fixin' to do so. This is about dollars.
So, Tiger didn't owe me an apology, because I had no expectations of him. But Tiger did disappoint me in one regard. He failed to apologize for his failure to put human rights and human dignity ahead of his profits. To be more specific, plans are still in motion for Tiger Woods Dubai, an expansive Woods-designed golf course and luxury home development in Dubai. The $100 million project is being built in Dubailand, the adult playground of the Mideast. Mansions and villas in the 580-acre resort are reportedly selling for $12 million to $23 million, and Woods plans to build a 16,500-square-foot mansion overlooking his course.
The problem is, Dubai is built on slave labor, and Tiger has had nothing to say about it. And I don't mean slavery as in hundreds of years ago. I mean slavery as in over the past thirty years, including now. The home of the world's tallest skyscraper, Dubai is a sparkling city of excess built by slave labor from the Third World, including the nations of the Indian subcontinent, the Philippines and Africa. Companies lure these workers with a promise of making a ton of money, and in the end steal their passports and their money as well. Migrant workers work 12 hours a day, six days a week in hot temperatures. And they earn an average of $175 a month, with no minimum wage, and some making as little as $8 a day, according to Human Rights Watch. I know, how dare I spoil other people's fun, and stand in their way as they try to earn a dishonest living on the backs of slaves, as dictated by the free market.
And you'd think that your average high-profile celebrity athlete or entertainer, often in tune with social and political causes, might have a low threshold of tolerance when it comes to slavery, much less people who profit from the practice of slavery. Never mind looking at it from the glaringly obvious moral perspective, just look at it from a PR point of view for a minute. But when that high-profile person is himself a descendant of slaves, the expectations are even higher. So the question that we must ask Tiger is, exactly how much money do you need, man? Were there no black history lessons in your childhood? Did all of those African-American heroes before you make their sacrifices, and endure the racial taunts, the hostility, the beatings, and the threats to life and livelihood, for this?
A person who would take money from people who have used slave labor, look the other way and not ask questions is truly a slave--a slave to his riches and to his corporate masters. Such a person is a billion-dollar monster, created by a mixture of extraordinary talent, excessive media hype and unprecedented corporate promotion.
But then again, maybe Tiger's statement about his devotion to the Buddhist faith is more than mere empty rhetoric. Perhaps he will see the light and make a correction to this previously unaddressed character flaw. But I wouldn't hold my breath.
When golf giant Tiger Woods made his public apology recently, he said he let a lot of people down. Personally, I cared very little about his personal dalliances and extracurricular activities. With an economic and political crisis afoot in this crumbling empire, it seems that this salacious celebrity gossip is nothing more than that--a media-created distraction to help us forget how bad things really are in America. This is a sideshow, like the gladiator games in Rome, or feeding the Christians to the lions.
A personal matter, the subject of Tiger's apology really was not intended for the general public, though it was made before an audience of millions. Rather, his plastic, controlled, manufactured pseudo-press conference, no doubt the creation of some well-paid public relations firm, was intended for the people closest to him. And more importantly, it was meant for his corporate sponsors who have backed out and bailed out on him, or those who are fixin' to do so. This is about dollars.
So, Tiger didn't owe me an apology, because I had no expectations of him. But Tiger did disappoint me in one regard. He failed to apologize for his failure to put human rights and human dignity ahead of his profits. To be more specific, plans are still in motion for Tiger Woods Dubai, an expansive Woods-designed golf course and luxury home development in Dubai. The $100 million project is being built in Dubailand, the adult playground of the Mideast. Mansions and villas in the 580-acre resort are reportedly selling for $12 million to $23 million, and Woods plans to build a 16,500-square-foot mansion overlooking his course.
The problem is, Dubai is built on slave labor, and Tiger has had nothing to say about it. And I don't mean slavery as in hundreds of years ago. I mean slavery as in over the past thirty years, including now. The home of the world's tallest skyscraper, Dubai is a sparkling city of excess built by slave labor from the Third World, including the nations of the Indian subcontinent, the Philippines and Africa. Companies lure these workers with a promise of making a ton of money, and in the end steal their passports and their money as well. Migrant workers work 12 hours a day, six days a week in hot temperatures. And they earn an average of $175 a month, with no minimum wage, and some making as little as $8 a day, according to Human Rights Watch. I know, how dare I spoil other people's fun, and stand in their way as they try to earn a dishonest living on the backs of slaves, as dictated by the free market.
And you'd think that your average high-profile celebrity athlete or entertainer, often in tune with social and political causes, might have a low threshold of tolerance when it comes to slavery, much less people who profit from the practice of slavery. Never mind looking at it from the glaringly obvious moral perspective, just look at it from a PR point of view for a minute. But when that high-profile person is himself a descendant of slaves, the expectations are even higher. So the question that we must ask Tiger is, exactly how much money do you need, man? Were there no black history lessons in your childhood? Did all of those African-American heroes before you make their sacrifices, and endure the racial taunts, the hostility, the beatings, and the threats to life and livelihood, for this?
A person who would take money from people who have used slave labor, look the other way and not ask questions is truly a slave--a slave to his riches and to his corporate masters. Such a person is a billion-dollar monster, created by a mixture of extraordinary talent, excessive media hype and unprecedented corporate promotion.
But then again, maybe Tiger's statement about his devotion to the Buddhist faith is more than mere empty rhetoric. Perhaps he will see the light and make a correction to this previously unaddressed character flaw. But I wouldn't hold my breath.
November 20, 2009
November 9, 2009
September 13, 2007
U.S. needs to pay reparations for slavery
(FROM THE ARCHIVES)
By David A. Love
Published by Progressive Media Project and Knight-Ridder Tribune News Service
March, 2000
Reprinted in A Reader For College Writers, 6E (Santi V. Buscemi ed., McGraw-Hill, 2004).
In December, officials from Germany, Eastern Europe and the United States signed a historic agreement to pay $5 billion in reparations to Nazi slave laborers and their families. U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called the deal the first serious attempt to compensate "those whose labor was stolen or coerced during a time of outrage and shame. It is critical to completing the unfinished business of the old century before entering the new."
Unwittingly, Albright was making the perfect case for reparations to the descendants of African slaves in America. Since the United States has pressured the German and Swiss governments to own up to the sins of their past, shouldn't our country own up to the sins of its past?
Randall Robinson, executive director of TransAfrica and author of the new book, "The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks" (Dutton, 2000), believes that the nation's racial problems cannot be solved unless the United States compensates blacks for the massive crime of slavery, the "grievous wrong that has been committed against African Americans, and takes steps to redress that wrong."
Robinson notes that the U.S. government requested 100 slaves to construct the Capitol in Washington, a potent symbol of freedom and democracy. Masters who agreed to lend their slaves to the government received $5 per month per slave. Subsequently, forced labor helped clear the land for the rest of the District of Columbia.
Advocates for reparations point not only to the past injustices of slavery, but to the present racial inequalities that are a manifestation of slavery's legacy. In 1996, 39.5 percent of black children lived in poverty, as compared to 15.5 percent of white children, according to "The Social Health of the Nation" (Oxford University Press, 1999). The infant-mortality rate for African Americans in 1996 was more than twice as high as for whites, a proportional gap larger than in 1970.
Social injustice is accompanied by inequalities in the criminal-justice system. According to Human Rights Watch and the Sentencing Project, African Americans make up 13 percent to 15 percent of all drug users, yet account for 36 percent of all arrests for drug possession. In 1996, the incarceration rate for black men was eight times that of white men.
In 1865, following the end of the Civil War, Congress passed a bill that called for the seizure of Confederate property and the allocation of 40 acres of land and a mule to each of the former enslaved blacks. President Andrew Johnson vetoed the bill.
In every legislative session since 1989, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., has introduced bill H.R. 40 -- for "40 acres and a mule" -- legislation that would establish a commission to examine slavery and its lingering effects on African Americans and the country as a whole. The commission would then make recommendations to the Congress on appropriate remedies.
"What we're trying to do is start a discussion," says Conyers. "This is the most averted subject matter in the congressional agenda."
Others suggest that the road to reparations is possible through legal action. The National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, based in Washington, D.C., plans to sue the U.S. government on this issue.
"Our team is convinced that a solidly crafted lawsuit will help us achieve our reparations," says the group's attorney, Adjoa Aiyetoro. "Much like our ancestors who fought for 250 years to end chattel slavery, we cannot refuse to demand reparations in every forum because it appears that the government is unlikely to give it to us or that we do not have agreement as to what form it will take."
America, your silence on reparations smacks of hypocrisy.
Copyright © 2000 by David A. Love
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)