Black Reparations: All You Need To Know

I have read many articles concerning reparations for African Americans. The pros and cons of opinions on the subject are as wide spread as the billions of Black people that are affected by the actual reality of what the term, "Reparations," implies; and the implications are staggering in a culture that has demonstrated many times that it doesn't want African Americans to be in North America - period.

The information in this web page and its links are my representations of the most comprehensive explainations of reparations that I have come across, so far. At first glance, the informaion might appear to be too long to be bothered with taking a look at. However, there is lots here for the informed, and the not so informed.

Critiquing Harpers Magazine: Making the Case for Racial Reparations-Part 1

By: Oscar L. Beard, African Reparations Activist.

Thanks to Harpers Magazine for showcasing Black Reparations in their November 2000 issue. And thanks to Emerge Magazine for breaking the ice for the major magazines in showcasing Black Reparations in an article they published a couple of years ago.

The article, "Making the Case for Racial Reparations," is based upon a discussion moderated by Jack Hitt, a contributing editor to Harpers.

In order to place principles before personalities, my comments will focus on the substance of what was said in contrast to whom said it. It is old news now that some top notch Class Actions attorneys are planning to file suits for U.S. Slavery against the U.S. Government and all of its States, to include certain U.S. Corporations. Johnnie Cochran is on this team of lawyers. The pivot person for this new initiative is Dr. Ogletree, Harvard Law Professor. The discussion features attorneys Willie E. Gray, Alexander J. Pires, Jr., Richard F. Scruggs and Dennis C. Sweet, III. All are experienced experts in winning Class Action suits.

In response to the opening question of Hitt, one of the attorneys states (according to the article) that slavery ended in 1865. Though theattorney proceeds to contradict himself in describing the awful slaveconditions of the freed slaves, his response struck me as a crucial study piece on how we think as African slave descendants, i.e. thought processes and modalities based upon our conditioning.

What immediately comes to mind is that if we were freed in 1865, why are these attorneys about to conduct Class Actions for a settlement for slavery? I assert that this question may sound frivolous due to the conditioned manner in which we think, but that it presents an obvious discrepancy. The famous quote from Frederick Douglass, "As long as we are not the direct beneficiaries of our labor, we are still slaves." After stating that we were freed in 1865, the attorney goes on to state that we were left with nothing. Point; how can you be free with nothing?

The notion that we were freed in 1865 is one of the greatest White propaganda successes of all time. The approach was two-pronged. The U.S. Congress, having considered the idea of asking us if we wanted to associate with the U.S. Government, if we wanted to be U.S. Citizens, which would have been treating us like humans, decided not to ask us, not to deal with us as a Class because this would infer Reparations, an idea that had high profile at the time. So, the U.S. Congress decided to "make" us their so-called U.S. Citizens, highly publicizing the fact of the Black so-called Vote internationally, which mislead a world increasingly skeptical of U.S. Slavery to believe that the issue of slavery had been resolved. Slaves can vote now!

Of course, slaves had no voice in any of this. So we simply believe to today that we were freed in 1865 because the slavemaster said that we are free. If you have not been accustomed to being treated like an human being for over 400 years, you have little with which to compare when you continue to be treated as a non-human by having your legal status determined, being told that you have a certain status but having no say in it. We need to stop circulating White Propaganda.

Slavery was not monolithic, but changed as the slave economy changed. Economies to Scale had been reached by the U.S. Slavery System by the 1830s. By that time, after over two centuries of the illegal transport of slaves, illegal for us in that we did not agree to be slaves, there had been an emerging fear of what White South Africans call "swartgevaar" or the Black Takeover. Illegal transport and forced breeding resulted in too many slaves and the fear of Black "Insurrection".

By 1838 it had become politically correct to free Cinque and The Amistad captives. Who needed a bunch of slaves anymore anyway. Furthermore, Britain had jumped the gun on the U.S. by "abolishing" the slave "trade" after it had already made its fortune, and the U.S. was under sufficient international eye and embarrassment such that releasing The Amistad captives on grounds of a violation of their legal domicile of origin as freemen (women), provided a kind of asceticism for a Nation that conducts the most brutal forms of Crimes Against Humanity known in World History, a system of such efficiency that Adolf Hitler studied it diligently prior to forming his The Third Reich.

U.S. Slavery is not monolithic, but is in constant transformation as the slave economy transforms. By the time that you have thoroughly dehumanized a People via rape, castration sodomization, breaking the limbs of a nigger between two horses, tar and feathering and putting gunpowder in the arse of an outspoken nigress pregnant with your bastard baby, you have produced a mental slave off of whom you take the physical chains and he will still be your faithful dependent slave. Call him what you like (for effect), free or whatever, its up to you

Then you can make him (her) your legislated slave by making him your so-called U.S. Citizen without meeting with the Class of Slaves to seek their view (Whites debated from 1776 to 1789 whether they wanted to be an U.S. Citizen) on the matter because you know they are going to demand Reparations just as you would do in their situation.

Then you do The 14th Amendment to let the world know that you are now protecting your new U.S. Citizen slaves’ forced so-called Civil Rights, persons you have stripped of all of their Human Rights, Mother Tongue, Religion and Culture, a non-person who no longer possesses an human identity of his (her) own. How can a People be free without an human identity of their own?

(Author's Note: I have been forced to place the International Copyright on these materials due the fact that a party has taken the "liberty" of re-distributing Part I with their own changes. In my view, these changes altered the substance and/or flavor of my statement.)

More Reparations

Critiquing Harpers Magazine: Making the Case for Racial Reparations-Part 2

Tulsa

Historical Society
Tulsa Race Riot
Report
Though we are aware that the term Reparations is in recent use in a number of differing contexts in U.S. Law, there is a dire need for African or Black Reparations Activists to be clear on what the term means in the wake of the DEMAND for Reparations by African People. The usage of the term is now extended to local Courts, an apparent colloquialism for the term restitution. At the same time, African Reparations articles now tend to distinguish between Reparations and restitution.

According to the Harpers article, one of the attorneys identified the recent Class Action Settlement by the Black Farmers against the U.S. Department of Agriculture as Reparations. But what is meant by Reparations in the context of the abuses of U.S. Slavery and its lingering effects is provided in Black's Law Dictionary, 6th Edition, as "Payment made by one country to another for damage during war." The 'war' context is crucial to the appropriate understanding of what we are about to do in the U.S. and globally regarding African Reparations and in understanding in no uncertain terms that we are still U.S. captives without our liberties as a People.

An excellent explanation of what African Reparations really mean in the context of the European war against Africans, is provided in a video by Attorney Dr. Robert L. Brock called, "Black Sovereignty and the 14th Amendment". If you need information on how to acquire this very important video, visit the website of The Self Determination Committee at: http://www.directblackaction.com and e-mail the webmaster. An additional source of information regarding the war context of African Reparations may be found at my website, listed above, at the link near the bottom of the home page called Did We Sell Each Other Into Slavery?.

The recent global phenomenon of the payment of Reparations in International Law deals with the payment by one Nation to another Nation or State, for abuse(s). So that the Black Farmers' Settlement would not be Reparations in this classic sense of the word as it applies to African Reparations. The problem that The Honourable Silis Muhammad of The Lost Found Nation of Islam and The National Commission for Reparations experienced in 1996 in seeking Reparations for African Slavery and its lingering effects via Due Process in International Law through The United Nations Commission Human Rights Commission protocol in Geneva, Switzerland is this. There was no existing category by which even to discuss the problem of Reparations to African slave descendants in the U.S. and the Diaspora because we, the Plaintiff(s) have no International Identity. Our Human Identity in terms of the three Human Rights in International Law, Mother Tongue, Religion and Culture, were all stripped from us by force of arms and brainwashing during slavery. This presented a tactical problem.

The problem was that since Reparations is a transfer of payment(s) from one State or Nation to another State or Nation (The United NATIONS) for abuse(s), only the Defendant, the accused U.S. Government and others, could be identified as a State or a Nation with a government that is recognized by the International community. Where is the Diaspora Negro State that has international recognition? Who is its president? What is its Gross National Product? Where is its military? On what land is the Negro State located?

The problem of a category by which to discuss the matter of Reparations to African slave descendants in the Diaspora was solved in Geneva in May of 2000 by an expert in The Working Group on Minorities within The United Nations Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights (a mouthful), which comes under the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. The Subcommission is a primary arena in which problems in Human Rights may be presented to the 188 member-Nation States of the World while they are in session.

So what occurred this August in Geneva is that the paper which, for the first time, gives us an human or International Identity by which Reparations can be discussed in Due Process in International Law, was, in the short run, stopped by the U.S. Our new International Identity comes under the concept of Ethnogenesis.

And what is Ethnogenesis? There are a wide range and permutations of Crimes Against Humanity. Bringing these crimes to a least common denominator for our purposes we could speak of two situations. There are those People, Nations or States who are being dominated or subjugated by some of other Nation(s) or State(s) on their own land, but who still have their Mother Tongue, their traditional Religion and original Culture, though both their Religion and Culture may be under threat from the presence of the alien Culture. They still have their Human Rights, though not their liberties.

hen there are those People(s) who have been removed from their land by force of arms to a forced jurisdiction, but who still have their Mother Tongue, Religion and Culture. In our situation, we were removed from our land by force of arms (our Common Law Domicile(s) of Origin) and also stripped of our Human Rights and Human Identity by force of arms and brainwashing. This is a very unique situation for which, until this past May 2000, the International community had no category. Literally, we now exist as a People in International Law for the very first time in U.S. and Diaspora History!

So Ethnogenesis refers to a People(s), a Nation(s) or State(s) illegally removed from their Common Law Domicile(s) of Origin into a forced jurisdiction and who were stripped of their Human Identity, but who have been experiencing a return or a rediscovery of that Human Identity, Mother Tongue(s), original Religion(s) and original or traditional Culture(s), but who continue to be dominated, eclipsed by a popular and more powerful Nation(s) or State(s) or People(s) under whose forced identity they are identified as opposed to their own Human Identity which was stripped from them by force and brainwashing. Well, this describes us quite nicely!

So it is extremely important at this juncture as African and/or Black Reparations moves into the mainstream media locally, nationally and globally, that we are clear on these issues.

Respectfully, Oscar L. Beard African Reparations Activist