A Reparations Explanation for Angry White People

PREFACE

There are two types of ignorance. One is the absence of knowledge, and the other is the decision to ignore something. Opposition to slavery -reparations is born of both — in equal measure. This article aims to provide a remedy for the first kind.

INTRODUCTION

We have entered a new age. Word on the street is that reparations are up next. For the angry white person hellbent on making sure that doesn’t happen, this is for you.

The goal is not to change your mind, the goal is for you to know.

Archive.org/ fair use

A PRIMER

In law, “reparations” means that when a country has committed a crime such as the invasion of another country or the genocide of a people, it must make amends to the victims, including the descendants of the original victims who still suffer from the consequences of the crime.

Most Americans have little to no understanding of how America spends our money, but in particular, when it comes reparations. America has never had a problem writing checks.. Not until it’s time to talk about repairing the harms done to Black Americans.

Today, we pay people living in U.S. territories for abuses of land caused by the US government. We pay the victims of the 911 attacks. We pay farmers affected by trade, people who lost bank accounts and banks that lost money. We pay veterans and descendants of veterans. In 2020, we paid out the last Civil War pension to the descendent of a white soldier, even though Black Americans who bravely served on the front lines in the same war were denied benefits. We compensated gay people for being denied survivor’s benefits before gay marriage was legal.

America pays Native American tribes billions of dollars annually. There have been millions of acres of land returned and investments that include, just last year, the largest federal contribution to date to support Native American programs. Let us not lose the irony here. Native American tribes also owned slaves, and when slaves became Freedmen%2C%20or%20self%2Dpurchase.), Freedmen became tribe members. When the Government agreed to reparations, the approved tribes expelled Freedmen from their homes and heritage. A battle is ongoing to gain recognition and secure property rights.

America also paid reparations to the original slave holders to compensate them for their loss of “property.” The rich planters demanded incentive if they were to comply with the emancipation proclamation. After all, it was only a proclamation, not the law.

We paid Japanese internment camp victims.

Ronald Regean signing the reparations act for Japanese Americans/ fair use

The Marshall Plan allocated billions of dollars to Jewish European resettlement and reparation after World War II. This was especially generous of the Truman Administration, considering they had just sacrificed their boys to Hitler’s war. America welcomed Jews and integrated them into business ownership and community building while violently excluding Black Americans.

Indeed, America pays reparations. Just not to the group most eligible for repair which, according to a report by The UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, are Black Americans.

WHERE THE WILD WHITES ARE

One only has to browse the internet to lose any illusions of a post-racial society. Anywhere there is mention of reparations, there you are: angry white people. Some of you are so passionate about your convictions, you’d rather die on a pristine hill of righteousness, defending America, instead of attempting to understand why such repair is warranted. The word is an instant trigger to rants about hard-earned tax dollars, slave- trading Africans, and, yes, those damn bootstraps. This is all despite there being no logical reason to believe America will attempt to right her wrongs.

It’s Black people who have inherited this sacred fight from our ancestors. It’s Black people who believe reparations should happen, and it’s Black people who mostly believe reparations won’t happen. We fight for it because we know it’s the right thing for this country to do, even though we’ve understood for a long time that we’re playing a rigged game.

Our government is devoid of the inclination to atone. Even as they once again dangle the reparations carrot, we remember they’ve made no serious effort for 158 years. Not since General Sherman and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton met with 20 leaders of the Black community in Savannah, Georgia to ask what would be most helpful to the freedmen after the Civil War. This was four days prior to Sherman issuing the infamous Special Field Order №15. The meeting was an unprecedented event in American history. It is also the last time a representative of our government delivered as promised to Black Americans. 1,000 black men were led to Skidaway Island, Ga., where they established a self-governing community. By June, as per the field order, they settled 40,000 freedmen on 400,000 acres of “Sherman Land.” In the fall of 1865, Andrew Jackson, Lincoln’s successor, overturned this visionary program without pause. He did not consider, or care, what effect such a move would have in paving the path for American race relations. To add insult to injury, he returned the land to the angry white people who had declared war on the divided nation in the first place.

Special Field Order No 15 or “40 Acres and a Mule”

These days, the best we get is the notion that there’s a bottle of hot sauce in Hillary’s purse. There’s also hip-hop recognition day, a Juneteenth holiday and more rumors of an Emmett Till statue. Black Americans requested none of these things. Democrats offer them as a show of solidarity and virtue, but they are meaningless, and attached to nothing that would actually repair harms done. That’s because retroactive morality alone doesn’t feed capitalism; like all high stakes games, the attention is on their own bigger cards, and we’ve known for a long time, the house always wins. Therefore, you won’t find a single Black person lying in wait for that elusive check in the mail.

WHITE PEOPLE PROBLEMS

They go something like this: People who never owned slaves don’t owe people who never were slaves./Slavery was a long time ago, so why should I be punished?/Stop playing the victim./What about Oprah and Obama? Do they get reparations too?/ My immigrant family had to pull itself up by its bootstraps, and Black people are lazy and looking for handouts./ If anyone deserves reparations, it’s Native Americans./ What about the Japanese, the Chinese, Jewish people?/ White people were slaves, too, so where are our reparations?/ All groups on earth were enslaved or oppressed in history, so why do you get special treatment?/ Get it from the Africans who sold you into slavery./ We already paid reparations with affirmative action, welfare, with White soldiers dying to free the slaves./ How do we even figure out who will get reparations?/ Plus, giving money to Blacks won’t solve their problems, they’ll blow it all./ Reparations are divisive./ Racism is over/Our economy will crash./ This will start a race war./ Race based compensation is racist./ Why can’t you get over it?/ Blah blah blah./ Bootstraps./ Blah blah.

None of that has a thing to do with what the government owes Black Americans for centuries of targeted sabotage. If angry White people believe their laundry list of grievances deserves repair, they should pursue their government for repair. But this is not that.

The government denied GI Bill benefits to Black Americans who fought beside their countrymen in every early American war. After which, they subsequently confined Black Americans to American ghettos and forced them to navigate manufactured street wars at home, watching grandparents rot in polluted inner city cancer-clusters. The U.S. government attacked Black Americans through easy availability of drugs, alcohol and sugar-packed foods and a paucity of medicines and healthful foods in the neighborhoods they were redlined into. Black Americans have been denied mortgages, had properties stolen or devalued, watched sacred burial grounds be destroyed. We have been held back from ownership wealth through racial covenants, have been given unbalanced prison sentences based on unfair laws, and planted evidence. A blind eye has been turned to the guns flooding Black neighborhoods, drugs pouring in, resources removed. Thousands and thousands of Black murders have gone unsolved while the perpetrators remain at large. The government and the industries they control have effectively weaponized Black music and Black sexuality. Those impossible 3 strikes laws took 100,000, primarily Black bodies, to prison. Both fellow citizens and the Government have bombed Black Americans in their homes, always because we had the audacity to attempt self liberation. America has buried or re-accredited our accomplishments, incentivized fatherlessness, practiced compulsory sterilization, strategically targeted Black Americans for birth “control” and abortions, medically poisoned us, profiled us, and exploited us. We have had precious babies fed to alligators, been lynched by the thousands, our body parts distributed as keepsakes, then denied anti-lynching legal protection until 2022, when the bill was expanded to include “all marginalized groups”. Many accurate histories have been erased permanently, burned, falsified. Black children have been lied to, underrepresented, then mocked when finally included, 200 Black towns have been flooded out of existence. When forced to move, Black folks had to navigate 10,000 sundown towns that spanned across the USA. January 6th was the most documented “crime” in history, although the only true American insurrection in US History happened when a fully Black government body was destroyed and taken over. Since then, every person who has stepped up to be a leader has been killed in cold blood by invisible people shooting invisible guns. Yet with all of that, it’s still impossible for America to differentiate between playing the victim and being one.

LONG LONG AGO

The next thing to understand is that Slavery reparations are not just for slavery, despite the confusing name. The reason for the proposal’s title is ironically the same reason the claims exist in the first place: racism. A recent example will be when the Biden administration promised $4 billion in federal aid to Black farmers to offset decades of proven racial discrimination. Instead of allowing this long awaited repair, angry White farmers have sued, arguing that it’s unconstitutional to give aid based on race. This is despite it being 99% White farmers who claimed $46 billion in comparable farm aid allocated by the previous administration. The lawsuits have left Black farmers with deeper debt and no end in sight.

The task forces putting together proposals for reparations did not want to drag things out further by fighting a losing battle with angry White people. Reports will be based on lineage, not race. The word “slavery” cannot change, even though it causes angry White people to become more angry.

Slavery prefaced racism but is not the embodiment of the claim. Reparations are about damage caused by racism. When Black Americans were no longer considered property, they were no longer protected, and so it got worse before it got better. Reparations are for damage caused by widespread unfair practices, sabotage, and murder, since slavery ended, including behaviors built into the system that have blocked Black people from any or all components needed to live life with the rights granted inherently by being born in America. This includes but is not limited to health & nutrition, financial access & education, land & homeownership, ancestral knowledge, inheritance, complete family units, safety, historical truths, & freedom, and the understanding of what this has cost “black” people, if applicable, for compensation consideration. Ironically, those who have suppressed our history only serve to renew it from the moment it’s discovered. It was a long time ago, and it was yesterday. It was also today.

While it’s correct that no one currently alive owned slaves or was a slave, and slavery ended 158 years ago, that argument offers a shallow perspective and an underhanded insult simultaneously. This ancient battle exists because the design of slavery and emancipation scarred Black people, psychologically, domestically, and societally. How could it be that Black people are living its legacy, but White people aren’t? By reducing the argument to slave status in the present, which is your preference for reasons one can only assume, you’re removing the very real experience of Black Americans. Perhaps ask yourself why you’d do that.

THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU

Thirteen US presidents owned slaves, including the first, and thus began the building of America. That’s how you can be sure the claim has nothing to do with you or any other so-called “white person.” This is a claim American descendents of the American institution of chattel slavery have pending with the United States Government. This begins and ends with them.

Immediately after emancipation, the US Government representatives established and enforced laws, codes, and conditions that not only exposed our ancestors to danger, but also rendered them vulnerable to imprisonment, violence, theft, poisoning, degradation, and demonization. These actions ensured a systemic devaluation across generations and ensured that one group would have a significantly different future compared to others. These politicians, with their leadership aspirations, took office and promised, generation after generation, to uphold the rule of law for all American people, swearing on their bibles to offer equal opportunity and equal protections under the law, and it was that same US government that failed at their job with purpose.

Our ancestors had to deal with their policies and so will you. If you are an American citizen, you are governed by consent and, therefore, elected officials represent you. The polls are where your input ends. Whether you feel the claim is false or fair doesn’t matter at all. You are part of a larger society. As a member of the collective, you share in its benefits and you also share the burdens. You inherit the debts and the gains. No one turns red in the face over America’s 33+ trillion dollar debt already in existence. No outrage for the 200+ billion dollars to Ukraine this year. We spent 250 billion + on illegal immigration. That’s how America works. You can’t opt out of the losses and only collect on the gains you’ve personalized. Further to that, you’re not the only one who pays taxes. Everyone pays taxes according to federal and state laws, without having any say in how the law spends those dollars. This happens regardless of whether you support Ukraine or Russia, or whether you believe the US Air Force needed a $700m B-21 Raider Bomber or think that money could have been better used to feed the homeless. Foreign Policy and corresponding aid are great examples.

If the government presents a reparations package, and if they it includes monetary compensation, you also have no say-so about how the funds are spent. If you’re worried about the economy crashing, you should be so lucky if it’s blown right back into the precious economy. Still, not a single step of the journey has a thing to do with you.

While you rant from behind your keyboard, it may interest you to learn about a 20-year Princeton University study that asked: Does the Government truly represent the people? What they found was that public opinion counts for less than 1% of legislation passed. That means is your incredibly emotional responses don’t affect law or policy. Perhaps you will ask why politicians and media keep strategically baiting you into outrage that literally has nothing to do with you. Perhaps you will focus on the implications of that. That said, your support is appreciated, but obviously, not necessary.

THE MISEDUCATION OF ANGRY WHITE PEOPLE

You are also under-educated on purpose, which is no fault of your own. In the age of information, this is only faultless to a certain point, however. The fear is of Black Americans becoming financially equal. A part of reparations will include releasing knowledge that’s been hidden since writing American curriculum, history, geography, literature, medicine, psychology and so on. This would include acknowledgments of societal and generational trauma, the kind that in popular belief systems effects everyone in the world except Black Americans. Instead of being disgruntled, perhaps you’ll come to understand why repair is warranted once you learn who Black people are, were and what has always been. Perhaps you’ll even find something to not hate. Although in a country more willing to give up gender than race, Black Americans won’t depend on such a possibility.

oi

As it stands, Black Americans have to defend something that should not face any opposition, which is largely based on perception and the social behaviors of a damaged group of people. Yes. There have been monsters created. You’re not a lone witness. It’s hated from within and without. Yet there’s some understanding in Black communities. There is consideration when dealing with group trauma. We know what it looks like, and we wonder how you all feel such things do not affect Black people. These behaviors you despise didn’t happen overnight. You who want to scream and shout when it all spills over into streets you haven’t yet gentrified, may find yourselves casualties of a civil war the government doesn’t deem worthy of aiding. That should feel more scary than the what’s being requested to repair an unbalanced civilization.

PROVE YOU ARE HUMAN

You have enough information to come to your own informed opinion now. This makes ignorance from now on your own choice. Humanity doesn’t progress well in darkness. Don’t complicate it.

You may even come to realize that those you’d don’t want to meet in a dark alley tonight can bring an untapped beauty into tomorrow. It’s what America needs in order to grow from a country stale with its own hate and manufactured history into a future where the truth of humanity will lead the way.