Recovery

I just finished reading an enlightening article on “Reparations” in the June 2014 issue of, The Atlantic. The piece was titled “The Case For Reparations” written by Ta-Nehisi Coates, a senior editor at The Atlantic. Reparations, in this context, is referring to amends for past treatment of African slaves and their descendants. The reaction to the word reparations has a predictable knee-jerk effect on most Americans of European descent. “Who is going to pay and who is going to be paid and how much are WE expected to come up with”, are the usual defensive and dismissive questions.

This article attempts to address those questions, but is more focused on the necessity for an open rational dialogue on the subject. As the copy on the cover of the magazine states in bold print: “250 years of slavery. 90 years of Jim Crow. 60 years of separate but equal. 35 years of state-sanctioned redlining. Until we reckon with the compounding moral debts of our ancestors, America will never be whole.” Recovery begins with an admission that there is a problem.

I was unaware, for example, that every year since 1989, congressman John Conyers, Jr. 13th district, Michigan introduces his bill HR 40. The full title of the bill is: Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act. Every year he introduces it and every year it does not make it to the floor. Heaven forbid we talk about the elephant in the house. As we vigorously deny our past, our present is rapidly deteriorating.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a non-profit “hate group” watchdog reports that “since 2000, the number of hate groups has increased by fifty six percent. This surge has been fueled by anger and fear over the nation’s ailing economy, and influx of non-white immigrants, and the diminishing white majority, as symbolized by the election of the nation’s first African-American president.” A more recent SPLC report states “the radical right experienced its first significant decrease in 2013 since Obama took office,” although this is “not necessarily an indication that extremist views are on the decline.”

In this climate of racial scapegoating, the recent neutering of the 1965 voting rights act and affirmative action by our Supreme Court, the very public and increasingly acceptable bigoted blitherings of the likes of Cliven Bundy and Donald Sterling, it is refreshing to see a journalist unafraid to address the issue of reparations in spite of the current back sliding on past civil rights accomplishments.

In his article Mr. Coates deftly articulates the selective memory of America.

“One cannot escape the question by hand-waving at the past, disavowing the acts of one’s ancestors, nor by citing a recent date of ancestral immigration. The last slaveholder has been dead for a very long time. The last soldier to endure Valley Forge has been dead much longer. To proudly claim the veteran and disown the slaveholder is patriotism à la carte. A nation outlives its generations. We were not there when Washington crossed the Delaware, but Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze’s rendering has meaning to us. We were not there when Woodrow Wilson took us into World War I, but we are still paying out the pensions. If Thomas Jefferson’s genius matters, then so does his taking of Sally Hemings’s body. If George Washington crossing the Delaware matters, so must his ruthless pursuit of the runagate Oney Judge.”

When you add the plain fact that our entire economic success as a nation would not have been possible without the African slave, we need to talk.

The piece by Mr. Coates is a clinical, yet illuminating look at the lives of African-Americans, both as individuals and as a demographic. It isn’t a quick read, but it’s worth reading twice. The on-line version has video footage, as well as the text. I urge everyone to read it and after America comes to grips with its past treatment of African-Americans, she can examine her relationship with Native America. One abomination at a time.

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Alex lives with his wife, Anna in Key West, Florida. He enjoys writing poetry and prose and making the complacent uncomfortable.

 

 

More From Other Sources:

http://www.theatlantic.com  [search for “reparations” in their search box, direct link not available without bounce back.]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/01/0131_030203_jubilee2.html

http://conyers.house.gov/index.cfm/reparations

http://www.splcenter.org/blog/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oney_Judge

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_People’s_History_of_the_United_States