|
Books on Reparations
Belinda's Petition:
A Concise History of Reparations For The Transatlantic
Slave Trade
/
Race, Racism & Reparations
Should America Pay?: Slavery and the Raging Debate on
Reparations /
Race
and Reparations: A Black Perspective for the 21st
Century (1996)
* * *
* *
Henry Louis
Gates' Dangerously Wrong Slave History
By Barbara Ransby
In a recent New York Times editorial, entitled, “Ending
the Slavery Black-Game,” Harvard Professor Henry
Louis Gates calls on the United States’ first Black
president to end the nation’s sense of responsibility
for the legacy of slavery. It is a pernicious argument,
well suited to the so-called “post-racial” moment we are
in. Like the erroneous claims of “post-racialism,” in
general, Gates’ editorial compromises rather than
advances the prospects for racial justice; and clouds
rather than clarifies the history, and persistent
realities, of racism in America.
Gates essentially absolves Americans of the guilt,
shame and most importantly, financial responsibility for
the horrific legacy of slavery in the Americas. How does
he do this—through a contrived narrative that indicts
African elites. And they did collaborate in the trade.
But this is no news flash. Every history graduate
student covering the Atlantic World knows that people of
African descent (like the elites from every other corner
of the globe) waged war against one another, captured
enemies in battle, and enslaved their weaker and more
vulnerable neighbors. This is nothing unique to Africa.
What is problematic about Gates’ essay is how he frames
and skews this fact.
The frame is this. Black and white people in the
United States should now “get over” slavery because as
we all know, this was not a racial thing but an economic
thing. Since both Blacks and whites were culpable, the
call for reparations is indeed meaningless and bereft of
any moral weight. If we take Gates’ argument to its full
conclusion, we might claim that it is not America or
Europe, but the long suffering, impoverished, and
debt-ridden nations of Africa, that should really pay
reparations to Black Americans. “The problem with
reparations,” Gates proclaims, is “from whom they would
be extracted.” This is a dilemma since Africans were
neither “ignorant or innocent,” when it came to the
slave trade.
At its worse, Gates’ argument resembles that of some
Holocaust deniers who don’t deny that “bad things”
happened to the Jews, but add that maybe the Nazi’s
weren’t the only ones to blame. Maybe the Jews, in part,
did it to themselves. Stories that over-emphasize the
role of the Judenrats (Jewish Councils), for example,
who were coerced into providing slave labor to the Nazis
and organized Jews to be sent to the concentration
camps, distorts the real culprits and criminals of the
Holocaust, and in the final analysis, serves to blame
the victims.
Even though African monarchs did collaborate in the
selling of Blacks bodies into slavery, what happened
after that was the establishment of a heinous and brutal
system that rested squarely on the dual pillars of White
supremacy and ruthless capitalist greed. There was
nothing African-inspired about it.
It is with the
construction of a racialized slave regime in the
Americas that a new form of the ancient institution of
slavery was honed and refashioned. African slaves in the
Americas, unlike most other places, were deemed slaves
for life, and their offspring were enslaved. Moreover,
Black servants were distinguished from white servants
(who were also badly treated) and stripped of all rights
and recourse. As slavery evolved even “free” Blacks were
denied basic rights by virtue of sharing ancestry and
phenotype with the enslaved population.
Racism, as so many scholars have documented was the
critical and ideological justification for the
exploitation, or more accurately, theft, of black labor
for some 300 years. Blacks were deemed inferior,
childlike, savage, and better suited to toiling in the
hot sun than whites, and innately incapable of governing
themselves. These are the racist myths and narratives
that justified slavery in the Americas. It was indeed
different in this way from other slave systems where the
fabricated mythologies of race did not rule the day.
Another problem with Gates' narrative about slavery is
that he neglects to examine the plantation experience
itself as the main ground on which African and
African-American labor was exploited. As distinguished
historian, Eric Foner, points out in his letter to the
Times [see below] on April 26, in critical response to Gates, the
internal U.S. slave trade, which had nothing to do with
Africa or African elites, involved the buying and
selling of over two million Black men, women and
children between 1820 and 1860. Slavery existed for over
a half century after the abolition of the trans-Atlantic
trade in 1807.
Even if African monarchs were complicit in and
benefited individually from the trade, none of them
received dividends from the profits generated by the
production of millions of tons of tobacco, sugar and
cotton by the stolen labor of imprisoned African and
African-American plantation workers (i.e., slaves). It
is this appropriation of millions of hours of
uncompensated labor that is the core of the reparations
demand.
Professor Gates’ selective storytelling and slanted use
of history paints a very different picture than does the
collective scholarship of hundreds of historians over
the last fifty years or so. A learned man who commands
enormous resources and unparalleled media attention, why
would Gates put this argument forward so vehemently now?
It is untimely at best. At a time when ill-informed and
self-congratulatory commentaries about how far America
has come on the race question, abound, Gates weighs in
to say, we can also stop “blaming” ourselves
(‘ourselves’ meaning white Americas or their surrogates)
for slavery.
The burden of race is made a little bit lighter by
Gates’ revisionist history. It is curious that the essay
appears at the same time that we not only see efforts to
minimize the importance of race or racism, but at a
moment when there is a rather sinister attempt to
rewrite the antebellum era as the good old days of
southern history. Virginia Governor Bob McConnell went
so far as to designate a month in honor of the
pro-slavery Confederacy.
Gates’ essay fits conveniently into the new discourse on
post-racialism. Slavery was long ago, the story goes,
and Black Americans have come such a long way. So, we
need to stop embracing ‘victimhood,’ get over it and
move on. We need to stop complaining and ‘end the blame
game,’ with regards to racism. After all, doesn’t the
election of Barack Obama relegate racism to the dustbins
of history? Gates goes even further to suggest that even
the worst marker of American racism, slavery, wasn’t so
exclusively racial after all.
Clearly, there has been racial progress in the United
States since the Civil War and the Civil Rights
Movement. That progress was born of decades of struggle
and protest. But we have not come as far as some would
have us believe. And we don’t escape history by either
tracing common ancestry or blaming others for comparable
crimes. Reconciliation with the past is a long, arduous
and complex process and there are no shortcuts.
Moreover, ‘the past’ is not so long ago. In other words,
chattel slavery ended in the United States in the 1860s
but, as Herb Boyd [see below], in yet another letter to the New York
Times in response to Gates, rightly points out, “the
economic disadvantage of Black workers extended beyond
the long night of slavery into the iniquitous era of Jim
Crow” (marked by segregation, legal disenfranchisement,
and rampant violence). Moreover, we don’t have to go
back to Jim Crow to see the ravages of American racism,
a racism that took hold under slavery.
Today, millions of young Black men and women are
caged,
shackled and dehumanized by a prison system that is
growing rapidly, privatizing and increasingly exploiting
the labor of its inmates. That scenario is far from
Harvard Square, where police harassment lands you in the
White House and on television. But the reality of the
21st century carceral state suggests that various forms
of coercion and containment are palpably present today.
It is not slavery but a powerful reminder of it. And
once again people of color are disproportionately
impacted.
Finally, despite its flawed and reckless uses of
history, and powerfully disturbing political messages,
there are some useful lessons embedded in Professor
Gates’ essay. The lessons are about the self-serving
role of certain Black elites, who in slavery times and
now, will sell (or sell out) other Black bodies for
their own gain and advancement. African royalty did it
in the 1600s and 1700s.
Comprador elites did it in colonial and postcolonial
settings through the Global South. And certain public
figures, in political, cultural and academic circles, do
so today, with a kind of moral blindness and impunity
that rivals the slave sellers of old. As we know, ideas
have consequences. And misleading narratives that fuel
and validate new forms of denial and given cover to
resurgent forms of racism should not be taken lightly.
* * *
* *
Barbara Ransby
is a historian, writer, and longtime political
activist. Ransby has published dozens of articles and
essays in popular and scholarly venues. She is most
notably the author of an award-winning biography of
civil rights activist Ella Baker, entitled,
Ella
Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical
Democratic Vision, (University of North Carolina,
2003).
Barbara is
currently working on two major research projects: a
study of African American feminist organizations in the
1970s, and a political biography of Eslanda Cardozo
Goode Robeson. She serves on the editorial board of the
London-based journal, Race and Class, and a number of
non-profit civic and media organizations.
Dr Ransby is a
University of Illinois (Chicago) Associate Professor,
Gender and Women's Studies, African American Studies,
and History Director, Gender and Women's Studies Program
PhD in History, University of Michigan.
* * *
* *
Africa’s Role in
the U.S. Slave Trade
26 April 2010
To the Editor:
In “Ending
the Slavery Blame-Game” (Op-Ed, April 23), Henry
Louis Gates Jr. notes that African rulers and merchants
were deeply complicit in the Atlantic slave trade.
Despite Mr. Gates’s contention that “there is very
little discussion” of this fact, it hardly qualifies as
news; today, virtually every history of slavery and
every American history textbook includes this
information.
Mr. Gates’s point
is that the African role complicates the process of
assigning blame for slavery and thus discussion of
apologies and reparations by the United States. I
believe that apologies serve little purpose and that
reparations are unworkable. But the great growth of
slavery in this country occurred after the closing of
the Atlantic slave trade in 1808.
It was Americans,
not Africans, who created in the South the largest, most
powerful slave system the modern world has known, a
system whose profits accrued not only to slaveholders
but also to factory owners and merchants in the North.
Africans had
nothing to do with the slave trade within the United
States, in which an estimated two million men, women and
children were sold between 1820 and 1860. Identifying
Africa’s part in the history of slavery does not negate
Americans’ responsibility to confront the institution’s
central role in our own history.
Eric Foner
New York, April 23, 2010
The writer is a professor of
history at Columbia University.
NYTimes
* * *
* *
To the Editor:
It is true, as
Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr. says, that many African
monarchs were complicit in the heinous Atlantic slave
trade. But the demand for reparations has less to do
with the mechanism that delivered the African captives
than what happened to them during the hundreds of years
of working without compensation.
The economic
disadvantage of black workers extended beyond the long
night of slavery into the iniquitous era of Jim Crow. A
crime was committed against humanity, and the European
nations, the United States and the African chiefs are
all accessories. But the United States was the greatest
beneficiary, and thus should be the main compensator.
Herb Boyd
New York, April 23, 2010
The writer teaches
African and African-American history at the College of
New Rochelle and City College, CUNY, and is the author
of 18 books.
NYTimes
* * *
* *
Response
Barbara Ransby's
polemics against the Harvard apologist, Skip "the jip"
Gates is on target, justified and based on sound
reasoning. I share her point of view that:
"Gates . . . argument resembles that of some Holocaust
deniers who don’t deny that “bad things” happened to the
Jews, but add that maybe the Nazi’s weren’t the only
ones to blame. Maybe the Jews, in part, did it to
themselves."
I sense that Gates' use of the Economics Determinism
argument is his attempt to spin the Marxist theory on
historic materialism, and the primacy of economics in
the development of human societies and history. Ransby
has made a formidable case against Gates views,
relegating it to Vulgar Marxism.
More competent and able thinkers than Gates, in the last
Century( 1933-1939) such as Leon Trotsky and C.L. R
James examined similarly foolhardy arguments of the
Gates type and dismissed them. Both
C.L.R. James and Trotsky
strongly supported the demands of Blacks in the US and
urged them never to give up their efforts for
Self-Determination and Nationalism.—Yao
* * *
* *
 |
Ella
Baker and the Black Freedom Movement
A Radical
Democratic Vision
By Barbara Ransby
One of
the most important African American leaders
of the twentieth century and perhaps the
most influential woman in the civil rights
movement, Ella Baker (1903-1986) was an
activist whose remarkable career spanned
fifty years and touched thousands of lives.
A gifted grassroots organizer, Baker shunned
the spotlight in favor of vital
behind-the-scenes work that helped power the
black freedom struggle. She was a national
officer and key figure in the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored
People, one of the founders of the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference, and a prime
mover in the creation of the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. |
|
Baker made a place for herself in
predominantly male political circles that included W. E.
B. Du Bois, Thurgood Marshall, and Martin Luther King
Jr., all the while maintaining relationships with a
vibrant group of women, students, and activists both
black and white.
In this deeply researched
biography, Barbara Ransby chronicles Baker's
long and rich political career as an
organizer, an intellectual, and a teacher,
from her early experiences in depression-era
Harlem to the civil rights movement of the
1950s and 1960s. Ransby shows Baker to be a
complex figure whose radical, democratic
worldview, commitment to empowering the
black poor, and emphasis on group-centered,
grassroots leadership set her apart from
most of her political contemporaries. Beyond
documenting an extraordinary life, the book
paints a vivid picture of the African
American fight for justice and its
intersections with other progressive
struggles worldwide across the twentieth
century.
UNC Press
|
 |
* * *
* *
Obama's America and the New
Jim Crow
The Recurring Racial
Nightmare, The Cyclical
Rebirth of Caste
by
Michelle Alexander
Michelle_Alexander Part
II Democracy Now
(Video) Race, Racism & Reparations
By J. Angelo Corlett
* * *
* *
Audio:
My Story, My Song (Featuring blues guitarist Walter Wolfman Washington)
* * *
* *
* *
* * *
|
Hopes and Prospects
By Noam Chomsky
In this urgent new book, Noam Chomsky
surveys the dangers and prospects of our
early twenty-first century. Exploring
challenges such as the growing gap
between North and South, American
exceptionalism (including under
President Barack Obama), the fiascos of
Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S.-Israeli
assault on Gaza, and the recent
financial bailouts, he also sees hope
for the future and a way to move
forward—in the democratic wave in Latin
America and in the global solidarity
movements that suggest "real progress
toward freedom and justice." Hopes and
Prospects is essential reading for
anyone who is concerned about the
primary challenges still facing the
human race. "This is a classic Chomsky
work: a bonfire of myths and lies,
sophistries and delusions. Noam Chomsky
is an enduring inspiration all over the
world—to millions, I suspect—for the
simple reason that he is a truth-teller
on an epic scale. I salute him." —John
Pilger
In dissecting the rhetoric and logic of
American empire and class domination, at
home and abroad, Chomsky continues a
longstanding and crucial work of
elucidation and activism . . .the
writing remains unswervingly rational
and principled throughout, and lends
bracing impetus to the real alternatives
before us.—Publisher's
Weekly
|
 |
*
* * * *
 |
Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
|
* * * * *
The White Masters
of the World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* * *
* *
Ancient African Nations
*
* * * *
If you like this page consider making a donation
* * *
* *
Negro Digest / Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
* * *
* *
The
Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
* * * *
*
The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding
of Haiti
* * * * *
* *
* * *
ChickenBones Store
(Books, DVDs, Music, and more)
posted 7 May 2010
|
