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Books on Reparations
Belinda's Petition:
A Concise History of Reparations For The Transatlantic
Slave Trade
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Race, Racism & Reparations
Should America Pay?: Slavery and the Raging Debate on
Reparations /
Race
and Reparations: A Black Perspective for the 21st
Century (1996)
The
Essence of Reparations
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Overview
Churches: A Black Manifesto—Time Friday, May. 16, 1969—James Forman,
one-time executive director of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee, disrupted a Sunday Communion service at Manhattan's Riverside
Church to demand, among other things, that the church, located on the edge
of Harlem, turn over 60% of its investment income to the conference. Two
days later Forman posted the conference's "Black Manifesto" on the door of
the headquarters of the Lutheran Church in America; the Lutherans' share of
the reparations bill, he said, was $50 million. Finally, he appeared at the
New York Archdiocesan chancery to demand $200,000,000 from U.S. Roman
Catholics.
Ironically, this blunt demand on the
churches originated from a well-intentioned effort by a liberal interfaith
group to draw out black ideas for the economic betterment of urban ghettos.
The Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO), which
includes 23 Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Negro and Mexican-American groups,
organized the National Black Economic Development Conference to bring black
leaders together for discussions and action on the economic aspects of Black
Power. The result was not what IFCO had expected. Forman took over a meeting
of the conference in Detroit and called for an end to the capitalistic
system in the U.S. Then he pushed through a "Black Manifesto," which passed
187 to 63, with many abstentions—Time
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Black Manifesto by The Black
National Economic Conference—The New York Review of Books—July 10,
1969—We the black people assembled in Detroit, Michigan for the National
Black Economic Development Conference are fully aware that we have been
forced to come together because racist white America has exploited our
resources, our minds, our bodies, our labor. For centuries we have been
forced to live as colonized people inside the United States, victimized by
the most vicious, racist system in the world. We have helped to build the
most industrial country in the world.
We are therefore demanding of the white
Christian churches and Jewish synagogues which are part and parcel of the
system of capitalism, that they begin to pay reparations to black people in
this country. We are demanding $500,000,000 from the Christian white
churches and the Jewish synagogues. This total comes to 15 dollars per
nigger. This is a low estimate for we maintain there are probably more than
30,000,000 black people in this country. $15 a nigger is not a large sum of
money and we know that the churches and synagogues have a tremendous wealth
and its membership, white America, has profited and still exploits black
people. We are also not unaware that the exploitation of colored peoples
around the world is aided and abetted by the white Christian churches and
synagogues. This demand for $500,000,000 is not an idle resolution or empty
words. Fifteen dollars for every black brother and sister in the United
States is only a beginning of the reparations due us as people who have been
exploited and degraded, brutalized, killed and persecuted. Underneath all of
this exploitation, the racism of this country has produced a psychological
effect upon us that we are beginning to shake off. We are no longer afraid
to demand our full rights as a people in this decadent society. . . .
NYBooks
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Henry Louis Gates gets slavery's history all wrong—By
Dr. Boyce Watkins—What occurred after we left Africa can and must be
considered independently from what happened while our forefathers were in
the mother land.
Beyond the indisputable financial damage caused by
slavery, there is also a price to be paid for pain, suffering and aggregate
trauma. Even the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which abolishes
slavery, has a clause stating that it's still OK to enslave another
American, as long as that person has been convicted of a crime. Given that
the United States incarcerates 5.8 times more black men than South Africa
did during the height of apartheid, it's easy to argue that the human rights
violations of American slavery continue to this day.
The arbitrary label of "convict" is used against black
men in a disproportionate fashion as a loophole for American corporations to
continue to profit from slave labor. I don't want to play the "blame game."
But mainstream media must not play the "irresponsibility game," by promoting
apologist African-American scholars who are willing to write off 400 years
of systemically oppressive behavior. While the Rodney King, "Can't we all
just get along?" approach makes some of us more comfortable, the truth is
that America cannot become truly post-racial until it overcomes its
past-racial influences. TheGrio
Home
Reparations Table
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Religion & Politics
Table
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Ending the
Slavery Blame-Game” by Henry L. Gates Jr.: Some
Perspectives—Kwabena Akurang-Parry—
Gates argues that since European slave traders lived
in the coastal trading posts, the blame for the
Atlantic slave trade wholly lies with Africans who
captured fellow “Africans” in the interior and sold
them to Europeans. His argument is an attractive
proposition obviously quarried from the
historiography. Unlike “Western” sources that inform
much of the historiography, the use of oral history
allows us to interrogate Gates’ conclusions at
several levels. First, 1871, Gates’ date for the
so-called European exploration of the interior of
Africa, is wrong: long before 1871, Europeans had
visited the interior parts of the continent.
Oral history
collected by scholars at the Institute of African
Studies, University of Ghana, Legon, shows that
during the era of the Atlantic slave trade,
“aborofo/oburoni”[whites] visited the interior of
what is today Ghana, broadly defined as the region
between Greater Asante and the littoral stretching
from Edina [Elmina] in the west to Keta in the east.
Even granted that Europeans never set foot in the
interior of West Africa and West-Central Africa,
there is no doubt that their presence in the trading
posts along the coast enabled them to influence
politics that led to wars of enslavement, and the
example of Portuguese predatory activities in the
Kongo may be summoned to elucidate this conclusion.
BlackBirdPressNews
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Audio:
My Story, My Song (Featuring blues guitarist Walter Wolfman Washington)
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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) * * *
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Race, Racism & Reparations
By J. Angelo Corlett Having supplanted "race" with a
well-defined concept of ethnicity, the author then analyzes the
nature and function of racism. Corlett argues for a notion of
racism that must encompass not only racist beliefs but also
racist actions, omissions, and attempted actions. His aim is to
craft a definition of racism that will prove useful in legal and
public policy contexts.
Corlett places
special emphasis on the broad questions of whether reparations
for ethnic groups are desirable and what forms those reparations
should take: land, money, social programs? He addresses the need
for differential affirmative action programs and reparations
policies—the experiences (and oppressors) of different ethnic
groups vary greatly. Arguments for reparations to Native and
African Americans are considered in light of a variety of
objections that are or might be raised against them. Corlett
articulates and critically analyzes a number of possible
proposals for reparations
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The
Essence of Reparations
By Amiri Baraka
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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Lies My Teacher Told Me
Everything Your American History
Textbook Got Wrong
By
James Loewen
Americans have lost touch with their
history, and in
Lies My Teacher Told Me
Professor James Loewen shows why. After
surveying eighteen leading high school
American history texts, he has concluded
that not one does a decent job of making
history interesting or memorable. Marred
by an embarrassing combination of blind
patriotism, mindless optimism, sheer
misinformation, and outright lies, these
books omit almost all the ambiguity,
passion, conflict, and drama from our
past. |
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In this revised edition, packed with updated material, Loewen
explores how historical myths continue to be perpetuated in today's
climate and adds an eye-opening chapter on the lies surrounding 9/11
and the Iraq War. From the truth about Columbus's historic voyages
to an honest evaluation of our national leaders, Loewen revives our
history, restoring the vitality and relevance it truly possesses.
Thought provoking, nonpartisan,
and often shocking, Loewen unveils the real America in this
iconoclastic classic beloved by high school teachers, history buffs,
and enlightened citizens across the country.
James W. Loewen is the
bestselling author of
Lies My Teacher Told Me and
Lies Across America. He is a regular contributor to the
History Channel's History magazine and is a professor emeritus of
sociology at the University of Vermont. He resides in Washington,
D.C.
posted 7 May 2010
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