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Reparations needed to right U.S. wrongs
Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) has introduced HR 40 - Commission to Study Reparation Proposals to African Americans Act - to every Congress since 1989. He has promised to reintroduce it until it is passed into law.
The new chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Conyers has written, "One of the biggest challenges in discussing the issue of reparations in a political context is deciding how to have a national discussion without allowing the issue to polarize our party or our nation. The bill is named after the 40 acres and a mule once promised to former slaves. It calls for: the acknowledgement of the fundamental injustice and inhumanity of slavery; establishment of a commission to study slavery, its subsequent racial and economic discrimination against freed slaves; the study of the impact of those forces on today's living African Americans; and it would have the commission recommend to Congress appropriate remedies to redress the harm inflicted on living African Americans.
In this letter, an African American Tallahassee resident explains why she supports reparations.
Greetings of blessings and peace in the mighty name of Jesus, Yahshur, Buddah, Allah: One God, one people.
I stand on the shoulders of my ancient African Nubian Ancestors. I give honor to my mother Irene Clifton Cranshaw, her mother Alice Hemingway Clifton, and her father, my great grandfather Watson Hemingway-Amen-Ashe!
Thank God for Black African His(Our) story Month. Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., to name a few who held black people in great esteem!
It has been almost 400 years since Africans were first brought to this country in chains. We demand reparations for this. Reparations must be paid before America can start to heal. The enslavement process is a cancer eating at the very core of this society.
America must heal; America can heal. She must first offer an apology for wrongs done. This country must stop trying to sweep the issues of murder, rape, torture and systemic psychological abuse of black people under the rug. This has not worked and it will not work.
America is in denial, and it is destroying the very fabric of this society. For instance, inner city streets, rural roads and prisons are filled with African Nubian gods and goddess living the legacy of the trade in human cargo. Furthermore, historians estimate that at least 11 million men, women and children were stolen from their homes, crammed into ships by the hundreds, brought to the Caribbean and Americas and forced to work for free. In addition, it is estimated that 15 million to 25 million Africans died during transport to the Americas.
The banking, insurance, textile, shipbuilding, and other trade and finance related industries were built on the bodies of black women, men and children. Black people were worked to death on sugar cane plantations, tobacco fields and cotton fields. Mothers were torn from their children, fathers from their families, all in an attempt to demoralize and dehumanize a great black people!
U.S. Census Bureau surveys have found that white household income is 10 times greater than that of black households. This is directly due to the enslavement process and jim crow laws that enforced segregation and limited black peoples' options in areas ranging from jobs to housing to education.
The Constitution sanctioned the enslavement process that has kept blacks in this country from earning and learning. Also, legalized discrimination was created to help whites continue to advance while deliberately oppressing black people.
The U.S. government owes black people $300 to $500 billion dollars.
Respectfully,
D.R. Ha-nah' Manu-El
D.R. Ha-nah' Manu-El is an educator who holds a bachelors degree in African-American studies and a masters in applied social sciences. |
