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A JUST CAUSE - The Atlantic Monthly ran a review of the book by Black activisit Randall Robinson, famed for his work in the anti-Apartheid campaign, entitled The Debt. Listen to this:
Today Robinson wants to employ the tactics that ended apartheid to advance the justest cause in history. He envisions a "Year of Black Presence":Every black church, organization, and institution would commit to choose one day of the 130-odd days that the Congress is in session and bring on that day one thousand African Americans to walk the halls of Congress in support of compensation measures designed to close the economic and psychic gap between blacks and whites in America. The Congress, for one year, would never stop seeing our faces, never stop hearing our demands, never be relieved of our presence.
The Debt is a work of ideas, not a policy prescriptions; nevertheless, Robinson has wisely included some proposals to bring home to his readers what's at stake. His main proposal, taken from the article "Million Billions Gone," by the Tulane Law School associate professor Robert Westley, is that a private national trust be established, with heavy contributions from the government, to pay for enriching the education of black children and for the college tuition of "all were found to be in financial need." Research into the uncompensated contributions that blacks have made to white businesses and individuals down the years would set the size and duration of the trust.
Corporations, governments, and other institutions found to have benefited from slavery would be assessed "just compensation as an entitlement" for the labor they stole; these funds, too, would flow into the trust.
This compensation would be sought with the "same vigor that Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat demonstrated on behalf of Jewish survivors of the Nazi holocaust," if Robinson had his druthers, and the trust would establish a museum of slavery on the Mall, in Washington, to document the magnitude of American iniquity. Robinson wants young African-Americans to see why they are disadvantaged relative to white Americans. "You are owed...," he writes. "The fault is not yours. There is nothing wrong with you. They did this to you."
| The World's Magazine: g21.net
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The King family said in a press conference that they don't accept the conclusions of the Justice Department about the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., just a few days ago --- on June 10th.
In New York, the Amadou Diallo verdict still resonates.
While white people aren't that willing to talk about White Privilege, you can still find some places where the word gets out. Here is one of them.
Now, I know it's painful for some of ya'll to read me talk about this subject.
But guess why?
White Privilege does still exist in America. Nobody white wants to accept the true heinousness of slavery in American history, or what happened --- the lies and murders --- at the end of the Reconstruction era after the Civil War, or the beginning of Jim Crow, or the era of lynchings of Black folks at the beginning of this last century, or how Black people had to fight to get the damned vote, or the atrocities committed during the Civil Rights movement when my parents went to the streets, or COINTELPRO and J. Edgar Hoover's war against Black people, or the institutional racism which has ensued.
You and me enter a store together. The security guard follows me 'cause I'm a Black man and fit the profile. Meanwhile, you, White Boy, is shoving steaks down your pants to take back to you Slacker friends. Am I right?
Nobody wants to read that America has created a new Gulag where there are now a million Black people in prison and counting.
And now that a new death penalty debate has begun in this country, NOBODY wants to use the DNA testing to free more imprisoned Black men who are very likely NOT guilty of the crimes which white juries condemned them to death for.
And you don't think we need to talk about race, America?
If we don't start talking about it, we could end up fighting about it --- again.
One of the things my people have always been good at doin' is lettin' ya'll slide, White Folks. We always take the High Ground. Forgiveness.
We always appeal to your supposed sense of morality in order to get you to just treat us right. But I don't know how long that kindah strategy can go on.
We come to you as Christians, and you come to us as Killers.
We go, "Okay, Mr. Ofay, it's alright that I don't remember jack about the history of my people in Africa from whatever country you stole me from. It's okay that I, as a Black American, represent the ONLY race on earth which cannot regenerate its origins, language, religions. No problem.
"It's okay that you separated me from my family, took my language, raped my wife and daughter.
"We'll forget all that.
"We'll start fresh. Act like that's water under the bridge and try to have a 'reasonable' new beginning. And you promise not to treat me like you treated the Indians, right?"
It didn't work then and it ain't gonnah work now. America needs to deal with its Race Problem.
RDR RECOMMENDED SITE OF THE DAY: G21 has a lot of friends over the British Isles, and here's one that will give you a chuckle or two. Check out what they do over at Hahabonk. Enjoy!
