Critiquing Harper's Magazine's
'Making the Case for Racial Reparations'
Part I
By Oscar L. Beard, African Reparations Activist

Thanks to Harper's Magazine for showcasing Black Reparations in their November 2000 issue. And thanks to Emerge Magazine for breaking the ice for the major magazines in showcasing Black Reparations in an article they published a couple of years ago.

The article, "Making the Case for Racial Reparations," is based upon a discussion moderated by Jack Hitt, a contributing editor to Harper's. In order to place principles before personalities, my comments will focus on the substance of what was said in contrast to whom said it. It is old news now that some top notch Class Actions attorneys are planning to file suits for U.S. Slavery against the U.S. Government and all of its States, to include certain U.S. Corporations. Johnnie Cochran is on this team of lawyers. The pivot person for this new initiative is Dr. Ogletree, Harvard Law Professor. The discussion features attorneys Willie E. Gray, Alexander J. Pires, Jr., Richard F. Scruggs and Dennis C. Sweet, III. All are experienced experts in winning Class Action suits.

In response to Hitt's opening question, one of the attorneys states (according to the article) that slavery ended in 1865. Though the attorney proceeds to contradict himself in describing the awful slave conditions of the freed slaves, his response struck me as a crucial study piece on how we think as African slave descendants, i.e. thought processes and modalities based upon our conditioning.

What immediately comes to mind is that if we were freed in 1865, why are these attorneys about to conduct Class Actions for a settlement for slavery? I assert that this question may sound frivolous due to the conditioned manner in which we think, but that it presents an obvious discrepancy. The famous quote from Frederick Douglass, "As long as we are not the direct beneficiaries of our labor, we are still slaves." After stating that we were freed in 1865, the attorney goes on to state that we were left with nothing. Point; how can you be free with nothing?

The notion that we were freed in 1865 is one of the greatest White propaganda successes of all time. The approach was two-pronged. The U.S. Congress, having considered the idea of asking us if we wanted to associate with the U.S. Government, if we wanted to be U.S. Citizens, which would have been treating us like humans, decided not to ask us, not to deal with us as a Class because this would infer Reparations, an idea that had high profile at the time. So, the U.S. Congress decided to "make" us their so-called U.S. Citizens, highly publicizing the fact of the Black so-called Vote internationally, which mislead a world increasingly skeptical of U.S. Slavery to believe that the issue of slavery had been resolved. Slaves can vote now!

Of course, slaves had no voice in any of this. So we simply believe to today that we were freed in 1865 because the slavemaster said that we are free. If you have not been accustomed to being treated like an human being for over 400 years, you have little with which to compare when you continue to be treated as a non-human by having your legal status determined, being told that you have a certain status but having no say in it. We need to stop circulating White Propaganda.

Slavery was not monolithic, but changed as the slave economy changed. Economies to Scale had been reached by the U.S. Slavery System by the 1830s. By that time, after over two centuries of the illegal transport of slaves, illegal for us in that we did not agree to be slaves, there had been an emerging fear of what White South Africans call "swartgevaar" or the Black Takeover. Illegal transport and forced breeding resulted in too many slaves and the fear of Black "Insurrection".

By 1838 it had become politically correct to free Cinque and The Amistad captives. Who needed a bunch of slaves anymore anyway. Furthermore, Britain had jumped the gun on the U.S. by "abolishing" the slave "trade" after it had already made its fortune, and the U.S. was under sufficient international eye and embarrassment such that releasing The Amistad captives on grounds of a violation of their legal domicile of origin as freemen (women), provided a kind of asceticism for a Nation that conducts the most brutal forms of Crimes Against Humanity known in World History, a system of such efficiency that Adolf Hitler studied it diligently prior to forming his The Third Reich.

U.S. Slavery is not monolithic, but is in constant transformation as the slave economy transforms. By the time that you have thoroughly dehumanized a People via rape, castration sodomization, breaking the limbs of a nigger between two horses, tar and feathering and putting gunpowder in the arse of an outspoken nigress pregnant with your bastard baby, you have produced a mental slave off of whom you take the physical chains and he will still be your faithful dependent slave. Call him what you like (for effect), free or whatever, its up to you.

Then you can make him (her) your legislated slave by making him your so-called U.S. Citizen without meeting with the Class of Slaves to seek their view (Whites debated from 1776 to 1789 whether they wanted to be an U.S. Citizen) on the matter because you know they are going to demand Reparations just as you would do in their situation. Then you do The 14th Amendment to let the world know that you are now protecting your new U.S. Citizen slaves' forced so-called Civil Rights, persons you have stripped of all of their Human Rights, Mother Tongue, Religion and Culture, a non-person who no longer possesses an human identity of his (her) own. How can a People be free without an human identity of their own?

PART 2

Submitted by Ed L. McQuarters
Stress and Other Workplace Afflictions.
"What you wear in your heart, comes out in your face."

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