I was asked about how I thought Reparations would play out if granted to Black people.
I fully support Reparations, and I know that we are owed more than our Oppressors could ever repay, I also accept that; just as everything else we’ve organized to fight for in this nation we will get Reparations.
However, my prognosis on the Reparations Movement and Payout is extremely negative; here’s my full response to the question of how Reparations will play out for the Black population.
I suspect that Reparations would play out just like Affirmative Action and all the other concessions we’ve forced our Oppressors to make.
The way it always plays out is like this:
- Black Revolutionist/Militants organize and rise up against our Oppressors.
- Our Oppressors kill/frame/exile/demonize the Black Revolutionist.
- The Revolutionist out of Love for the people continue in the face of impossible odds and eventually force the Oppressor to change its policies, surrender resources, and make concessions.
- The Oppressor is resentful for being forced to the negotiating table with a people they deem sub-human (us) so they pick the passive Negros who didn’t rise up, who refused to support the Revolutionist, and who value acceptance of the Oppressor more than the empowerment of their own people.
- The Passive Negros get all of the benefits from the policy changes, resources, and concessions that the Black Revolutionist and Militants fought for, they then pretend that their Passivity, Cooperation, and Non-Violence is what won the day, not protracted militant struggle.
- The masses begin to believe this and begin to mock, ignore, and reject the Militants and chase after the resources and opportunities that our Oppressors have given to the Negros.
- The Negros take these resources and instead of building Black institutional, and expanding Black power, they simply show off, strut around mimicking their Masters, squander the concessions won by the Black Militants, and then blame the Black masses for our failure to progress.
That’s how the Reparations movement would play out if we fought and won them in this era. That’s how the Emancipation Struggle played out, the Back-to-Africa Struggle under Garvey played out, the Black Liberation Struggle in the 60s played out, and how the anti-Colonization Struggle played out.
In political terms this is called “Winning the War and Losing the Peace.”
The only way to avoid this scenario is for the Global African Community to conduct an internal Cultural Revolution prior to, or as we carry out our larger Pan-African Revolution so that there will be no New Negros and Uncle Tom left in our communities and nations for the Oppressors to negotiate with or hand the reclaimed resources over to.
The US did this during the Revolutionary War were they had to deal with those who supported the British Crown, the Chinese had to do this because many Chinese supported the colonizers over their own people.
We in the Black community value getting along more than Liberation at this point so we are in no position to fully conduct the needed Cultural Revolution, we call this Getting Along “Unity,” but it’s not Unity, far from it; Unity require much more than getting along, you need a coherent ideology, methodology, agendas, etc.
People are always accusing me of damaging Black Unity when I call out New Negros, because they don’t understand this history, or what Unity truly looks like.
I support Reparations, but I know the Negros will get control of the grants, and direct them to scholarships instead of building our own schools, they will direct the funds to job training instead of building our own industries, the will direct them to buying individual homes instead of collective tracts of land to build upon, etc. The Negros have been undermining our liberation since we’ve been on the Plantations. SMH.
(I hate deflating the tires on the Reparations bandwagon, but unless we accept the lessons of history, Reparations, like Integration, Civil Rights, and Decolonization will drive us deeper into dependence on our Oppressor, not free us from them.)
