The US Presidential Race, Black leaders, and Reparations

Hotep Peace!!!

Take notes!!!!!!!!!

At an US Congressional hearing on reparations in Washington D.C during the summer of 2019, internationally famous Black author Ta-Nehisi Coats told lawmakers that reparations was a “dilemma of inheritance”. Coates told US Congressional leaders at the N'COBRA (The National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America) supported Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African-Americans that many of the inequities created by American slavery and segregation persist today, including in the form of economic disparities. The highly acclaimed writer said, “the wealth of the typical Black family has 1/10 of the wealth of a typical White family.” Coates’s is respected for his arguments on reparations. In 2014, he published his widely read commentary called, the Case for Reparations, in the Atlantic(https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/361631/). United States slavery legally forced Black people into racial servitude for 250 years. It accumulated billions of dollars in wealth for America and White people. The enslavement of Black people made America the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world. Segregation lasted from 1896 to 1966 separating Black people from White people for 100 years; continuing the racially oppressive policies from American slavery to legally make Black people second class citizens. Both American slavery and segregation were based upon White supremacist fictitious ideological notions that Afrika, Black people, Afrikan culture, and Afrikan History were inferior to White people. Using the system of racism, Whites justified the enslavement and racial domination of Black people in every aspect of life in the United States and in the world. With all that history being said, unfortunately, today’s US political leadership; but in particular, many Black leaders, with the exceptions of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam, N’COBRA, and few Black progressive US congressional members, ignored Coates’ eloquent pleas for the United States of America to presently come to grips for her past injustices to Black people to remedy centuries of racial and class oppression within the Black community. Unfortunately, many of today’s Black leaders have done nothing to force the American racist power structure, and US political leaders, to provide money, land, and all resources needed to improve the conditions of the masses of Black people in 2019. It is now 2020. The American Presidential election is taking place in the land. Consequently, it will be business as usual. US Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden, and the Democratic establishment, will continue dissing Black people. Incumbent US Republican President Donald Trump, and the Republican establishment, will continue dissing Black people. But many Black leaders will convince the masses of Black people to vote for either the Democratic Candidate Biden or for the Republican incumbent President Donald Trump. We will then give our vote to either Biden, or to Trump, without a commitment from both Biden, and Trump, to address a Black agenda for reparations.

As a side bar note, and this must be stated for the record, there have been a few courageous Black leaders and Black organizations that stepped up and out to challenge America on reparations. N’COBRA (The National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America), Dr. Conrad Worrell, Dr. Ron Daniels, the New Black Panther Party, the Nation of Islam, and of course, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan. Former US Congressman Jon Conyers and current US congresswoman Shelia Jackson Lee established House Resolution (H.R.) 40 as the Congressional Reparations Study Bill. Since 1989, every year the Bill has been introduced in the United States Congress. H.R. 40 has been championed by N'COBRA's (The National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America) Legislative Commission. In 2001, N'COBRA supported H.R.40, entitled Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act. This bill was sponsored by the late John Conyers Jr. The N'COBRA organization has been around for decades fighting for reparations since 1987. It was founded by Afrikan centered community-based organizations, such as the Conference of Black Lawyers, The New Afrikan Peoples, and the Republic of New Afrika. However, with all this great Black nationalist and progressive work for reparations from some Black leaders and Afrikan centered grass-roots organizations, we still have not received our reparations. America is still hell bent on denying owed Black reparations to the Black community.

Biden said, “if elected, the first item on my list of things to do as President will be LBGTQ issues.” At the time of this statement, Biden was loosing in the polls to US Presidential Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders. But because the Black vote was being manipulated by many Black leaders in the South, and around the United States, Black people gave our to vote Biden. Ultimately, Biden became the Democratic leader in the race for the White House.

I personally do not have a problem with an US President or an US Presidential candidate addressing LGBTQ issues at all. An US Presidential candidate, or an US President, should address an oppressed group’s issues (i.e. LBGTQ, Latinos, Asians women, Native America, Muslims, Jews, etc). And big props to the LBGTQ community’s leadership for forcing elected officials to address their issues. The LBGTQ leadership forced Barack Obama to establish and protect Gay rights during his two terms in the Whitehouse. Because of the work of the LBGTQ’s leadership, the Gay community made historic civil rights gains in America in the millennium. However, it was not the LBGTQ’s vote that saved Biden’s primary US Presidential campaign bid in 2020. It was the Black vote. But many Black leaders have not harness the power of the Black vote, nor the masses of Black people, to force the Democrats and the Republicans to address reparations in America’s. Reparations will find solutions to the problems uniquely affecting the Black community, such as unemployment, under employment, poverty, poor health care, high incarceration, police violence, community violence, the lack of Black business ownership, the lack of owning real estate, the lack of Black private schools, the land question, Black self-determination, neocolonialism in Afrika, and racism. These problems, that I mentioned earlier, stem from hundreds of years of American slavery (the Maafa) and legalized segregation. The Maafa is a Kiswahili word for the force migration of Black people from Afrika to the world.

History teaches us that oppressed groups, such as Black people, can force elected officials to address issues unique to that group. For example, Black leadership in the 1950s and 1960s, were able to force US political leaders to pass historic and unprecedented civil rights legislation to protect Black freedoms ignored by the American constitution. The Black civil rights movement inspired other oppressed groups such as, Latinos, women, and the Gay community to fight for the protection of their freedoms and the liberation of their group form oppression. However, if you have bad leadership in place, the oppressed group, such as Black people, will never get their issues addressed. This is being allowed to happen today. Because Black America has such poor leadership, our unique issues continue to go unaddressed in America by Democrats, Republicans, and the racist power structure!!! White supremacy and the system of racism in America have created generations of cultural, social, and economic wealth disparities between Blacks and Whites. These disparities have made Black people in America a permanent underclass. Therefore, we as Black people are the second most exploited group of people in the United States behind Native Americans. Although we as Black people have some success stories in America despite White domination (i.e. Lebron James, Russel Wilson, Sean ‘Puffy’ Combs, Jay Z , Beyoncé, Kanye West, Rihanna, Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Robert Smith, Dr. Ben Carson, etc) the masses of our people are still suffering under generations of wealth disparities. I am in my fifties now. I will not minced words anymore when it comes to our condition. In the millennium, Black people are in bad shape.

In conclusion, America has created a great illusion that we as Black people live in a “post-racial society.” That the prosperous success of some Black people in America means we all have made it in America. However, this is far from reality. On April 12, 1964 Malcolm X gave one of his most famous speeches called, the Ballot or the Bullet. He said, it’s either freedom for everybody or freedom for nobody.”Malcolm was essentially saying that all Black people must experience freedom and not just a select group of selected wealthy Black people. This fake notion of Black progress in America subscribes to what Karl Marx called in his book, The Communist Manifesto, “a false consciousness.” In reality, many Black people live near or below the poverty line. Income and wealth are not being generated fast enough in the Black community to build independence and Black power in the US for future generations. Nicole Hannah-Jones, the respected New York Times domestic reporter created the 1619 Project. She started her 1619 project in commemoration of the 400 years of Black presence in America. Black people were brought to Jamestown, Virginia from Afrika in chains by White people to be tuned into slaves in 1619 in America. Slavery in America and in Europe violently stripped Black people from our Afrikan names, Afrikan culture, Afrikan religions, Afrika spirituality, Afrikan languages, manhood, womanhood, childhood, norms, values, folkways, mores, and any connection to mother Afrika. She completed the project in the summer of 2019. With calls from all over the country for her to speak, Nicole Hannah-Jones started her American tour on her project. The purpose of her New Times 1619 Project tour was to force a discussion on the real facts about Black people’s enslavement in America, our struggle to hold on to cultural traditions from Afrika despite White people forcing Europeans cultural supremacy in our daily lives, our fight to create new Afrikan cultural traditions from American enslavement, our social justice struggles to make America live up to its democratic ideals, and our contributions to United States History. Her first stop was Weequachic High School in Newark, NJ to speak to students, teachers, administrators, and the community about the importance of the 1619 Project. What she said at Weequachic challenges Black leaders, and leadership in America, to give justice to Black people. Nicole Hannah-Jones said at the school, “it is time for us to stop hiding from our sins and confront the truth.” Unfortunately, many of our Black leaders, and US mainstream White leaders in America, are failing us!!!!! Sadly, many people in America, particularly many Black leaders, are choosing to ignore the facts on Black oppression. They do not see the need to fight for a Black agenda on reparations for the masses Black people. They seem to be blinded by their own personal political agenda fight for a position within the Democratic Party, or the Republican Party, or completely assimilating within mainstream America. Those Black leaders can not see and / or fail to understand that Black reparations is the pendulum shift to help us free ourselves from a permanent life of racial and class oppression in America.

Asante sana (Kiswahili for thank you very much) for reading my commentary

Hotep!!!

O Daboo (Yoruba word for go with God until we meet again)!!!

-Bashir Muhammad Akinyele is a History Teacher, Black Studies Teacher, Community Activist, Chairperson of Weequahic High School's Black History Month Committee in Newark, NJ, commentary writer, and Co-Producer and Co-Host of the All Politics Are Local, the number #1 political Hip Hip radio show in America.

Note: Spelling Afrika with a k is not a typo. Using the k in Afrika is the Kiswahili way of writing Africa. Kiswahili is a Pan -Afrikan language. It is spoken in many countries in Afrika. Kiswahili is the language used in Kwanzaa. The holiday of Kwanzaa is celebrated from December 26 to January 1.

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