Before we can ask for reparations we need to be sure what reparations are. When most Black or African-American people hear the word “reparations,” the only thing in and on their minds is a song by the OJAYS money, money, money, money,… MONEY. This is true but for us and our ancestors who were enslaved in America, reparations mean a whole lot more.
What are reparations? The word reparations comes from the Latin word reparare which means “to make ready again”. It has morphed into a compensatory amount to repay for damages or loss caused to an individual or people due to war or suffrage. Reparations in modern and capitalistic terms means to make amends for a wrong that has been done by paying money to or otherwise helping those who have been wronged.
Reparations are synonymous with Amends, Restitutions, Reimbursements, Recompenses, Compensations, Returns, Damages, to name several. So when Black people of America ask for reparations, what are we asking for? The majority is asking for the repayment of wages lost by our ancestors who were worked for years without receiving a single dime or penny for their labor. Today the United States government inspects the world for human rights violations in countries that use people and especially children for slave labor, sweat shops, and little to no pay for a day’s work. Although many corporations have moved their operations overseas to take advantage of the poor and impoverished people who are dying to work for low wages, the US government still takes its hypocritical stance globally against social injustices and denials of democratic freedom. So America, the two-faced and forked-tongue and whorish liar that she is, must come clean and see that she has committed the same acts that she now condemns and made herself rich in doing so. Now it is time, if she wants to be a true champion of freedom, liberty and justice for all, to admit to her wrongdoing and profiteering off the free labor of enslaved Africans and make restitution to their descendants who never got an inheritance or any benefits.
Reparations means to make ready again! So money will not make us ready again when we were not ready in the beginning. So what does it mean to make Black people ready again? In reality it means to return us to African status. Prior to being brought to America we were a people with identity, ethnicity, nationality, tribal recognition language, culture, diet, religion, and even family ties. We had names and names of our fathers. With all of that taken away we were first erased, then left in limbo, then reconstituted into blank pieces of human flesh without spirit, life, brains, souls, or any human qualities. We were whipped into shape like animals and mules and became the beasts of burden for White people of all nationalities that benefitted from American slavery. So to make us ready again means to replace every thing that was taken away: husbands lost their wives and children; wives lost their husbands and children; mothers lost their children and children lost their mothers; fathers lost their children and children lost their fathers; brothers and sisters were separated from each other and from their parents, uncles, aunts and grandparents, and vice versa. So how can America repay and repair these losses? It cannot and is definitely not willing to do anything to go that deeply into the lives of mules and sheep. So the distraction is to pass out money! So America allowed for the idea but never fulfilled the promise and thus the idea of having money dangling like a carrot in the eyes of a donkey, keeps Black people searching for the payday that they believe they are due.
How can any man or woman of God, dignity, self-respect, and pride accept some measly paper (cash money) that has pictures of his or her same slave owners on it as compensation for murder, rape, torture, dismemberment, maiming, torture, terrorism, sodomy, forced homosexuality and lesbianism, hanging, lynching, beatings, whippings, adultery, fornication, kidnapping, neglect, abandonment, and burning and burying alive? No amount of money could ever soothe the anger, hurt, trauma and pain that come about whenever the visual realities capture the actual acts that led to the deaths and traumatized spirits of human beings? As Hitler took lessons from the Americans, as he tortured and killed millions of Jews in Europe, the Jews not only received reparations and compensation for their losses, but they engraved their experience in films and books and showed the world their suffering; then they made a pact and solemn oath to go after, find, and make every single Nazi and Nazi supporter pay for their crimes against the Jews. Blacks in America do not have this type of desire or power or ability because they were stripped of identity, nationality and religion and their Nazis, the White Americans, are still in power. The whole world went to war and defeated Hitler, not the Jews! So it is global support that allowed them to not only escape death and eternal damnation under Hitler, but allowed them to have a homeland (Israel) and eternal monetary support so they could become the Hitlers of the Middle East. The world is not coming against White people of America in defense of its overdue reparations owed to the Black American Children of Israel.
So without a foundation there is absolutely nothing to stand upon and thus the entire retaliatory abilities are left in the air. Plus, without a single friend in the world, not a single nation that would come to our aid and support or defense, we have no power to make anything happen. Consequently we are left to beg the same slave master and owner to make us whole again or to reparare. If Whites were interested in that they would not have invented the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow, and all of the other traps and obstacles to self-awareness and truthful identity; they would have passed out Qur’ans or Korans and told the Black Africans to return to Islam instead of forcing the Bible and White-supremacist Christianity down our throats, at gunpoint, and with the threat of acceptance or death looming over us. They would have told us who we really are, where we were from, who were our fathers and mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers, etc. They would have told us where they buried our sisters, brothers, parents, children, spouses, and other relatives that they murdered in cold blood. They would have helped us get back to who and what we were prior to being brought to America. Reparare!
Now Niggahs don’t like to hear all of this mess and just want to chill, party, dance, get high and drunk and let bygones be bygones. Niggahs just want some money to blow. Stupid Niggahs! How you gonna let bygones be bygones when ain’t nothing gone by except the time? Whites haven’t gone anywhere and neither have you. You still wear and proudly carry their and their fathers’ names on your birth certificates and other identifications; you proudly worship their gods and lords and will defend Whiteness to the very end; you change your appearance to try and emulate them as much as you can; you wear their European clothes and styles and use their perfumes and colognes and hygiene products and eat their foods that keep you sick and diseased, etc. You go to their doctors and take their prescribed medicines. You hire their lawyers to defend your Blackness against their punishment, persecution, prosecution, judgment and imprisonment. You live by and die by their laws! Instead of running away you fight to be let into their chambers so you can prove to them that Black Lives Matter and that you are a man or woman, whole man and woman and not some 3/5 human ape or pig. You love your masters and mistresses and you hate your own selves because the selves you are came from slavery and not from freedom of choice.
You can let a mentally ill child run free and fend for his or her self, and then watch him or her become an adult but without any proper support or guidance or rehabilitative therapy or caring interventions; what will that child become in time? He or she will be a mentally ill adult that looks and acts crazy and who is out of control and without consequence or any intelligence or planning; you will get complete mental illness and disorder. Tadah! Welcome to Black America!
So who are we originally? Where did we come from? What are our real names? What did we do every day in Africa? What were our songs and dances? What was our diet? What were our tribal structure and our positions within our tribes and African nations? What religion did we have or practice? What languages did we speak? How many wives and children were we entitled to? What did we do for a living? How did we dress? What were our goals and ambitions in life? How did we bury our dead? How did we honor our parents? What was the role of the man, the brother, the father, the son? What was the role of the woman, the sister, the mother, the daughter? Did we hunt or fish or farm and harvest? What animals did we have around us? What trees and bushes were we accustomed to? What was our climate and seasons of the year like? How did we practice medicine? Did we have engineers and doctors and lawyers? Who were our leaders, kings, queens, princes and princesses? What was childbirth like for our mothers? What were our fathers’ roles? How did we raise our children? What were nights and mornings like? Did we use money? How did we bargain and make a living? Who were our builders and how did they learn how to build? Who were our hunters and what did they hunt? Who were our butchers and how did they learn how to cut meat? Who were our fishermen and how did they build boats and make nets, etc.? Who were our farmers and what equipment and tools did they use? Where did they get their seeds? Who were our harvesters? Who were the chefs and cooks? How often did we eat? What was breakfast like? Lunch? Supper? Dinner? How did we run our tribes or nations? What was our rule of law? How did we bury our dead? What were our funerals like? How young were we when we got married? Was divorce permissible? Did we have pets? Do we know anything about our past? Who, what, when, where, why, how were we? How can we know? Do we even care to know?
All of these questions would have to be asked and answered if we truly want REPARATIONS. Overshadowing what has been lost in almost half a millennium by rewarding us with some phony money instead of gold is an insult! However this is how we have been trained to want and think. Bling bling! Cha-ching! That’s all we care about because that’s the only way we can feel equal or superior to White people; material acquisitions and spending big money foolishly are what make us somebody in the eyes of the world. It is not our Black skin, integrity, dignity, honor, education, knowledge, wisdom, understanding, respect for self and others, etc. that make us human; not in our own eyes or the eyes of our captors or the world. No indeed! For us it is All About The Benjamins, and we don’t even know what the word Benjamin means. All we know is that it represents Benjamin Franklin and he is on every $100 bill. Cha-ching and/or bling-bling! We could care less about reparare as long as they give us lots of cash; money that cannot heal diabetes, cancer, high cholesterol, heart disease, COPD, AIDS, HIV, or that cannot get our family out of prisons even after being wrongfully convicted. DNA has more power than we have and thus the entire world sees us as slaves without physical shackles r chains. We are still bound and tied up, weak and subliminally submissive. We need reparare!
As people who were legally kept away from knowledge because there were laws against educating us and death threats were issued to anyone caught teaching us how to read or write or if we were caught reading and writing. This went on for centuries. Consequently we use words ignorantly without any etymology. It’s not our fault! We were bred into ignorance and were forced to love being ignorant and we happily remain this way as long as we live under the rule of our captors. Just go to the hood and verify the facts. We live under their educational and civil and governmental systems; we obtain their degrees and strive for their goals, and we look forward to the fulfillment of their promises of jobs, careers, positions and a secured future; we live in their homes and walk down their streets and traverse their roads and highways, driving their cars and filling those cars with their gasoline or diesel fuel; we emulate their lifestyles that are predominantly predicated upon their dollars that have their faces on them; and we worship and practice their religion that also wears and bears their faces throughout it. There is no place of escape for the Black man and woman in America and the only solution is to, well, when in Rome, become Romans. Yet in America, being White is not an option for ex-slaves, even though many have done everything their masters asked of them and have been good Niggahs for massah, and even tried to marry their white men and women and hopefully se this as a passport to acceptance. Yet and still, that Black skin and those Black features just remind Whites of who Niggahs really are and why they brought Africans to America and turned them into Niggahs.
We started out as recognized people from recognized tribes. Many spoke different languages and could not communicate. Upon realizing our ability to communicate in our native tongue, the slave master separated us from each other and we were left without anyone to talk to. We couldn’t understand each other and we could not understand the languages of our European captors and owners. We were in a strange land and exposed to strange weather and climates. Then they began to erase our identities and the only time we remember that we were Africans was when new Africans arrived as slaves on the plantations and we were forced to introduce them to the new life of servitude that most of us had become accustomed to. After complete erasure, we became nobodies. Afterwards we were given White names as property of White people. Eventually we evolved into Negroes, Niggers, Coloreds, Blacks, African-Americans, all of which are known to be Niggahs or the buried “N” word. This is what White-Christian America did for God’s people. This is history and factual, not some fantasy that we created! So here we are today as buried “N” words, still turning to these same White-Christian enslavers and asking them to “make us ready again” or repair us? So who are the fools? Who is to blame if nothing ever happens? Not them! They only offered 40 acres and a mule, not restoration or reparare!
Erasure. The removal of recorded material or data. Amnesia. A complete loss of memory. Reconstruction. Rebuilding a thing that has been damaged or destroyed. Delusion. Maintaining a false belief despite contradictory evidence, a typical symptom or mental disorder. These are our processes and realities in America. They erased us completely, took away all memory and recognition of self and home and history, and then rebuilt us into what they needed us to be so we can remain captive forever, even when there were no chains, shackles or fences to hold us captive. Then they put us into Disneyland and Universal Studios as they projected images of what we could be and gave us names that we could not possibly be or live up to. They made us living delusions and despite all of our efforts to resurface as human beings, they beat us back down into the darkness of blackness and made us finally feel proud to be Black, not African or wearing the names of our tribes nations or forefathers, but, “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud.” Black Panthers. Black Muslims. Black Man. Black Woman. Black Family. The Black Church. The First Black this and that. Historically Black Colleges. Black Fraternities and Sororities. Black Athletes and Entertainers. The First Black President of the United States of America. The First Black Lady. The First Black Family. The Black Experience. Black Music. Black Art. Soul Food. Black Ghettoes and housing projects. The Westside of town. BET. Black pimps and Black hoes and Black bitches. Everything identified as Black and not as American.
As we remain captivated and captive, free without anywhere to really go or the desire to leave the plantation where we are gun down or choked or hanged or lynched or raped or sodomized or forced into adultery, fornication, homosexuality and lesbianism, or just robbed at gun point and without any weapons at all, we keep beating our heads against the stones of their ancestors and we keep coming back injured in the head which further intensifies our amnesia, erasure, delusion and a new reconstruction of our brains and souls. It is a revolving cycle of nothingness wherein everything remains unfulfilled and we continue to watch the minstrel show that we star in. Puppets that believe they are real humans and even though they see the wires and strings attached, they boldly go into the slaughterhouses and await certain death and dismemberment. Luckily and because of the ability to erase and reconstruct, the masters can kick us out, resurrected and born again but without any of the tools that substantiate that we are born of the spirit and are truly independent, cognizant, free, and restored or repaired. This the delusion takes over and we continue again down the cycle of diminished returns, chasing the steam dragon that leaves a trail of mist as we follow the crumbs of Hansel and Gretel back to nowhere.
Progress? Sure we have delusional progress. What progress? Still not knowing who we are and where we came from and not receiving any truth, even about Jesus and God, how can we say we have made progress? The magician performs many tricks; just because he is not using the scarf or cutting the pretty woman in half does not mean that you are not still inside the magic show. Every time we try to get our memory back, they unleash their Ku Klux Klan plans on us and drive us back into darkness, lull us asleep, and then another decade or so will pass before we wake up from the stupor and get back to the business at hand. It’s not a mistake that we are incarcerated, drugged, intoxicated, unemployed, mis or poorly educated, and left with only a few options for survival. It’s not by mistake that we have access to as many guns as we want but not access to as many loans as we need or development tools that we need. We are in a box and someone has the key to our freedom and as soon as one of our leaders coms to lead us home and to true freedom, even while remaining in America, they assassinate him or her physically or socially or economically or characteristically. No Black man or woman will ever let God’s people go. There will never be another Moses and Aaron in the land of Pharaoh.
So we get along the best we can as delusional victims of amnesia and erasure. We wander to and fro, day in and day out, night in and night out, locked into the box of society and them into microcosmic pods called homes, apartments, townhouses, condominiums, lofts, flats, shacks, and even homeless shelters where we take our pills and return to the land of Nod so we can refresh the screen on our computers, get the latest updates, and then go back to being aimless for another century or so. It takes thousands of George Floyds to make us wake up temporarily while they rush to maintain order and then repair the programming or mix a new drug that will put us back into a stupor. Even after the world hears our cries and looks at our suffering today, no one came yesterday and over the past 400 years to do a damned thing about it. While we go all around the world assassinating people and demeaning them in the media for crimes against humanity, we do not put our crimes on the table and in front of the world court and fight for the freedom of the Blacks oppressed by White America. So what if a handful of Niggahs have prominent positions within a White supremacist government and society? These Niggahs are not African, they are delusional Americans! When they win races they proudly stand in front of the flag that represents the murder, slaughter and erasure of Black truths; it represents trauma and amnesia caused to an entire race of people. So how any Black person honorably wear and drape his or her self in, and stand and salute this flag? Only if he or she has been brainwashed and programmed to accept the brutality and be rewarded and awarded underneath it. It’s like a wife that has suffered here entire life under the physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual, and sexual abuse of her husband and then has to stand in front of everyone and applaud and worship and praise him and still wear his name as a married and abused captive. Everyone sees the black eyes, bruises and abuse record and no one comes to her rescue and allow the abuse to continue and the trauma to become pervasive; everyone turns a blind eye and tells the wife that “at least he’s providing for you and buying you nice things.” This is what happens when we focus on money as a solution to our problems. Is that wife freed from her past with a few dollars more? Can money heal her wounds? Making us focus on money as reparations for what has been done to us is an insult. It’s like a trick or pimp slapping a whore after raping her of her dignity and shooting sperm all over her face and making her swallow semen. She just picks up the money as if money is going to make all of what just happened to her go away. She will take each and every episode into her heart and soul and mind and live with each eternally. The only way to escape the trauma is through erasure, amnesia, escape and reconstruction.
Niggahs with degrees are still Niggahs. Niggahs with money are still Niggahs. Niggahs elected to Congress or the House of Representatives or even to the Supreme Court are still Niggahs. No one even talks about or hears from Clarence Thomas, and that Niggah has been on the Supreme Court since 1991. So we can speckle Black color onto the White landscape of America as much and as often as we like, but as long as that Blackness is delusional, erased, reconstructed and suffering from amnesia, that Blackness is part of the problem and not part of any solution for Black justice in America. Sorry, no reparations will be coming any time soon! And while you’re at it Niggah, how about some dancing and singing and sports entertainment? Make me some money and I’ll break you off a piece of that Kit Kat Bar. No! White man please! Gimme a break! In the name of GOD, give me my identity and property back. Even when released from prison the incarcerated person is given what he or she had when he or she arrived at the prison or detention center or jail. So why cannot we get back our history and the truth about who we are, where we came from, our ancestry, our names, our religion, our diet, and our ability to return home as men and women and not as Niggahs?
Did you forget that our subject is Reparations? Now you can see that with all of our comings and goings, smiling and shuffling, achievements, awards, successes and pageantries, there are no reparations for Black Americans! Niggahs don’t even ask for them when they reach the supposed levels and positions of achievement and success, or even when they make history. Clarence Thomas did not ask for reparations for our people, nor did the first Black President of the United States of America, Barack Hussien Obama, who held office for two terms and during that time he helped to bail out the banks but did not get one penny of reparations for the Black Americans. The banks were “too big to fail”, but not us! Black people can fall and fail as often as needed because we have been erased, we have amnesia, we are delusional, and we can be reconstructed after a commercial break or any time our masters decide to rewrite our story because it is all about his story, thus we have history to rely upon. We can go from afros to bald heads, from weaves and wigs to locks and dreads, and round and round the rabbit hole as often as needed, and we will still not get reparare. So again, who are the fools? This is minstrel mayhem! Not even a dog or pony would join this show.
So REPARATIONS should be three-fold and not singular because they did not rob us solely of money: they took away us from our selves and stole everything from us. What we are as Americans is some Frankenstein creature created in a laboratory and brought back to life after parts from many creatures were put together in order to make us. There is nothing about us that connects us to our past except our skin color and features. Everything else has been altered or erased. We may claim to be African Americans because our masters revealed Africa to us. The fact that we label ourselves as Africans proves further that we are without knowledge. Albeit that the term or identity as African-Americans is far better than the previous terms used to describe or label us, African-American is just the same assaying car. Which car? Which brand? Where was it manufactured? What are its features and abilities? What type of fuel does it take? What is the maintenance plan? We cannot just be “car”! We need more information. When we were sold on the auction block they described us better than they allow us to describe our selves. When we return to the auction block for the NBA, NFL, MLB, etc. they describe us better than we describe our selves. When they arrest us and convict and incarcerate us, they describe us better than we describe ourselves. If they can describe us under duress and after we have been erased and have become victims of amnesia, are they going to tell us the truth about our selves? Or are they going to give us just enough information to lull us back to sleep and make us feel welcomed on the plantation? If you haven’t been there then you don’t know what I am talking about: the parties and lavish lifestyles and yachts and private jets and the endless supply of deviant material possessions and access to all the sex, drugs, alcohol, food, beverage, desserts, and whatever the heart desires. After a soiree like this, there is no Niggah that would turn this opportunity down. This is why not a single one comes out in support of reparare. “Lose the reparations or lose the good life you have!” If you do not choose wisely and in their favor they will ruin and destroy you. Oh no? Ask Bill Cosby and others what happens when you bite the hands that feed you and have made you what you are and have become under their system? In the end, you are left being just another Niggah and not one from your race of people can come to your aid or defense, just like in the good ole days when Niggahs sat around watching other Niggahs receive punishment, torture and even death. Powerless and defenseless.
So do we need to be paid for lost wages? Yes. That’s #1 and it is the easiest to achieve; all they have to do is print the money. What else do we need? #2. We need freedom, justice and to be left alone to heal and self-reflect and self-determine. We don’t need equality! We need a long, long break from White people and all of the diversity of lies, deceit, treachery, hypocrisy and cajoling that keep us in the stands of their halls of learning and entertainment, amused with false hopes and dreams of ever becoming like them. #3. We need the truth because the truth shall set us free. The White people need to come clean and if they cannot because filth and indecency has been their lot since the first time we laid eyes on them and they laid their hands on us, then at least point us in the right direction so we can og and discover the truth for ourselves, financed by the U.S. government, just like they give grants to White students to research the life and times of the Silverback Gorillas in Africa, and to investigate or scrutinize other creatures and species all over the world and in the oceans, rivers, lakes and seas. They can spend money whenever they want to except when it comes to us. Giving us what we need makes them guilty for depriving us what we need and they do not like to stand for justice and to be found guilty in front of the world. For them it’s all about Hollywood, cinema and show. They can pretend and become anyone they want to because they have the power over their world. We have no power except the power they give us, therefore we are like unto the prophets and messengers who turn toward God for power and direction. So who then is our god and who is our lord? The White man! Jesus! Fresh off the cross and out of the grave and who has prepared a place for us in His Father’s mansion. Suffer little children unto the lord! Pied Piper is playing a tune and we and the rats and children are following the sounds as we march and rush off to our end. So we must wake up and smell the coffee that we grew and brewed, not his because he always has some negative side effects, even to his medicines that are supposed to heal and cure diseases, not create more problems.
