The most important thing that I want to address that keeps getting left out of the reparations conversation is that reparations have already been paid.
DC Compensated Emancipation Act. You can read the bill here from the Senate.
This is when Abraham Lincoln paid out reparations to European Americans to compensate their loss of income from freeing other human beings.
$300 for each freeperson
Do you know how much 300 per slave is in today’s US currency?
Now that we’ve got little history lesson out of the way. Let’s just address your logic because I’m trying to understand it.
This is sort of a weird comparison. What does both groups happening to be of African origin have to do with the conversation on reparations?
Why are you comparing yourself to African Americans? How does your skin color make you the same? Are you implying because you have the same skin color as someone else that your experiences should be compared to each other?
Let me ask you something let’s just say the Jewish people in Germany had black skin instead. Would you compare yourself to them based on having the same skin color or perhaps is skin color unrelated to ethnicity? From my perspective I don’t see Africans as comparable to African Americans. Would this comparison make sense if we were comparing Irish immigrants fleeing to America with Jewish immigrants from Germany to America? From my perspective both ethnicities have white skin but here is the difference. Jewish immigrants were fleeing their systematic annihilation in another country. Irish immigrants came over primarily due to lack of resources. Some did come as indentured servants but no one was rounding up Irish immigrants for systematic annihilation like they did the Jewish people.
I’m sorry to break this to you but this post makes the same fallacy that most white supremacists make on a daily basis. It is to believe that one’s skin color dictates what group a person can belong to. This is called stereotyping and if it leads to unequal treatment that is called discrimination.
I understand you are surrounded by what would be classed by the capitalist machine as “poverty” but let’s all people of all ethnicities try to work together.
Yes, African Americans are owed reparations for the systemic inequality and economic disenfranchisement they have been subjected to for the past 300 years.
On your point referencing the economy.
While I hardly think pieces of currency or a bank account number takes precedence over ideas like morality and justice. I think you may be unaware that during slavery 60% of the United States GDP came from cotton. They sold it and traded with Europe as well. African Americans were turned into currency and traded on the stock market. Chase Bank and many other well known Ivy League universities in the US were financed by selling African Americans. So considering that the United States brand of capitalism was built off slavery it is high time they return the earnings back to the people they systematically tortured for 300 years.
