If you don’t want to hear about reparations for slavery in America, you are NOT an ally. There’s no price on human life but Germany paid billions in reparations for not only killing 6M Jews during the Shoah (Holocaust), but also enslaving another 20M and working them to death.

Germany paid not just Israel but individuals, $1 Billion as recently as 2013 for the care of all elderly Holocaust survivors.

Instead of trying to pretend it never happened like America is doing to slavery/racism here, they recognize and continue to work to atone for their sins.

Germany keeps apologizing. Did you know America hasn’t even officially APOLIGIZED for slavery? Congress had two separate apologies in 2008 but couldn’t agree so it was never signed.

Germany has ZERO Nazi statues. America? Racist symbols are not just everywhere, they’re REVERED.

Every facet of America and its wealth, benefitted from the enslavement, Jim Crow oppression, segregation, and discrimination against Black people. Reparations has to be a moral reckoning, first, and a financial redress, second. They won’t undo the harm but they’ll help atone.

White people going on about “I’m not responsible for the sins of my grand-parents”, YES YOU ARE. If you’ve gotten anything passed down, inherited *anything* from your white family here in America, you too benefitted from our enslavement and disenfranchisement. Miss me with that.

And especially to the white so-called Christians, in the words of Ben-Gurion, who invoked Kings 21:29, “Have you murdered and also inherited?” You might not have done the former but you definitely benefitted from the latter. And even further in Deuteronomy, where it states...

“If any people serve you six years, in the seventh year you must let them go free.

And when you release them, do not send them away empty-handed. Supply them liberally from your flock, your threshing floor and winepress.

Give to them as the Lord your God has blessed you.”

Not trying to get all biblical but right wingers are evangelical nuts who claim to love Jesus and God above all else, but conveniently pick and choose whose lives matter more.

Any conversation about #BlackLivesMatter MUST include reparations. A word that means REPAIR. An honest and valiant attempt at repairing this rotten foundation on which this country stands. If it continues unaddressed, it’ll continue to infect and eventually destroy us.

We shouldn’t accept not a single other empty apology, one more performative kente cloth wearing gesture, one more phony attempt at “unity”, nor any “reform”. All of those are aimed at preserving the status quo and prevent the real change and real conversations we need to have.

For more on reparations, context, especially as education for true allyship, please read Ta-Nehisi Coats excellent “Case for Reparations” https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/

And @SandyDarity’s ten myths about the White-Black generational wealth gap https://socialequity.duke.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/what-we-get-wrong.pdf

It’s an unfortunate misconception that reparations can only take the form of cash and land. That’s a falsehood and a distraction.

Here are ways 40 acres and a mule can look like in the 21st century that’d make an immediate impact on the lives of Black Americans and close the gap

We have to frame it as restoring opportunity - past, present and future - for Black people in America. For at least 3 generations:

- 0% mortgage loans
- 0% small business loans
- student loan forgiveness
- free higher ed
- tax exempt status
- annuities for direct descendants

Plus cash, and land.

At least 75 to 100 years worth of this to make up for 246 years of building an entire country for free is an incredibly generous deal.

America OWES Black people. And should pay its debt before it’s way too late.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk

PS: If you’re white and this whole idea of reparations makes you feel uncomfortable or some kind of way, sit with yourself and unpack that. Go read the articles. Then ask yourself what role you’re playing in upholding white supremacy. Cause that’s exactly what you’re still doing.