The Descendants of Enslaved Americans have made tremendous progress in recent years due to their rejection of Pan-Africanism and the instituting of an uncompromising advocacy for self-interest. On Tuesday, March 29, 2022, this cultural shift continued to bare fruit when the California Reparations Task Force decided that eligibility for Reparations would be based on one’s lineage rather than their race. What this decision means, is that any Reparations payouts made by the State of California would be to the Descendants of Enslaved Americans exclusively. If successful, this decision will serve as blueprint for the rest of the states and inevitably, the entire country.
As Jason Black would say, “THIS. IS. GOOD.” But despite these gains, we still have a long journey in reversing the damaging, untreated aftermath of American chattel slavery.
Table of Contents
The Case for Reparations
By 2053, the median wealth of Descendants of Enslaved Americans is projected to be $0. This is the result of generations of structural inequality that has disenfranchised Black America in housing, employment, healthcare, media and more. The keyword here is “generations”…not years, not decades, literally 100’s of years of non-stop terrorism against our people. Not only were our ancestors enslaved and unpaid but even after chattel slavery was abolished, we were subject to the following:
- Sharecropping (which is slavery by another name)
- Being repeatedly stripped away from our families through mass incarceration
- Being subject to downright abominable human rights violations and unsuitable living conditions
- Being uncredited for our inventions and ideas and having them stolen (while whites and others who stole our intellectual property became wealthy and rich from them)
- Being subject to generational theft, con games, and having our lands stolen (Did you know that, for example, George Floyd’s Family was Robbed Of 500 Acres?)
- Being inhumanely and graphically brutalized, and severely and helplessly abused for centuries
- Forced, unpaid, and even uncredited labor
- Redlining
- Jim Crow
- Widespread and disproportionate wealth distribution (specific funding, resources, capital, and assets get distributed to whites, Native Indians, Latinos, Asians, and all other groups, whereas we as a people collectively and historically have not received any kind of tangibles specifically for us)
- Bombings, attacks, and racist sabotaging of prosperous Black American communities
- Lack of a repair plan provided such as cash reparations
- And much more
Descendants of Enslaved Americans have never lived in the land of opportunity, but rather a land of oppression. We have been blocked from the GI Bill, Homestead Act, much of the New Deal, etc. It’s ironic how America boasts about diversity and inclusiveness while simultaneously having an uninterrupted timeline of terorrism and discrimination against Descendants of Enslaved Americans.
It is imperative more than ever that the USA ceases this very deliberate and long-term strangulation by putting forth a comprehensive reparations plan targeted specifically to this demographic. How much would it cost? Some studies estimate the requisite amount of repair to be around $17 Trillion while others are closer to $100 trillion once interest and inflation are taken into account.
A Specific Claim Due to Specific Harms
What people don’t actually understand is that lineage-based reparations for Descendants of Enslaved Americans is not necessarily a racism claim, but a specific claim to get what we are owed, what we were and are blocked from, and what we were promised from the United States. With reparations, we will finally have the necessary resources available to collectively feed ourselves, gain land and assets, create our own businesses and economy, form strong neighborhoods and communities, and protect and secure ourselves and what’s ours. We will finally be able to create and enforce a real system of justice, equity, and equality for ourselves.
And even though both Descendants of Enslaved Americans and Black Immigrants continue to face racism and anti-Black discrimination, we still belong to different ethnic groups, backgrounds, and lineages. While South African apartheid, the Belgian genocide of the Congolese, and slavery in the Caribbean are all inhumane acts, they do not entitle these groups to Reparations from the United States of America. More specifically, they do not entitle these impacted groups to the claims the Descendants of Enslaved Americans have against the US Government.
Neither of these groups were kidnapped and snatched away from their homeland, thrown into a slave ship with outright deplorable and horrific living conditions, stripped away of their identity and native language and cultures, and put into the USA to remain in eternal chattel slavery and suffer for 500 years afterward. No other ethnicity of Black people in the USA have faced the targeted and persistent terrorist onslaught that Descendants of Enslaved Americans have faced at the hands of the US Government and citizens.
This reparations claim focuses on the grievances of a historically aggrieved and ignored group of a specific lineage who never received reparations for the extremely unique, yet horrific atrocity that they experienced collectively. It is disrespectful to equate the struggles of voluntary migrants to those of the Descendants of Enslaved Americans simply because they share a skin tone. Up until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, Black people were all but banned from migrating to the USA. Why should repair for hundreds of years of terrorism against Descendants of Enslaved Americans be diluted by including individuals who came here largely after 1965?
Learning From Past Mistakes
The lineage standard also avoids common trick language used to funnel resources to everyone BUT Descendants of Enslaved Americans. A great example of this is Affirmative Action, a piece of legislation passed in 1961 that aimed to stop widespread employment discrimination against Black Americans. By 1995, White women had benefitted disproportionately from the legislation. Obtuse terminology like “minority”, “disenfranchised communities”, “underserved” have all been used to funnel resources to other groups under the guise of support for Descendants of Enslaved Americans.
Race-based eligibility would be a “Black” twist on this same trick bag with the result being Reparations paid to Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Cubans, Mexicans, Colombians, Hondurans, Belizeans, Jamaicans and many more as each group has members who have some type of “Black” admixture. What makes this even more troubling is the fact that these groups are already prioritized over Descendants of Enslaved Americans in the USA. While we are fed lines such as “repair for Black people is unconstitutional” we see programs that target cash and resources specifically to Latinos, Asians, Afghans, Ukrainians, LGBT, etc. A race-based standard will simply infuse more cash into groups who are prioritized over Descendants of Enslaved Americans and often harbor anti-Black sentiments themselves.
Putting Respect on Our Names
Black Americans who are Descendants of Enslaved Americans are an ethnic group and lineage that is every bit as valid as Brazilians, Nigerians, Trinidadians, etc. If you are a Black person who lives or even was born in the USA, but do not descend from Black American enslaved people, rather than get upset and feel left out, you should think bigger and use this momentum to advocate for lineage-based reparations from the country you descend from. Jamaica, a predominately Black country, is taking notes from the Descendants of Enslaved Americans and demanding reparations from Britain / UK. Like us, they still have more work to do but it’s a much needed shift in tone.
Reparations for chattel slavery and the very unique historic oppression of Descendants of Enslaved Americans is a human rights issue, and human rights issues should not be up for a public vote or discourse. After all, did we the American public ever vote to prevent the Jewish, Japanese, Native Americans, and others from getting their reparations for the atrocities they faced as a group? Were their human rights up for a vote? Absolutely not!
It’s Time to Cut The Check
Descendants of Enslaved Americans have the most legitimate grievances of any other group in the USA. Our labor, lives, blood, bodies, sweat, tears, pain and agony built the foundation and wealth of America. We earned and deserved to get what’s rightfully ours. This is not an entitlement program, this is a legitimate claim. This is not a fix for racism or anti-Blackness, this is an unpaid debt. This is unfinished business. An owed back payment. An unpaid settlement. An inheritance that was stolen and deprived from us. The time is now. We will not back down. #CutTheCheck #ReparationsNow
“A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for him, in order to equip him to compete on a just and equal basis.”
– Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Interview With Kamilah Moore
For more information, watch our interview with the Chairperson of the California Reparations Task Force:
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