Consider the following equation:
x < y< z
where x, to the left (politically) represents the removal of confederate statues and z, on the right, represents erasing critical race theory education.
Both x and z represent the efforts of the same melanin-recessive playbook attempting the erasure of African American history in this country. We know this because neither the left nor the right, Democrats nor Republicans, will seriously take up the cause of reparations or even discuss it.
House of Representatives (H.R) bill 40 has been re-introduced and rejected in Congress since 1989 when it was originated by the late John Connyers. This bill to study reparations has never passed the house, the Senate or been passed to the President to sign in over 33 years even after being re-authored by Representative Sheila Jackson Lee in 2018. This poorly-written bill was vague to begin with, but Lee’s re-written version continues to die in committee. Why? H.R 40 was a red-herring, a feather never meant to be taken seriously, but simply a tepid gesture of no effect until the problem; Black people’s entitlement to repair just disappears or is absorbed, like a merger, into its acquiring company; whiteness.
This brings me to the variable, y. Black people, African American Descendants whose ancestors’ bones are buried in this land are the y. The why. The reason for the repair, the invoice, the receipt, the proof of what is owed by the United States government and what must be paid. This government has stated that it is one nation under God, but it only earns scorn because of the dishonesty in failing to recognize and pay the debt owed to African American Descendants.
It would be easy to make a list of the many x- and z-variable actions occurring in the world today. These efforts tend to increase during election years which 2022 happens to be, but make no mistake, these are team efforts and the lines blur to purple.
Let’s keep our eyes solidly focused on the prize: reparations for Black Americans. The United States government pulled a one trillion dollar rabbit out of its hat instantly in the form of the CARES Act and the $2000 it provided to Americans at the start of the shutdown. The bill was authored by no less than that bleeding-heart liberal Mitch McConnell of Kentucky making it clear that x and z are one the same violet page.
Further, Poland’s president has demanded 1.3 trillion dollars in reparations from Germany for a war that ended seventy-five years ago. American Apartheid or Jim Crow, the Black Codes, redlining and targeted mass incarceration occur to this day in the United States of America with little to no mention by politicians on either side. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 addresses discrimination in the area of commerce for all people, but the oppressions experienced by American Blacks are systemic and built into the Constitution by design to hoard wealth, property and humans codified (three fifths) as chattel.
This two-party amnesia Democrats and Republicans agree upon is their solution to the slavery debt problem: erasure. Erase Black history, white documentation and Black oppression in the country so that no accountability is due and payable. Poland isn’t buying that line and neither do African American Descendants in this land. We know how easily the government will hand out the money whether it has it or not. When paying a portion of students debt or purchasing a cache of Reaper drones, the government prints the money. When Connyers introduced a bill to simply study reparations, it took over three decades, his death like the ghosting of H.R. 40 and still in 2022, the bill could not be passed in a Democratic Congress. When the United States government and its shareholders attempt to erase Black people from history be it integration or merger-take-overs, you end up with a “Blackish” caste.
Fortunately, pertinent books like Dr. Darity’s and Dr. Mullin’s From Here to Equality and Mr. Baptiste’s The Half Has Never Been Told bring the receipts for the debt owed to the descendants of American slaves.