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White Progressives, Black Reparations
A commentary on white "progressives" and activism for reparations.
By Ted Glick
How many white progressives \"get it\" when it comes to the issue of reparations for people of African descent? More to the point, how many are able to genuinely and rationally consider it?
These questions came to mind after reading a column by white progressive Marty Jezer, \"Reparations: By Whom? For Whom?\" in the August issue of The Progressive Populist. In that article Jezer, whom I have known and respected for many years, comes out firmly against reparations for black people. He has difficulty understanding \"who should pay reparations for slavery,\" and he is also concerned about \"who\'s going to get the money. .. . It\'s going to be a tough sell demanding reparations for, say, Michael Jordan.\" At the end, he admonishes all those black people and anybody else who might need enlightening that, \"reparations are inherently divisive. A multiracial coalition to fund and organize a campaign against poverty unites people in common cause. Practically speaking [as distinct in Jezer\'s eyes from the impractical reparations demand], it would benefit African Americans.\"
My hunch is that it\'s the \"inherently divisive\" problem that Jezer, and other white progressives, are most concerned with. And I fully appreciate that problem.
About two years ago, at a meeting of the predominantly African-American Unity Party to which I belong, our chairperson Charles Barron proposed that we become more serious about the reparations demand. My immediate reaction was to get uptight, nervous, wonder where this left me, a white man who would not benefit from reparations. More significantly, I believe my major organizing work should be with my people, white people, working around issues they are most affected by while also helping them over time to see the need for alliances and ever-more-positive relationships with people of color. My uptightness, I have since come to realize, came from a knowledge that reparations is a \"hard sell\" in predominantly white communities and with individual white people, including white progressives.
Or is it? Over the last several years, reparations has not only entered the mainstream of the black movement; it is being addressed within the larger society. Randall Robinson, a sober-minded, intelligent black leader, has much to do with this development through the writing of his acclaimed book, \"The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks.\" Resolutions in support of federal government hearings on reparations have been passed in Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and Dallas. 60 Minutes did a segment about it on one of their shows.
I believe that, as one part of an overall progressive program, the damage done to people of African descent in Africa, in the Caribbean and in the United States should be addressed and, over time, undone and repaired. There are clearly major racial gaps when one considers that the net worth, assets minus debts, of the median African-American family in the U.S. in 1999 was $7,000, while for the median white family it was $84,000. And look at the tremendous poverty, AIDS epidemic and human misery, the most widespread on the planet, being experienced in sub-Saharan Africa, for centuries victimized by the slave trade and brutal, racist colonialism and neo-colonialism.
Who is responsible for these massive inequalities and injustices? The average white person in the United States? No. The primary responsibility lies with the white, male, obscenely-rich power structure, the ruling elite, which is the same elite, the same class that has been dominant since the founding of the U.S. and which has profited enormously from chattel slavery, Jim Crow, colonialism, neo-colonialism, segregation and racism. This is the same class of people most responsible for institutionalized racism against all people of color, which benefits from the exploitation of workers and the second-class status of women, and which is destroying the earth\'s natural environment. It is an enemy we all have in common. Those of us who do not belong to that class and who are sincere about wanting positive change have a responsibility to study our history, including African and African-American history, and to take positions and organize for changes that will rectify and overturn historic injustices that continue up to the present day, nationally and internationally.
Should we raise our concerns and questions about how the reparations demand could be implemented? Yes. But there are some practical ideas that are out there, such as Robinson\'s call \"for setting up a private trust fund that \'would be funded out of the general revenues of the United States to support programs designed to accomplish\' the education and economic empowerment of Blacks based on need [taking care of the Michael Jordan problem]. The model is the trust fund set up for Jewish Holocaust survivors.\" (1)
The real question for those of us who are white who claim to be about justice and equality for all is whether we can deal with the racism within us that prevents sober-minded, rational consideration of popular demands emerging out of black or other communities of color. We shouldn\'t blindly support demands we don\'t fully understand or with which we disagree. We should investigate, ask questions, listen and learn. It is just plain wrong to attempt to beat these demands down or \"advise\" our sisters and brothers of color what is the \"practical\" way they can achieve their objectives. Of all the things that are \"divisive,\" this has got to be up there at the top of the list.
1) Malik Miah, The Case for Reparations, Against the Current, Nov./Dec., 2000
Ted Glick is the National Coordinator of the Independent Progressive Politics Network and author of \"Future Hope: A Winning Strategy for a Just Society.\" He can be reached at P.O. Box 1132, Bloomfield, N.J. 07003.
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These bourgeois capitalists would most certainly include good Democrats like election-frauding, organized crime, anti-tenant thugs like the millionaire real estate attorney, San Francisco "mayor" Willie Brown who sits in office with 40% of the vote plus election fraud and now has only 20% support. This good black Democrat's policies as a real estate/landlord's attorney have contributed to the whitening of San Francisco. His election fraud used and abused the black community against its own interests and for the benefit of the captialist class. His accomplices in this election fraud included the Nation of Islam, A. Philip Randolph Institute, the US Housing Authority (a poverty organization often run by the black bourgeoisie) and a local outfit called Glide Church, run by that good black Democrat, Cecil Williams.
Willie Brown's election fraud in the 1999 San Francisco mayor's race was committed in the same manner as in the illegal 49er Stadium Swindle election of June 3, 1997, where Willie Brown's election fraud team changed our vote from 70% No to 50.2% "yes." Then, on December 13, 1997, 10 days after our election fraud lawsuit was filed challenging that election, Willie Brown's election fraud team murdered a black woman pollworker, Delores Evans, and 5 children, in a mysterious fire in their Housing Authority home just as Evans was about to testify as to the election fraud she witnessed on June 3, 1997. The fire inspector told the SF Chronicle-Examiner that they could have escaped but someone stopped them. Willie Brown stayed up all night to make sure that fire burned. This is all documented at http://www.brasscheck.com/stadium
Willie Brown was also part of the Democratic Party's election fraud promoters in the 1970s, using the People's Temple to commit election fraud. The People's Temple was a CIA effort to destroy the black liberation movement in the San Francisco Bay Area. See http://www.brasscheck.com/jonestown
I think we had best stick to fighting for socialism for the entire workingclass.