As a matter of fact two of my best friends are white and the third is black. So using Mendelian genetics, I think that actually makes one of the white friends mulatto.
But seriously, I love white people. I let some white people carve pumpkins in my house last night AND I let them use my bathroom. My Mom is white, and I don't hold that against her (anymore), and I sleep with a white man every night...and now that the Summer has ended he gets paler by the day. I am thinking about getting him a sun lamp before his skin gets any whiter and he starts reflecting light.
I think white people are very articulate. They are funny (that Kathy Griffin is a riot). And they sure are a musical people (N'Sync rules!). And boy oh boy can they move...I mean those white folks on Dancing with the Stars are AMAZING. And considering how queer I am, you know I appreciate all those Rogers and Hammerstein/Stephen Sondheim Broadway tunes. Thank you White America!
But seriously, a good friend of mine (he's white)....noted that I had been directing my anger lately at the shenanigans of white people. And truthfully between Glen Beck and Perez Hilton (I know, I know, that one is Cuban, but the Latino community voted to strip her of her Latinidad until she stops speaking in any public forum)...anyway...from Glen Beck and Lou Dobs to that idiot in Arizona with the "sweat lodge," white folks have been pissing me off a lot lately. But, I am an equal opportunity bitch master, and so yesterday I had to call out a dumbfuck black woman that was more worried about her food stamps than she was about the fact that she left two children in a house that caught on fire killing one of the kids.
And, frankly, since Obama took office many white people have decided that we are living in a post-race America. I still haven't gotten my 40 acres and a mule or a check for my share of 400 years of free labor by my ancestors (plus interest)...so just as soon as I get me a stretch of prime downtown Manhattan real estate and a check for roughly $1 billion dollars (I will cut the IRS a deal and settle their back taxes bill for a cool half-billion)...I will declare the United States to be post race. Until then, I am going to continue to write about the laughable yet sad attempts by racial terrorists to kill Barack Obama (there have been at least three plots foiled that I know about...curse those kids and that dog!)...until Lou Dobbs is yanked from CNN by his balls for his vilification and racist diatribes against undocumented immigrants...until Don Imus is dunked in a vat of Pink Lotion for daring to refer to black women as nappy headed...until transgender women of color are no longer targeted by white men for sexploitation and murder...until white privilege is a history lesson instead of an object lesson on racial reality....until no justice of the peace DARES to decline to marry a mixed-race couple...until white folks can tell me apart from Tiger Woods, Barack Obama, and Derek Jeter...until the day I die...I am most likely going to be on the case of white folks like...well...white on rice.
I love you white people, I just don't love what you do (sometimes). And I know that all white people are not guilty for the sins of the idiot few, which is why I rail against specific incidents as opposed to white folks in general. And I totally think that white people should be allowed to sit anywhere on the bus they want....just as long as its in the back.
Just kidding. Rosa Parks wouldn't like that at all.
This blog is dedicated to Divine Grace...one of the most awesome white people I know.
Showing posts with label Reparations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reparations. Show all posts
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Friday, June 19, 2009
Forget 40 Acres and a Mule...Write Me A Check!
(I am taking a short break from my multi-part Minnesota story to share with you my thoughts on today's vote by the Senate regarding slavery)
Today the United States Senate, on the eve of Juneteenth, passed a resolution apologizing to African-Americans and descendants of slaves for slavery and Jim Crow segregation. The resolution now moves to the House, where it is likely to pass.
I think I am going to pass on this apology too.
Juneteenth, the largely invisible holiday celebrated by few outside of the black community, is a celebration of the actual end of slavery. Slavery ended in the United States on 19 June 1865 when the last blacks held in bondage, in Galveston, Texas, received word that they were free. On that day no man could call another man property. Unfortunately, abject poverty, degradation, wage slavery, and violent subjugation were to continue, with state sanction and complicity, for another century. And anyone that has been pulled over for driving while black, been called a nigger, or been denied employment or housing because of their race, knows that while physical lynchings may be over, spiritual lynchings continue without regard to who may be sleeping in the White House.
Though this resolution, passed 143 years and 364 days after the actual end of slavery, is long overdue, the rider on the resolution clearly stating that it does not in any way support or condone or authorize reparation payments to the descendants of slaves invalidates the sentiment and marks the difference between an apology and an amends. I am not interested in apologies. An apology acknowledges action without the assumption of responsibility or obligation to repair what was broken. An amends is the assumption of responsibility for the results of ones actions and doing the work necessary to repair what was done.
The words of a body that once stood firm against human rights for black folks and continues to stand in the way of the liberation of queer folks is worth about as much as my total worth. Roughly -$46,000 or so…depending on the current amount of interest I owe on my student loans.
It is beyond time for apologies. In 1988, Congress voted to pay the 60,000 survivors of Japanese internment camps $20,000 each to help ameliorate their pain and suffering. That, my friends, is an amends.
I am no fool. There is a very real reason why the Japanese received remuneration for four horrible years in concentration camps while black folks received nothing for 400 years of free labor and horrific abuse. The 1980s saw a meteoric rise in Japanese international cache. Japan was an economic powerhouse and American business wanted to do it doggie style with Japanese businesses, and $1.2 billion dollars was a small price to pay for the return on their investments.
Most people of African descent have no idea from whence they were stolen. And, even if we did know, there is no African economic powerhouse that American businesses want to exploit. The natural resources of Africa are in the hands and control of Western business interests. The only reason to pay substantial reparations to U.S. descendants of slaves would be justice. The business of the U.S. government is business and investing in justice, though it pays great moral dividends, rarely creates capital gains.
So, I say, respectfully, keep your apology. It is meaningless. The wealth of this nation does not exist separate from the hundreds of years of free labor that created it. For some, this is an abstract concept, for me it is a reality. The family that owned mine was the Nickels family of Greenbrier County, West Virginia.
My family still lives in the town where we were slaves. My Father went to school and grew up with the descendants of the family that owned us. The economic privileges of that family, a century after my great-great grandfather was freed, were still apparent.
Our family records date back to 1709, for more than a century the Nickels and others before them earned wealth on my grandparent’s backs. No apology will free their spirits. No apology will remove the wealth from those that exploited them and put it in their hands or in the hands of their descendants.
In America, we value the ability to pass on wealth from one generation to the next. Parents pass as much wealth to their children as possible in order that their children will need to work less than, perhaps, they did. My ancestors did not have that option. Their wealth, the fruit of their hands, and their labor was compelled from them and their products taken from them to benefit those that did nothing to earn it except be born with white skin.
Keep your apology. I don’t want it. But I will take a check, and one for my brothers and sisters, parents, and grandparents, and every other descendant of slaves in this nation, children of those that built this nation. It is our due. You have been drawing from our spiritual and labor account for too long. I am marking your apology NSF: Insufficient funds. You will be charged a penalty.
Today the United States Senate, on the eve of Juneteenth, passed a resolution apologizing to African-Americans and descendants of slaves for slavery and Jim Crow segregation. The resolution now moves to the House, where it is likely to pass.
I think I am going to pass on this apology too.
Juneteenth, the largely invisible holiday celebrated by few outside of the black community, is a celebration of the actual end of slavery. Slavery ended in the United States on 19 June 1865 when the last blacks held in bondage, in Galveston, Texas, received word that they were free. On that day no man could call another man property. Unfortunately, abject poverty, degradation, wage slavery, and violent subjugation were to continue, with state sanction and complicity, for another century. And anyone that has been pulled over for driving while black, been called a nigger, or been denied employment or housing because of their race, knows that while physical lynchings may be over, spiritual lynchings continue without regard to who may be sleeping in the White House. Though this resolution, passed 143 years and 364 days after the actual end of slavery, is long overdue, the rider on the resolution clearly stating that it does not in any way support or condone or authorize reparation payments to the descendants of slaves invalidates the sentiment and marks the difference between an apology and an amends. I am not interested in apologies. An apology acknowledges action without the assumption of responsibility or obligation to repair what was broken. An amends is the assumption of responsibility for the results of ones actions and doing the work necessary to repair what was done.
The words of a body that once stood firm against human rights for black folks and continues to stand in the way of the liberation of queer folks is worth about as much as my total worth. Roughly -$46,000 or so…depending on the current amount of interest I owe on my student loans. It is beyond time for apologies. In 1988, Congress voted to pay the 60,000 survivors of Japanese internment camps $20,000 each to help ameliorate their pain and suffering. That, my friends, is an amends.
I am no fool. There is a very real reason why the Japanese received remuneration for four horrible years in concentration camps while black folks received nothing for 400 years of free labor and horrific abuse. The 1980s saw a meteoric rise in Japanese international cache. Japan was an economic powerhouse and American business wanted to do it doggie style with Japanese businesses, and $1.2 billion dollars was a small price to pay for the return on their investments.
Most people of African descent have no idea from whence they were stolen. And, even if we did know, there is no African economic powerhouse that American businesses want to exploit. The natural resources of Africa are in the hands and control of Western business interests. The only reason to pay substantial reparations to U.S. descendants of slaves would be justice. The business of the U.S. government is business and investing in justice, though it pays great moral dividends, rarely creates capital gains.
So, I say, respectfully, keep your apology. It is meaningless. The wealth of this nation does not exist separate from the hundreds of years of free labor that created it. For some, this is an abstract concept, for me it is a reality. The family that owned mine was the Nickels family of Greenbrier County, West Virginia.
My family still lives in the town where we were slaves. My Father went to school and grew up with the descendants of the family that owned us. The economic privileges of that family, a century after my great-great grandfather was freed, were still apparent. Our family records date back to 1709, for more than a century the Nickels and others before them earned wealth on my grandparent’s backs. No apology will free their spirits. No apology will remove the wealth from those that exploited them and put it in their hands or in the hands of their descendants.
In America, we value the ability to pass on wealth from one generation to the next. Parents pass as much wealth to their children as possible in order that their children will need to work less than, perhaps, they did. My ancestors did not have that option. Their wealth, the fruit of their hands, and their labor was compelled from them and their products taken from them to benefit those that did nothing to earn it except be born with white skin.
Keep your apology. I don’t want it. But I will take a check, and one for my brothers and sisters, parents, and grandparents, and every other descendant of slaves in this nation, children of those that built this nation. It is our due. You have been drawing from our spiritual and labor account for too long. I am marking your apology NSF: Insufficient funds. You will be charged a penalty.
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