Credit: Shutterstock.
The United States should give African Americans reparations for slavery, UN experts said Tuesday, warning that the country had not yet confronted its legacy of “racial terrorism.”
Amid a presidential election campaign in which racial rhetoric has played a central role, the UN working group on people of African descent warned that blacks in the US were facing a “human rights crisis.”
This has largely been fuelled by impunity for police officers who have killed a series of black men — many of them unarmed — across the country in recent months, the working group’s report said.
Those killings “and the trauma they create are reminiscent of the past racial terror of lynchings,” said the report, which was presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council on Monday.
Addressing the deeper causes of America’s racial tensions, the experts voiced concern over the unresolved “legacy of colonial history, enslavement, racial subordination and segregation, racial terrorism and racial inequality.”
“There has been no real commitment to reparations and to truth and reconciliation for people of African descent,” the report said.
Just as there has no real commitment to reparations and to truth and reconciliation for Indigenous people in the U.S. either. The uStates government has always been good at the gift of gab, with their constitution, freedom for all, blah blah blah. The trouble with it all is that it was aimed at white people alone. Other people were subjected to slavery, others to genocide. The aftermaths of both those things was nearly as terroristic as the initial events. Indigenous people are still dealing with that racial terror today, both the generational echoes of committed travesties, and the current assaults. The same can be said for Black people, who are still treated as little more than slaves, and always viewed through the lens of suspicion. We’ve all been herded, whether it’s into reservations, ghettos, or “that neighbourhood”.
I was reading an article the other day, about my old stomping grounds in SoCal, where white people still build enclaves to keep them safe from all those Mexicans, except for the cleaning and maintenance staff, natch. A 15 year old was quoted as saying something along the lines of “it’s not racism, it’s not segregation! People prefer to be with their own.” Right. Well, that sort of thing is easy when you don’t allow anyone in. I was quite pleased to see that Santana (Santa Ana) is very majority Hispanic now. I wasn’t born there, that was in LA county, but I did grow up there, and I also grew up with the familial grumbles and complaints about all those Mexicans.
The States are a seething hotbed of racism, and it’s not new, it did not show up with our current President, it’s the blood, bone and skin of this country, built upon all those ruthlessly slaughtered so their land could be stolen, and built upon the backs of those people who were stolen and put in chains. Until the day the U.S. government fully acknowledges all the horrendous wrong it did, and agrees not to just reparations and the return of much of what was stolen, and goes well past that by actually addressing the problems caused by those past actions, we won’t be moving past the racism here. And for those who would respond to this with a sneer and a “if you don’t like it here, leave”, I’ll lob that one back atcha. As a person who is part Lakota, I’ll point out to all the white folks that we were here first, and if you don’t like it, you’re more than welcome to leave Turtle Island.
Via Raw Story.
I wonder what it was like for white kids who grew up in apartheid south africa -- to start getting that creeping feeling of “uh…. oh.. Are we the baddies?” Because that’s what it’s been feeling like for me for the last 30 years of my life.
This creates a rare opportunity for a non-sarcastic use of the phrase: “Thank you for pointing that out, Captain Obvious.”
As in, thank you for pointing to the decomposing whale carcass in the living room that we, as a country, have spent several centuries diligently ignoring.
Ah yes, another thing that right wing demagogues will use to argue for blowing up the UN. Or at least, for the US to stop living up to its financial obligations.
Financial reparation would be a start, but without rebuilding the whole corrupt system (financing of schools, taxation, generations of lost homes and wealth due to redlining, etc.), a one time cheque is as much a short term bandaid as the 50 Euros that West Germany gave to East German citizens after reunification.
Reparations should have been paid long ago, and the US should have undertaken a campaign of de-Nazification in the Confederate South. Its crimes against humanity should have been put front and center in my history books, its political leaders tried for sedition and executed for rebellion and those same crimes against humanity. The day of the Confederacy’s defeat should have been declared a national holiday, and one devoted to self reflection on the dangers of denying our mutual humanity for what is easy, and to avoid what is inconvenient or unprofitable.
Shame none of that happened.
See, this is just such a denial of history, and total erasure of the people who were here before the colonizers arrived. The ignorance behind that particular snobbish statement is astounding.