2020 presidential candidate Anita Belle held a reparations summit in Detroit to commemorate the 400 year anniversary of the end to racially based chattel slavery. She held the two day event on June 18th and 19th at the black owned Space Lab building downtown. The event was comprised of several topics of discussion that included The Love Story & Prophecies of Reparations: From Princes to Prisoners and Preventing Genocide & Emergency Preparedness. Candidate Belle’s presentation helped me learn more about the power and authority that I have as a citizen of African decent in the United States whose ancestors contribution continues be invaluable to this country’s wealth.
So many candidates opt to make Blacks feel undeserving of having their concerns take political significance. As a people we are so used to begging politicians to give attention to our concerns that we fail to recognize when one comes along that centers their platform around us. No other candidate attempted to mobilize voters around the Juneteenth holiday, especially not to go as far as to educate Black voters of their political power. I want to use this piece to shine a light on the candidate that doesn’t get nearly enough attention from corporate media and to show marginalized voters the potential of their vote to show our collective seriousness about reparations on the 2020 ballot.
Why are we not supporting the candidates that are answering our call?
We’ve become comfortable assuming the position of begging politicians who’ve already demonstrated their complete disregard for the issues that we as a people care most about. Black people are the Democratic party’s most loyal voting bloc however the party has been hesitant to demonstrate its loyalty to support us in the issues we care most about. For the past few decades it hasn’t been a fair trade. Candidate Belle isn’t advocating for reparations as an empty platform promise or half hearted compromise, she has been a reparations activist since the 90s. It’s evident that we need a candidate who is going to make this issue a priority.
The call for reparations is clear and our ask for reparations is not as complicated as congress has attempted to make it seem with its countless studies that date back to when H.R. 40 was initially introduced in 1989. We as a society know that the calculation for payment is complicated beyond measure but we also know that is not our fault as Black people. The genocidal attacks that have (and continue to have) been performed on our people through a variety of warfare strategies from segregation to mass lynchings and mass incarceration would take forever to calculate if we wanted to come up with a perfect mathematical solution. We’ve already discovered that the US government cannot afford to even pay each individual descendant of slaves one dollar due to the our population growth of over 40 million and our numbers will continue to grow. The government should have paid us instead of slave owning families when our numbers were much lower in 1862 when we numbered just under 4 million . Then slaveowners were paid reparations $300 for each enslaved person that was freed. According to the inflation calculator this would equate to about $8,000 today. How is it that the government feels the weight of responsibility to restore the slave owners who lost their investment but still have yet to feel responsible to restore the families who were set back in their ability to invest in themselves and their livelihoods for several generations?
What message is the U.S. sending with their refusal to pay reparations?
There is a clear message that the United States is saying in their refusal to repay descendants of slaves over the past 157 years. That is that if a country is evil enough that their wrongs are too grossly abusive beyond mathematical calculation and indifferent to the point of decades of neglect and continued oppression than the refusal to repay and restore the oppressed group is ok. In the United State’s government’s refusal to offer reparations to defendants of slaves the country is setting an international precedent for this type of genocidal mass abuse. With this stance the United States has no right to be a world power, and certainly not the protector or monitor of world peace.
The excuse that all those who were directly involved is entirely invalid. The product of enslaved people’s work is the U.S. continues to be evident throughout the country. The U.S. status as an economic and military world power was achieved during the slave era and continues to be maintained. Along with this there is generational and calcified wealth that defendants of slaves do not have access to, the vast majority of families continue to live in poverty the wealth gap between Black and white Americans continues to expand beyond the hundreds of thousands.
The psychological effects of slavery also continue to be seen in African Americans which include violence, lack of cultural competency and the stressful effects of ongoing racism and discrimination that’s threaded throughout American culture. Beyond racially based chattel slavery Blacks in America continued to suffer slave like conditions that included discriminatory sharecropping practices, Black mothers being forced to raise the children of white men who raped them, the conditions the Jim crow south, convict leasing, family members being killed by klansmen, property destroyed by klansmen, senseless lynchings and castration.
Our freedom must include economic freedom
After understanding the variety of ways that Blacks suffered over the long span of time the continues into today it wouldn’t be far fetched for us to propose a reparations plan that includes a variety of forms of restorative ‘payment’ over a longer span of time. Belle introduced several ideas that included payments over a range of years, healthcare, therapy, residential and commercial property. I also believe that reparations should include a massive overhaul of the criminal justice system that is an obvious extension of slavery. If we didn’t allow the incarceration of so many people those funds could be used to pay reparations, but our country rather spend money on controlling us than liberating us. Belle insisted that reparations must include individual payments to every descendant of enslaved African people, rather than large payments to selected organizations. Without direct individual payments the people will have no voice or representation in the reparations conversation. Belle emphasized that, “our freedom must include economic freedom”.
It was wonderful having the opportunity to meet Presidential Candidate Anita Belle and to be free to discuss the issues that are most important to me which include receiving reparations as well as ending mass incarceration and building economic and political power in the Black community. As we move forward into 2020 and the presidential election takes over the national consciousness, it’s essential that we do not let up on the reparations conversation. Belle reminded us that this decade, 2015-2024 was declared by the UN as the International Decade for People of African Descent, so what better time than now to insist that reparations remain part of primary discussion in 2020 presidential debate. This discussion should shift from whether reparations should be dispersed to how and when because they must. I argue that they should prior to the end of our Internationally recognized decade and the way that we can guarantee this is by only giving our ear to those that are speaking our language and I’m confident that Belle is speaking our language and has been faithful in both word and action. Though elevating her campaign we can continue to elevate this discussion in a way that isn’t shallow or inconclusive.
Candidate Belle’s Presidential Campaign site https://www.bellevision2020.com/
