According to my estimates, which can be seen here, the Uruguayan black population is around 9.1% of the total, so 300,000, mostly concentrated around Montevideo, the capital. Watch George Reid Andrews talk about the African presence in Uruguay.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
George Reid Andrews on Afro-Uruguayan Presence
George Reid Andrews, who has extensively researched the Afro-Latin American experiences in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Central America, and elsewhere, delivers a fascinating lecture on the Afro-Uruguayan presence. He demonstrates the surprising amount of egalitarian relations between people of African and European descent in Uruguay. Indeed, Uruguay has something like the lowest poverty rate, of 7%, and the degree of maldistributed wealth is the lowest in Latin America, save Cuba. The result of Uruguayan social democracy over 100 years has led to lower class inequality. However, black poverty rates are twice as high as white poverty rates, blacks earn about 60% as white workers, and are in a similar position as African-Americans vs. white Americans in the US, despite the relatively high levels of class equality in Uruguay. The Uruguayan government recognizes the persistence of racial inequality, however, instead of pretending to be a racial democracy.
According to my estimates, which can be seen here, the Uruguayan black population is around 9.1% of the total, so 300,000, mostly concentrated around Montevideo, the capital. Watch George Reid Andrews talk about the African presence in Uruguay.
According to my estimates, which can be seen here, the Uruguayan black population is around 9.1% of the total, so 300,000, mostly concentrated around Montevideo, the capital. Watch George Reid Andrews talk about the African presence in Uruguay.
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Body and Soul
Esperanza Spalding
Billie Holiday here does a beautiful vocal rendition. "My days have grown so lonely, for you I cry..." Another beautiful moment: "I'm all for you body and soul." She also does a great live recording from a show in 1945 that's worth listening hearing. "I spend my days in longing, I'm wondering why it's me you're longing..." Also, check out her 1957 recording from her later days, when her voice was losing itself. She is accompanied by an accomplished guitarist, however.
John Coltrane's rendition of the song, featuring McCoy Tyner's skeletal characteristic piano, makes this my favorite version. Tyner's piano style always gets to me, and hearing Coltrane's solos is another delight. He does not take the song into a different direction, except for a more modern (1960s modern, that is) update. Tyner's unique block chord style, however, does give the enchanting song some unique aspects, as well as his moving solos.
Esperanza Spalding's Spanish version here is beautiful, but I can do without the scatting. She does a great job playing the song in 5/4 time but remains in the original key, soaring to great heights with her mesmerizing voice.
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Anti-Apartheid Songs
Gil Scott-Heron's Johannesburg is a funky track about apartheid South Africa. As always, Scott-Heron's conscious, politically-charged material is enjoyable.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDkQY6cOH0s
Max Roach's Tears for Johannesburg refers to the Sharpeville Massacre where anti-apatheid protesters were shot and killed. At least 69 were murdered and the recent massacre of striking mine workers at Marikana echoed the Sharpeville Massacre.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgNWYmgdO5Q
Max Roach's Man from South Africa is a jazz piece composed in honor for anti-apartheid South Africans. Roach, a committed black nationalist, was also dedicated to African liberation and the American Civil Rights Movement.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3aALURKt1U
Ibrahim Abdullah's Mannenberg refers to District 6 of Cape Town, which was forcibly evacuated during apartheid. Apparently the melody came from some old marabi song, which can be heard here. Read about it here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJw6weFdJOw
Ndodemnyama (Miriam Makeba) is a song composed by a South African who was executed during apartheid while singing his anti-apartheid anthem. The song is a warning to Verwoerd, the architect of South Africa's apartheid policy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYwgmOxhUvk
Khawuleza (Miriam Makeba) is a beautiful song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mwi_MdAdyHc
Bob Marley's War makes references to apartheid.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL9DXaXufh8
A Tribe Called Quest's Steve Biko (Stir It Up) is not really about Steve Biko or apartheid, but does mention him in the title.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZItLBiHG9gc
Peter Gabriel's Biko is actually about Steve Biko, the leader of the Black Consciousness Movement during anti-apartheid days. A stirring tribute from Peter Gabriel.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ncVyxQRw70
The list of anti-apartheid songs is obviously quite extensive. A future post will give additional songs.
Problems with 30 Rock and White Sitcoms
NBC's 30 Rock is always hailed as one of the best shows on the air. However, I don't get it. It's just another semi-clever, overwhelmingly white sitcom show that features a coon in the form of Tracy Morgan. I enjoyed the first season, but it seems to get progressively worse, as most shows do, with age. However, looking back, I still don't see the appeal? It's sort of meta and makes fun of NBC, which is great, but Community does that in a far more appealing and ingenious way. Moreover, seeing Cornel West appear on the show in a recent season and offer advice to Tracy Morgan, the Sambo, on how to improve himself by finding black role models, forced me to admit that the sitcom, like many American shows dominated by white writers and staff, is about reinforcing negative stereotypes of people of color to fit into a white racial frame that seeks to ignore the shifting demographics of New York City and the United States. For me, the problem with shows like 30 Rock, which seems to subvert and make fun of racial stereotypes, nevertheless reinforces them in a white frame or racial context. Tracy Morgan, playing the coon for white audiences, does not subvert centuries of stereotypes of black inferiority, but only serves to further them while the well-meaning white liberals, such as Liz Lemon, have to deal with the buffoons.
These white sitcoms use race and blackness in a way that, although perhaps meant to poke fun at racism, use black history and culture to fuel comedy for audiences that do not, by and large, have enough background information or context to look past the stereotypes. Now, I will admit, the first season of the show had its moments, particularly Tracy Morgan playing Thomas Jefferson, but other moments, such as Toofer, the "two for one" whose blackness is presumed to be the reason he's hired and because he went to Harvard, presumably because of his race. He is used in such a way that demeans affirmative action and restorative, redistributive economic and employment strategies. In addition, Toofer is mocked for not being "black" enough and fictive history is employed by the show's writers to suggest that Toofer's ancestors fought for the Confederates during the Civil War, further implying his lack of "proper" blackness. Never mind the fact that virtually no blacks served the Confederates, the myth persists because revisionist white supremacists want to downplay slavery immoral and dehumanizing character. Even if the show's writers knew this, most audiences won't catch on and will continue believing that some blacks fought for the Confederates Toofer's improper blackness is contrasted with Tracy Morgan, who plays what is essentially a child and foolish Other who can be bent and turned to whatever silly being the writers want him to be. The latter, representing 'real' black people or black culture, is a bumbling fool who serves common stereotypes of black inferiority and innate childishness that white folks have constructed about Africa and people of African descent for centuries.
In addition to the virtual coonery of Tracy Morgan, instances of blackface and the continued portrayal of a very white world reveals 30 Rock's Eurocentric premise and goals. The show depicts a lily-white world of normative whiteness for the show's mostly white audiences. Like Friends and numerous other allegedly great shows, the tokenism and perpetuation of stereotypical images of people of color continues unabated. Indeed, Jon Hamm appeared in blackface on 30 Rock, and Tracy Morgan remains a consistent minstrel show for white America. I usually have more tolerance and acceptance for the kind of racist drivel shown in popular culture, especially because I'm not very invested in most of it. However, it remains sickening that this disgusting culture will be maintained through popular culture consumed by whites and people of color in the US and around the world. If the show included black talent behind the writers' desks and starring in the show, with intelligent commentary on the state of race relations, like Dave Chappelle succeeded in doing (although he felt whites were laughing at him and not the stereotypes he believed he was subverting), then I would likely be more accepting. Divorced from a socio-historical context, 30 Rock and other sitcoms just come off as hideous tokenism, exoticism, and appalling practices such as blackface that fuel ignorance, xenophobia, and racism. Indeed, many white audiences, including a white friend of mine, came away from Toofer's character as not being a 'real' black person and believing in the myth of black soldiers fighting for the slaveholders, Confederates.
This is not to say that black folks, for instance, do not sometimes hold each other up by these foolish concepts of being "black enough," or that it cannot be amusing (Carleton Banks played this role quite well), but in a blindingly white context, for audiences that are mostly white, the unique context and historical experiences of African Americans are not fully included. We live in a society that continues to dehumanize Africa and African Americans, as simpletons, slaves, savages, never contributing anything to humanity, and a perpetual underclass. Since most whites, or even people of color, do not want to believe they are racist, they will never admit it. However, the ways in which African American history, culture, and contributions are continually cast aside or neglected by Eurocentrism, prevalent in sitcoms such as 30 Rock, does a disservice to black America. Whenever I see a clip of the show with Tracy Morgan or any other thing about black America, I feel deep disgust, since, once again, people who look like me are hypersexualized, dehumanized, and portrayed as unfit, inferior people.
Friday, October 19, 2012
Girl From Ipanema
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoOsRHMj88E&feature=BFa&list=PLD76BBA3AE3E00EC4
Zimbo Trio's jazzified version.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LzkLZxE9Kw&feature=BFa&list=PLD76BBA3AE3E00EC4
Os Ipanemas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ealy0P7bicQ
Stan Getz and Joao Gilberto
The Supremes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZPFlR3yrtM
Os Cariocas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tji1lYNwP3k&feature=related
Amy Winehouse
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHkv9BFBiyY
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
David Horowitz, Racism, and Reparations Part 2
Six
The Reparations Argument Is Based On The Unfounded Claim That All African-American Descendants of Slaves Suffer From The Economic Consequences Of Slavery And Discrimination
No evidence-based attempt has been made to prove that living individuals have been adversely affected by a slave system that was ended over 150 years ago. But there is plenty of evidence the hardships that occurred were hardships that individuals could and did overcome. The black middle-class in America is a prosperous community that is now larger in absolute terms than the black underclass. Does its existence not suggest that economic adversity is the result of failures of individual character rather than the lingering after-effects of racial discrimination and a slave system that ceased to exist well over a century ago? West Indian blacks in America are also descended from slaves but their average incomes are equivalent to the average incomes of whites ( and nearly 25% higher than the average incomes of American born blacks). How is it that slavery adversely affected one large group of descendants but not the other? How can government be expected to decide an issue that is so subjective - and yet so critical - to the case?
This was already addressed in my last post about some of Horowitz's previous ignorant racism. The rise of the black middle class that is now larger than the black underclass is indeed remarkable given the fundamentally white supremacist-driven system of the US. However, as mentioned previously, the black middle class is more likely to experience downward social mobility and live in mostly black neighborhoods facing some of the same issues plaguing lower-income black communities. Because of racial discrimination, redlining, and the post-industrial urban collapse, black urban communities have suffered disproportionately while job creation has shifted to suburbs or in fields that require education or job training inaccessible to most low-income blacks. Northwestern Sociology professor, Mary Pattillo, has done extensive research on the unique experiences of the African American middle class that shows the persistence of racism as an impediment to black wealth and achievement. Check that post, here. Horowitz also makes a racist argument that blames the victims of poverty that seeks to place the burden on impoverished Americans largely forced into poverty by blaming their individual character. As mentioned previously, white privilege and black disadvantage and ghettoization has made it extremely difficult for blacks, and other poor people of color, from entering the middle class, too.
He also attempts to give another example of slave-descended blacks, Caribbean immigrants and their higher average incomes, as proof of the non-existence of slavery's lingering effects on blacks after emancipation. West Indian immigration cannot be generalized so broadly, as done here, and must be placed in context. What time period of Caribbean immigration is Horowitz alluding to? Early 20th century or post-WWII? Furthermore, many West Indian immigrants came with more education, so their opportunities for entry into the "coveted" middle class was easier in some senses. Moreover, these West Indian immigrants are hardly a homogenous group. Many West Indian and African American communities in New York, for instance, are contiguous and facing the same problems with police brutality, housing discrimination, and various other disadvantages of being black in America. Thus, descendants of slaves from the Caribbean who have higher wages on average than African Americans require detailed analysis and contextualization lacking Horowitz's brief piece. In order to justify his claim, one would have to do additional research into the origins of the Caribbean diaspora in the US and also include them within the broader class dynamics of the black middle class. Despite receiving higher wages, like the African American middle class, many West Indians still face negative consequences of racism that serves as an impediment.
Seven
The Reparations Claim Is One More Attempt To Turn African-Americans Into Victims. It Sends A Damaging Message To The African-American Community.
The renewed sense of grievance -- which is what the claim for reparations will inevitably create -- is neither a constructive nor a helpful message for black leaders to be sending to their communities and to others. To focus the social passions of African-Americans on what some Americans may have done to their ancestors fifty or a hundred and fifty years ago is to burden them with a crippling sense of victim-hood. How are the millions of refugees from tyranny and genocide who are now living in America going to receive these claims, moreover, except as demands for special treatment, an extravagant new handout that is only necessary because some blacks can't seem to locate the ladder of opportunity within reach of others -- many less privileged than themselves?
First of all, racist Horowitz's claims about victimhood and grievance reek of the racist attempts by Arizona to end Chicano Studies for public high schools with predominantly Latino student bodies. Properly demanding redistributive social policies or reparations to correct the ongoing imbalance in US allocation of resources and power is rational and would be useful for creating conditions more amenable to a social democracy. This could and should be part of a broader plan for shifting the political discourse of the US to the left and to more inclusive, humanistic policies for education, financial resources, and opportunities for the poor, who are disproportionately black and brown. If properly framed as a social justice issue for addressing historic and current issues of racism in American society, it would be to everyone's benefit to address these issues. For instance, funding schools, job training, allocation of additional resources, and more participatory, democratic governance would lead to increased public safety since incentives for crime or at least robberies would decline. Fewer folks of all racial backgrounds would need to commit crime. The role of US imperialism and white supremacy on a global scale in fueling the conflicts that motivates many refugees and others to come to the US should also support reparations logically because it forces the US government to acknowledge its own domestic terrorism and its role in catastrophes internationally could be connected to US imperialism easily.
Eight
Reparations To African Americans Have Already Been Paid
Since the passage of the Civil Rights Acts and the advent of the Great Society in 1965, trillions of dollars in transfer payments have been made to African-Americans in the form of welfare benefits and racial preferences (in contracts, job placements and educational admissions) - all under the rationale of redressing historic racial grievances. It is said that reparations are necessary to achieve a healing between African-Americans and other Americans. If trillion dollar restitutions and a wholesale rewriting of American law (in order to accommodate racial preferences) for African-Americans is not enough to achieve a "healing," what will?
Horowitz's racist ignorance once again implies African Americans were not taxpayers whose money contributed to the Great Society and welfare benefits that also included more whites than blacks. Welfare was initially intended for white women, white widows and women abandoned by their men, not blacks. Indeed, many southern states went out of their way to exclude black women from receiving welfare, yet black women are now vilified as "welfare queens" who want to cheat the system and be government dependents. Most recipients of welfare are white, and though a disproportionate number of African-Americans use welfare services, that's because a disproportionate number of African Americans live in poverty. Horowitz further reveals his racism again and again by overlooking the obvious fact that white women were the original beneficiaries of welfare and most welfare benefits go to white women, not blacks. And again, blacks are taxpayers as well, so their money has contributed to welfare benefits for whites and others. Unfortunately, welfare rights have consistently faced cuts and challenges since black women began demanding their welfare rights, which are not an issue of reparations, but a social safety net to ensure people do not starve to death in this supposedly progressive nation. If reparations will take on the form of welfare, then it must be wholesale restitution that includes extensive job training, universal healthcare, living wages, and strengthening affirmative action to ensure black representation and other people of color.
The current weakened form of welfare, mended but not ended, removed countless impoverished individuals from receiving benefits and has adopted a discriminatory form that precludes many from public housing or other benefits based on situations often beyond the control of that individual. Thus, should a woman be denied access to public housing because someone in her family or household is suspected of drug dealing on the premises or nearby? Punitive, draconian measures taken against drug offenders and poor communities more broadly can often lead to denial of welfare or housing. If this is reparations, placing further restrictions on blacks or additional punishment lumped with police brutality, crime, and poverty, then I don't want it. Blacks in America deserve living wages, stronger affirmative action, right to food and shelter, job training, better schools, and financial restitution needed to fund the aforementioned. Horowitz also overlooks the well-known fact that white women have benefited more from affirmative action than blacks, yet remains silent on this fact when framing affirmative action as "racial preferences" that, presumably in his worldview, discriminate against whites.
Nine
What About The Debt Blacks Owe To America?
Slavery existed for thousands of years before the Atlantic slave trade was born, and in all societies. But in the thousand years of its existence, there never was an anti-slavery movement until white Christians - Englishmen and Americans -- created one. If not for the anti-slavery attitudes and military power of white Englishmen and Americans, the slave trade would not have been brought to an end. If not for the sacrifices of white soldiers and a white American president who gave his life to sign the Emancipation Proclamation, blacks in America would still be slaves. If not for the dedication of Americans of all ethnicities and colors to a society based on the principle that all men are created equal, blacks in America would not enjoy the highest standard of living of blacks anywhere in the world, and indeed one of the highest standards of living of any people in the world. They would not enjoy the greatest freedoms and the most thoroughly protected individual rights anywhere. Where is the gratitude of black America and its leaders for those gifts?
I don't even know where to begin with this...If black slaves were not actively resisting their enslavement and working alongside as well as pressuring whites to become involved or question their privileges from racial slavery, white abolitionism would not have done a thing. The Christian humanitarianism from Britain and elsewhere, such as the Quaker tradition, was abolitionist, but so was the legacy of the Haitian Revolution and many slave revolts, such as Nat Turner's in 1831. Horowitz ignores the historical agency of black abolitionism and slave resistance to frame it as an example of white, Western European and Americans swooping in and saving 'savage' Africans from themselves and the horrors of the slave trade. Owning another human being is objectively immoral, and even if many forms of African slavery were less physically destructive, it remained immoral. But so did European imperialism, scientific racism, and continued attempts to control the labor of emancipated blacks in the US or the Caribbean. Slavery may have been formally abolished, but ex-slaves continued to resist to ensure their rights rather than wait as passive recipients of the saving grace of Western civilization. "Western" civilization is inherently a product of enslaved African material, cultural, and intellectual traditions and political ideology, thereby making abolitionism and slave resistance two-sides of the same coin countering the capitalistic impulse for exploitation.
Horowitz, however, would like us to believe that if it were not for a white president signing the Emancipation Proclamation, or white soldiers of the Union army, then blacks would still be helpless slaves. Indeed, for Horowitz's racist view of history, blacks are ahistorical and incapable of freeing themselves from history. Indeed, Africa and the African diaspora become a literal Heart of Darkness where nothing resembling humanity or the capability for development or change can happen beyond the timelessness of its savagery. On the other hand, whites could have and would have abolished slavery without slave resistance on the ground, whites would have miraculously ensured full democratic rights to the entirety of American society, and consequently, black Americans must be grateful for the superior values of whites (although these whites were loathe to actually practice what they preached or really move beyond their racist thoughts). The truth is all peoples interact in complex networks and exchanges and, as a result, no region of the world is isolated from developments of humankind elsewhere. Blacks and whites, as well as indigenous and others, are responsible for the creation of the US, and Horowitz does nothing to prove his racist belief that blacks were freed entirely by whites in America and should be grateful rather than the self-liberation ethos and long history of slave resistance that all historians have noted.
Ten
The Reparations Claim Is A Separatist Idea That Sets African-Americans Against The Nation That Gave Them Freedom
Blacks were here before the Mayflower. Who is more American than the descendants of African slaves? For the African-American community to isolate itself even further from America is to embark on a course whose implications are troubling. Yet the African-American community has had a long-running flirtation with separatists, nationalists and the political left, who want African-Americans to be no part of America's social contract. African Americans should reject this temptation.
For all America's faults, African-Americans have an enormous stake in their country and its heritage. It is this heritage that is really under attack by the reparations movement. The reparations claim is one more assault on America, conducted by racial separatists and the political left. It is an attack not only on white Americans, but on all Americans -- especially African-Americans.
America's African-American citizens are the richest and most privileged black people alive -- a bounty that is a direct result of the heritage that is under assault. The American idea needs the support of its African-American citizens. But African-Americans also need the support of the American idea. For it is this idea that led to the principles and institutions that have set African-Americans - and all of us -- free.
Once again, Horowitz titles ten with a racist, paternalistic attribution of America freeing blacks. Of course, to Horowitz, America is defined as a normative white society with white European Western values, despite him referring to it as "multi-ethnic" previously or correctly noting that blacks were present in the present-day US before the Mayflower. He characterizes the demand for reparations as "separatist" without offering any evidence for how or why blacks demanding reparations means they want to separate themselves from American society or nationality. How or why is this separatist? Perhaps there are certain separatist black groups that also want reparations, but does that mean the entire movement for reparations is "separatist." Also, given the long history of white racism and violence toward blacks, black nationalism and separatism were/are understandable responses to the seemingly dismal state of race relations. Horowitz also makes an offensive assumption about the political left as wanting to further separate blacks from "America's social contract," which Horowitz declines to correctly identify as white supremacist. Charles Mills, a Trinidadian political scientist, has written an excellent analysis of the western social contract as a racial contract embedded with notions of white supremacy that Horowitz would never admit, lest he illuminate the covert racism of the American right.
In his conclusion, Horowitz tries to portray reparations as harmful for African Americans and the "American idea," but without defining what constitutes the latter. If, by "American idea," he is referring to the social contract and racialized political ideology rooted in liberalism premised on notions of whites as citizens and free and blacks as unfree and servile, which I suspect he is, then Horowitz is lying to his teeth about prescriptions for what would best serve the interests of African Americans. Indeed, his conclusion sounds like those post-racial, colorblind conservatives who misquote Martin Luther King to elucidate their opposition to affirmative action. For misquoting and misrepresenting the views of black civil rights activists to further a racist agenda is a despicable, heinous act common among the right, which must be refuted. The "American idea" that liberates African Americans is rooted in the left, African American radical egalitarianism, Christian humanism and the prophetic tradition, and a sense of a collective destiny, not the purely individualistic, capitalist-driven mania of right-wing America.
The Reparations Argument Is Based On The Unfounded Claim That All African-American Descendants of Slaves Suffer From The Economic Consequences Of Slavery And Discrimination
No evidence-based attempt has been made to prove that living individuals have been adversely affected by a slave system that was ended over 150 years ago. But there is plenty of evidence the hardships that occurred were hardships that individuals could and did overcome. The black middle-class in America is a prosperous community that is now larger in absolute terms than the black underclass. Does its existence not suggest that economic adversity is the result of failures of individual character rather than the lingering after-effects of racial discrimination and a slave system that ceased to exist well over a century ago? West Indian blacks in America are also descended from slaves but their average incomes are equivalent to the average incomes of whites ( and nearly 25% higher than the average incomes of American born blacks). How is it that slavery adversely affected one large group of descendants but not the other? How can government be expected to decide an issue that is so subjective - and yet so critical - to the case?
This was already addressed in my last post about some of Horowitz's previous ignorant racism. The rise of the black middle class that is now larger than the black underclass is indeed remarkable given the fundamentally white supremacist-driven system of the US. However, as mentioned previously, the black middle class is more likely to experience downward social mobility and live in mostly black neighborhoods facing some of the same issues plaguing lower-income black communities. Because of racial discrimination, redlining, and the post-industrial urban collapse, black urban communities have suffered disproportionately while job creation has shifted to suburbs or in fields that require education or job training inaccessible to most low-income blacks. Northwestern Sociology professor, Mary Pattillo, has done extensive research on the unique experiences of the African American middle class that shows the persistence of racism as an impediment to black wealth and achievement. Check that post, here. Horowitz also makes a racist argument that blames the victims of poverty that seeks to place the burden on impoverished Americans largely forced into poverty by blaming their individual character. As mentioned previously, white privilege and black disadvantage and ghettoization has made it extremely difficult for blacks, and other poor people of color, from entering the middle class, too.
He also attempts to give another example of slave-descended blacks, Caribbean immigrants and their higher average incomes, as proof of the non-existence of slavery's lingering effects on blacks after emancipation. West Indian immigration cannot be generalized so broadly, as done here, and must be placed in context. What time period of Caribbean immigration is Horowitz alluding to? Early 20th century or post-WWII? Furthermore, many West Indian immigrants came with more education, so their opportunities for entry into the "coveted" middle class was easier in some senses. Moreover, these West Indian immigrants are hardly a homogenous group. Many West Indian and African American communities in New York, for instance, are contiguous and facing the same problems with police brutality, housing discrimination, and various other disadvantages of being black in America. Thus, descendants of slaves from the Caribbean who have higher wages on average than African Americans require detailed analysis and contextualization lacking Horowitz's brief piece. In order to justify his claim, one would have to do additional research into the origins of the Caribbean diaspora in the US and also include them within the broader class dynamics of the black middle class. Despite receiving higher wages, like the African American middle class, many West Indians still face negative consequences of racism that serves as an impediment.
Seven
The Reparations Claim Is One More Attempt To Turn African-Americans Into Victims. It Sends A Damaging Message To The African-American Community.
The renewed sense of grievance -- which is what the claim for reparations will inevitably create -- is neither a constructive nor a helpful message for black leaders to be sending to their communities and to others. To focus the social passions of African-Americans on what some Americans may have done to their ancestors fifty or a hundred and fifty years ago is to burden them with a crippling sense of victim-hood. How are the millions of refugees from tyranny and genocide who are now living in America going to receive these claims, moreover, except as demands for special treatment, an extravagant new handout that is only necessary because some blacks can't seem to locate the ladder of opportunity within reach of others -- many less privileged than themselves?
First of all, racist Horowitz's claims about victimhood and grievance reek of the racist attempts by Arizona to end Chicano Studies for public high schools with predominantly Latino student bodies. Properly demanding redistributive social policies or reparations to correct the ongoing imbalance in US allocation of resources and power is rational and would be useful for creating conditions more amenable to a social democracy. This could and should be part of a broader plan for shifting the political discourse of the US to the left and to more inclusive, humanistic policies for education, financial resources, and opportunities for the poor, who are disproportionately black and brown. If properly framed as a social justice issue for addressing historic and current issues of racism in American society, it would be to everyone's benefit to address these issues. For instance, funding schools, job training, allocation of additional resources, and more participatory, democratic governance would lead to increased public safety since incentives for crime or at least robberies would decline. Fewer folks of all racial backgrounds would need to commit crime. The role of US imperialism and white supremacy on a global scale in fueling the conflicts that motivates many refugees and others to come to the US should also support reparations logically because it forces the US government to acknowledge its own domestic terrorism and its role in catastrophes internationally could be connected to US imperialism easily.
Eight
Reparations To African Americans Have Already Been Paid
Since the passage of the Civil Rights Acts and the advent of the Great Society in 1965, trillions of dollars in transfer payments have been made to African-Americans in the form of welfare benefits and racial preferences (in contracts, job placements and educational admissions) - all under the rationale of redressing historic racial grievances. It is said that reparations are necessary to achieve a healing between African-Americans and other Americans. If trillion dollar restitutions and a wholesale rewriting of American law (in order to accommodate racial preferences) for African-Americans is not enough to achieve a "healing," what will?
Horowitz's racist ignorance once again implies African Americans were not taxpayers whose money contributed to the Great Society and welfare benefits that also included more whites than blacks. Welfare was initially intended for white women, white widows and women abandoned by their men, not blacks. Indeed, many southern states went out of their way to exclude black women from receiving welfare, yet black women are now vilified as "welfare queens" who want to cheat the system and be government dependents. Most recipients of welfare are white, and though a disproportionate number of African-Americans use welfare services, that's because a disproportionate number of African Americans live in poverty. Horowitz further reveals his racism again and again by overlooking the obvious fact that white women were the original beneficiaries of welfare and most welfare benefits go to white women, not blacks. And again, blacks are taxpayers as well, so their money has contributed to welfare benefits for whites and others. Unfortunately, welfare rights have consistently faced cuts and challenges since black women began demanding their welfare rights, which are not an issue of reparations, but a social safety net to ensure people do not starve to death in this supposedly progressive nation. If reparations will take on the form of welfare, then it must be wholesale restitution that includes extensive job training, universal healthcare, living wages, and strengthening affirmative action to ensure black representation and other people of color.
The current weakened form of welfare, mended but not ended, removed countless impoverished individuals from receiving benefits and has adopted a discriminatory form that precludes many from public housing or other benefits based on situations often beyond the control of that individual. Thus, should a woman be denied access to public housing because someone in her family or household is suspected of drug dealing on the premises or nearby? Punitive, draconian measures taken against drug offenders and poor communities more broadly can often lead to denial of welfare or housing. If this is reparations, placing further restrictions on blacks or additional punishment lumped with police brutality, crime, and poverty, then I don't want it. Blacks in America deserve living wages, stronger affirmative action, right to food and shelter, job training, better schools, and financial restitution needed to fund the aforementioned. Horowitz also overlooks the well-known fact that white women have benefited more from affirmative action than blacks, yet remains silent on this fact when framing affirmative action as "racial preferences" that, presumably in his worldview, discriminate against whites.
Nine
What About The Debt Blacks Owe To America?
Slavery existed for thousands of years before the Atlantic slave trade was born, and in all societies. But in the thousand years of its existence, there never was an anti-slavery movement until white Christians - Englishmen and Americans -- created one. If not for the anti-slavery attitudes and military power of white Englishmen and Americans, the slave trade would not have been brought to an end. If not for the sacrifices of white soldiers and a white American president who gave his life to sign the Emancipation Proclamation, blacks in America would still be slaves. If not for the dedication of Americans of all ethnicities and colors to a society based on the principle that all men are created equal, blacks in America would not enjoy the highest standard of living of blacks anywhere in the world, and indeed one of the highest standards of living of any people in the world. They would not enjoy the greatest freedoms and the most thoroughly protected individual rights anywhere. Where is the gratitude of black America and its leaders for those gifts?
I don't even know where to begin with this...If black slaves were not actively resisting their enslavement and working alongside as well as pressuring whites to become involved or question their privileges from racial slavery, white abolitionism would not have done a thing. The Christian humanitarianism from Britain and elsewhere, such as the Quaker tradition, was abolitionist, but so was the legacy of the Haitian Revolution and many slave revolts, such as Nat Turner's in 1831. Horowitz ignores the historical agency of black abolitionism and slave resistance to frame it as an example of white, Western European and Americans swooping in and saving 'savage' Africans from themselves and the horrors of the slave trade. Owning another human being is objectively immoral, and even if many forms of African slavery were less physically destructive, it remained immoral. But so did European imperialism, scientific racism, and continued attempts to control the labor of emancipated blacks in the US or the Caribbean. Slavery may have been formally abolished, but ex-slaves continued to resist to ensure their rights rather than wait as passive recipients of the saving grace of Western civilization. "Western" civilization is inherently a product of enslaved African material, cultural, and intellectual traditions and political ideology, thereby making abolitionism and slave resistance two-sides of the same coin countering the capitalistic impulse for exploitation.
Horowitz, however, would like us to believe that if it were not for a white president signing the Emancipation Proclamation, or white soldiers of the Union army, then blacks would still be helpless slaves. Indeed, for Horowitz's racist view of history, blacks are ahistorical and incapable of freeing themselves from history. Indeed, Africa and the African diaspora become a literal Heart of Darkness where nothing resembling humanity or the capability for development or change can happen beyond the timelessness of its savagery. On the other hand, whites could have and would have abolished slavery without slave resistance on the ground, whites would have miraculously ensured full democratic rights to the entirety of American society, and consequently, black Americans must be grateful for the superior values of whites (although these whites were loathe to actually practice what they preached or really move beyond their racist thoughts). The truth is all peoples interact in complex networks and exchanges and, as a result, no region of the world is isolated from developments of humankind elsewhere. Blacks and whites, as well as indigenous and others, are responsible for the creation of the US, and Horowitz does nothing to prove his racist belief that blacks were freed entirely by whites in America and should be grateful rather than the self-liberation ethos and long history of slave resistance that all historians have noted.
Ten
The Reparations Claim Is A Separatist Idea That Sets African-Americans Against The Nation That Gave Them Freedom
Blacks were here before the Mayflower. Who is more American than the descendants of African slaves? For the African-American community to isolate itself even further from America is to embark on a course whose implications are troubling. Yet the African-American community has had a long-running flirtation with separatists, nationalists and the political left, who want African-Americans to be no part of America's social contract. African Americans should reject this temptation.
For all America's faults, African-Americans have an enormous stake in their country and its heritage. It is this heritage that is really under attack by the reparations movement. The reparations claim is one more assault on America, conducted by racial separatists and the political left. It is an attack not only on white Americans, but on all Americans -- especially African-Americans.
America's African-American citizens are the richest and most privileged black people alive -- a bounty that is a direct result of the heritage that is under assault. The American idea needs the support of its African-American citizens. But African-Americans also need the support of the American idea. For it is this idea that led to the principles and institutions that have set African-Americans - and all of us -- free.
Once again, Horowitz titles ten with a racist, paternalistic attribution of America freeing blacks. Of course, to Horowitz, America is defined as a normative white society with white European Western values, despite him referring to it as "multi-ethnic" previously or correctly noting that blacks were present in the present-day US before the Mayflower. He characterizes the demand for reparations as "separatist" without offering any evidence for how or why blacks demanding reparations means they want to separate themselves from American society or nationality. How or why is this separatist? Perhaps there are certain separatist black groups that also want reparations, but does that mean the entire movement for reparations is "separatist." Also, given the long history of white racism and violence toward blacks, black nationalism and separatism were/are understandable responses to the seemingly dismal state of race relations. Horowitz also makes an offensive assumption about the political left as wanting to further separate blacks from "America's social contract," which Horowitz declines to correctly identify as white supremacist. Charles Mills, a Trinidadian political scientist, has written an excellent analysis of the western social contract as a racial contract embedded with notions of white supremacy that Horowitz would never admit, lest he illuminate the covert racism of the American right.
In his conclusion, Horowitz tries to portray reparations as harmful for African Americans and the "American idea," but without defining what constitutes the latter. If, by "American idea," he is referring to the social contract and racialized political ideology rooted in liberalism premised on notions of whites as citizens and free and blacks as unfree and servile, which I suspect he is, then Horowitz is lying to his teeth about prescriptions for what would best serve the interests of African Americans. Indeed, his conclusion sounds like those post-racial, colorblind conservatives who misquote Martin Luther King to elucidate their opposition to affirmative action. For misquoting and misrepresenting the views of black civil rights activists to further a racist agenda is a despicable, heinous act common among the right, which must be refuted. The "American idea" that liberates African Americans is rooted in the left, African American radical egalitarianism, Christian humanism and the prophetic tradition, and a sense of a collective destiny, not the purely individualistic, capitalist-driven mania of right-wing America.
David Horowitz, Racism, and Reparations Part 1
David Horowitz, conservative white supremacist, offered 10 reasons to not support reparations that reveal his right-wing racism. Check it out here.
One
There Is No Single Group Clearly Responsible For The Crime Of Slavery
Black Africans and Arabs were responsible for enslaving the ancestors of African-Americans. There were 3,000 black slave-owners in the ante-bellum United States. Are reparations to be paid by their descendants too?
First of all, black slaveholders in the antebellum South often purchased their relatives to keep them from being sold into slavery under white rule. This is not to suggest that some people who would now be called African-American were not, perhaps, brutal slaveholders, but without any research one cannot claim that the 3,000 black slave owners in the US South were all the same type of brutal slave drivers that were far more common among white Americans. Furthermore, the antebellum years of US history included punitive Fugitive Slave acts and other measures to ensure the free black population in the North and South were vulnerable to re-enslavement, limited mobility, and little access to formal education or political rights. Indeed, the free black population actually became a small proportion of the total black population due to these punitive measures passed by Southern states and the federal government that sought to end runaway slaves.
Furthermore, one cannot simply state, "Black Africans and Arabs were responsible for enslaving the ancestors of African-Americans." How did these enslaved Africans get across the Atlantic? Obviously, white Europeans and whites from the Americas transported them in dangerous, overcrowded slaveships where mortality rates were high, Africans were terrified and countless committed suicide or led revolts (the famous Amistad, for instance), and then, when this horrendous Middle Passage was finally over, a life of likely perpetual servitude awaited them. Yes, the slave trade in Africa existed for thousands of years, as it has existed elsewhere in Europe or Asia, but white Europeans specifically can take credit for the largest forced migration in history under the most savage, dehumanizing conditions. White Europeans and European-descended slave traders from the Americas, from the 16th century til the late 19th century, sold manufactured goods and various other products in exchange for enslaved Africans who were then enslaved based on the color of their skin. African slavery, beginning in Latin America and the Caribbean before English colonization in North America, quickly became justified based on the alleged inferiority of Africans. So sure, Africans and Arabs, like everyone else, was engaged in slave trades of some sort, but the specific highly racialized form of forced labor and migration that arose in the Americas, is due to white European racism and nothing will change that fact. White Europeans conquered the Americas through disease, genocide, and forced labor of indigenous peoples, and when that labor pool was exhausted or deemed insufficient, they imported millions of African laborers whose material civilization was the basis for countless societies across the Americas.
Two
There Is No One Group That Benefited Exclusively From Its Fruits
The claim for reparations is premised on the false assumption that only whites have benefited from slavery. If slave labor created wealth for Americans, then obviously it has created wealth for black Americans as well, including the descendants of slaves. The GNP of black America is so large that it makes the African-American community the 10th most prosperous "nation" in the world. American blacks on average enjoy per capita incomes in the range of twenty to fifty times that of blacks living in any of the African nations from which they were kidnapped.
Obviously, blacks have arisen in this nation not because of benefits from slavery, but in spite of it. The wealth for white elites created by black slaves on plantations, homes, urban centers, docks, and in various other fields of agriculture (rice, for instance), technology (Eli Whitney got the idea for the cotton gin from a black slave), music, language, art, literature, and intellectual endeavors was part of a dialectical process with the emergence of modern capitalism. White slaveholders in the South were connected with white elites and businesses in the North, particularly the shipping industry. Slave labor was also instrumental for creating wealth for Whites in the United States but also European colonial powers, such as Britain and France, whose shipping, trade, and manufactures found markets in the colonies and Europe, while also contributing to the development of industrialism in Europe and the Northeast of the US. Where do you think the cotton and other products of the antebellum South were going? Those raw goods were sent long distances to the emerging factories of the Northeast, Britain and other nascent industrial centers which only grew because of cheap sources of raw products that could then be manufactured and traded again. This was also part of the triangular trade in which European manufactured goods, made with products from the colonies or states of the Americas, were sold to Africans in exchange for human labor which went to the Americas to produce a lot of the aforementioned cotton, coffee, sugar, gold, and tobacco. Furthermore, I am speaking in a broader hemispheric perspective, not solely a US context. Enslaved black labor was also instrumental in the North, since many Northern states only emancipated their slave populations decades after the American Revolution.
All of this aforementioned wealth was raised disproportionately for white benefit and has been passed down to future generations of white Americans. Indeed, many white institutions and corporations that arose in the antebellum period owed their rise to the sale of humans or profited of their labor. Since blacks were largely excluded from the monetary system as unpaid, mostly rural workers, succeeding generations were unable to accumulate wealth or property (especially since they could and would be sold off to different plantations, sometimes in different parts of the US, such as the sale of blacks to the Deep South that led to more enslaved blacks being forcibly relocated than the entire number of enslaved Africans who survived the Middle Passage en route to the US (about 500,000 enslaved Africans arrived). Although it is true that the extreme wealth created by African American slave labor has fueled the growth of the US exponentially, and since blacks have forced the nation, through massive social movements and their own active participation in the industrial economy of the 20th century, especially during the Great Migration, to be included, albeit as an exploited labor force, blacks still lag far behind weights. Based on wealth as defined by assets, the average white family is better off, owns higher-valued homes, attends better schools, are not targeted based on race for mass incarceration, and enjoy a lower unemployment rate while blacks, even when a larger proportion of the black population is seeking work, still suffer from higher rates of joblessness. Moreover, the higher GNP of African Americans collectively being greater than that of any of the African nations from which their ancestors came from is irrelevant to the issue of the ongoing racial disparities in wealth, access to healthcare, education, unemployment, and shelter.
Furthermore, the economic conditions of various African states is related to the slave trade, European colonialism, and the exploitative neocolonial, neoliberal economic models and framework which impoverishes many post-colonial states. The continued poverty of African Americans and various African states, therefore, is related to consequences of unequal trade relations, a capitalist world system that thrives on exploitation for production, and the maintenance of white supremacy worldwide. One must be wary of racist attempts by individuals such as Horowitz who endeavor to justify slavery based on the current predicament of economic instability or stagnation seen in many African countries. Indeed, an Arkansas Republican recently stated blacks were better off for slavery, racist sentiments also espoused by Pat Buchanan, Robert E. Lee, and many other whites. The better question is, where would America be without the African American material, intellectual, and cultural contributions that have forced it to live to its ideals against its own will? Where would the impetus have arisen for the Industrial Revolution or the growth of colonial economies thriving on the trade of agricultural products? Would white European settlers have been able to do all the labor? No, African Americans are not and should not be grateful for slavery. Rather, white Americans should be grateful for the black presence that has played a huge role in building this nation and fomenting abolitionism and a democratic consciousness absent in the supposedly universal political ideology and liberalism of the European Enlightenment.
Three
Only A Tiny Minority Of White Americans Ever Owned Slaves, And Others Gave Their Lives To Free Them
Only a tiny minority of Americans ever owned slaves. This is true even for those who lived in the ante-bellum South where only one white in five was a slaveholder. Why should their descendants owe a debt? What about the descendants of the 350,000 Union soldiers who died to free the slaves? They gave their lives. What possible moral principle would ask them to pay (through their descendants) again?
True, only a tiny minority of Americans ever owned slaves. However, their descendants and the descendants of whites who did not own slaves have intermarried, so the divisions are not always clear or known. For instance, some American presidents with roots to the North, are descended from slaveholders. Also, whites who did not own slaves benefited materially, socially, and psychologically from being light-skinned, white European-descended. Their white skin saved them from perpetual stigmatization or forced labor because of their skin. This is not to suggest that all contemporary white ethnic groups never suffered in the past. Clearly, Jews, Irish, Italians, and many others were also, for a time, oppressed by Protestant Anglo-Saxons. However, they, because of their white skin, were quickly able to join the white race, a notion constructed based on opposition to a black, allegedly inferior racial group easily distinguishable. This confers white privilege on these European-Americans, and since they were and are not black, they have been allowed many benefits, such as access to higher education, more social mobility, political rights such as suffrage, better schools, and membership in a constructed race defined as normative for American society. White privilege also entails additional likelihood for accumulating wealth, being able to live in a community without fear of housing segregation (although, historically, many white ethnics were excluded from certain neighborhoods, such as Jews), and more chances for varying types of employment. Blacks, on the other hand, were often excluded from trade unions, repressed politically, suffered disproportionately from mob violence and lynchings, were and are rejected for loans, targeted for subprime loans, more likely to attend underfunded schools in high-poverty areas, and excluded from many professions and colleges.
In addition to whites, regardless of descending from slaveholders or not, benefiting from white privilege, society's collective debt to redistributive economic and social policy, taking the form of reparations or otherwise, would have to include the present since whites still benefit from the historic and current oppression, exploitation, exclusion, and suffering of African Americans. The Union soldiers who died to the free the slaves is also a problematic, and poorly worded assertion from the white supremacist Horowitz. If blacks really needed liberation from above, from white Americans, they would not have caused the Civil War. In truth, if blacks were not already resisting slavery in various ways, Southern states and "free" states would not have come to conflict regarding slavery and its immorality. Besides the importance of slave resistance prior to the Civil War and during the conflict, many blacks took it upon themselves to serve in the Civil War, with over 200,000 African American men serving for the Union during the war and thousands of black women also participating in the war for their own liberation. One must also not neglect to mention that many of these white soldiers, especially the Irish in NYC, were drafted against their will because they did not care about black slaves. This is not to suggest that the consequences of the war, the 13th Amendment, and the abolition of slavery, except for criminal offenses, were not great, but these whites who served in the war and who led both sides were committed to white supremacy by and large. The North betrayed democracy and blacks after Reconstruction, ensuring the maintenance of virulent white racism, and whites from all regions of the US participated in this process as moderates indifferent to the plight of others in their midst or by actively contributing to racial inequality through racist practices, attitudes and behaviors.
Four
America Today Is A Multi-Ethnic Nation and Most Americans Have No Connection (Direct Or Indirect) To Slavery
The two great waves of American immigration occurred after 1880 and then after 1960. What rationale would require Vietnamese boat people, Russian refuseniks, Iranian refugees, and Armenian victims of the Turkish persecution, Jews, Mexicans Greeks, or Polish, Hungarian, Cambodian and Korean victims of Communism, to pay reparations to American blacks?
Yes, American society is multi-ethnic, but this nation, founded on racial slavery, genocide, and thievery against indigenous peoples, has an obligation to ensure redistributive justice, which must result in strong affirmative action and reparations. Most Americans do have a connection to slavery, since white privilege has directly impacted all white Americans in the US, regardless of how recent their entry. Other people of color besides blacks are also affected since the maintenance of white supremacy with black and brown poverty makes it quite clear that white supremacy is thriving at the core of this increasingly multi-ethnic society. Vietnamese boat people and victims of oppression not directly caused by or encouraged by the US government domestically should still receive additional aid and reparations through redistributive social policies that would ensure equality of opportunity and outcome for everyone, regardless of race. The white supremacist Horowitz wants to pit non-whites and victims of oppression against each other, but the collective interests of people of color against whites necessitates reparations for blacks as well as a broader left that fights for economic change and reform. Moreover, no nation operates in complete isolation, and US imperialism has a significant if not overarching role in the suffering of Vietnam, Russia, Iran, Mexico, and other groups.The battle for reparations for African Americans must entail a broader leftist struggle for social justice that includes collective uplift for all people of color and marginalized members of society. Thus, the rationale for other groups to support reparations to American blacks would be a common goal of dismantling white supremacy and ensuring the aforementioned equality of access and outcome for all members of American society.
Five
The Historical Precedents Used To Justify The Reparations Claim Do Not Apply, And The Claim Itself Is Based On Race Not Injury
The historical precedents generally invoked to justify the reparations claim are payments to Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, Japanese-Americans and African- American victims of racial experiments in Tuskegee, or racial outrages in Rosewood and Oklahoma City. But in each case, the recipients of reparations were the direct victims of the injustice or their immediate families. This would be the only case of reparations to people who were not immediately affected and whose sole qualification to receive reparations would be racial. As has already been pointed out, during the slavery era, many blacks were free men or slave-owners themselves, yet the reparations claimants make no distinction between the roles blacks actually played in the injustice itself. Randall Robinson's book on reparations, The Debt, which is the manifesto of the reparations movement is pointedly sub-titled "What America Owes To Blacks." If this is not racism, what is?
Once again, right-wing racist Horowitz endeavors to paint black Americans demanding reparations as "racist" when his dialogue clearly indicates tremendous ignorance of African and African American history, as well as white privilege. Once again, the numerous accumulated benefits of black slave labor for whites and the white-dominated US includes numerous accumulated black disadvantages that are generational. Blacks were not allowed access for centuries to accumulate wealth and many other social capital whites have, by and large, had within reach. Yes, some African Americans were not slaves and some were able to accumulate wealth or become slaveowners, but that does nothing for the overwhelming majority of African Americans who were still in bondage. Moreover, a nuanced perspective on class dynamics of African Americans throughout history would reveal the greater chances for decline in social mobility among the black middle class, so prosperous blacks from the antebellum period or Jim Crow-era were not necessarily passing down their wealth to their progeny as successfully as whites. Whites, with legal resources and the plethora of privileges that came with their skin, were and are better able to survive economic crises, such as when corporations or Wall Street screws over an entire national economy, disproportionately obliterating black wealth.
Therefore, regardless of whether or not African Americans were directly affected by slavery, their slave ancestors never received their 40 acres and a mule, and their descendants had to live through nearly a century of Jim and Jane Crow that further curtailed black human rights, inevitably having a negative impact of blacks' socioeconomic status to this day. The New Jim Crow, detailed in Michelle Alexander's great book, also details the current mass incarceration of African Americans that resembles the conditions of slavery. Furthermore, since most blacks were not free or slave-holders, and the particular instances of blacks owning other blacks is not fully explained by our whites supremacist friend, his observation has no bearing. It's also not surprising that some members of an oppressed group collaborate with the oppressor group, since that usually raises their status or may bring some immediate short-term benefits. Some Jews collaborated with the Nazi regime, but does that mean Jews don't deserve reparations for the Holocaust? Our racist friend is unclear.
One
There Is No Single Group Clearly Responsible For The Crime Of Slavery
Black Africans and Arabs were responsible for enslaving the ancestors of African-Americans. There were 3,000 black slave-owners in the ante-bellum United States. Are reparations to be paid by their descendants too?
First of all, black slaveholders in the antebellum South often purchased their relatives to keep them from being sold into slavery under white rule. This is not to suggest that some people who would now be called African-American were not, perhaps, brutal slaveholders, but without any research one cannot claim that the 3,000 black slave owners in the US South were all the same type of brutal slave drivers that were far more common among white Americans. Furthermore, the antebellum years of US history included punitive Fugitive Slave acts and other measures to ensure the free black population in the North and South were vulnerable to re-enslavement, limited mobility, and little access to formal education or political rights. Indeed, the free black population actually became a small proportion of the total black population due to these punitive measures passed by Southern states and the federal government that sought to end runaway slaves.
Furthermore, one cannot simply state, "Black Africans and Arabs were responsible for enslaving the ancestors of African-Americans." How did these enslaved Africans get across the Atlantic? Obviously, white Europeans and whites from the Americas transported them in dangerous, overcrowded slaveships where mortality rates were high, Africans were terrified and countless committed suicide or led revolts (the famous Amistad, for instance), and then, when this horrendous Middle Passage was finally over, a life of likely perpetual servitude awaited them. Yes, the slave trade in Africa existed for thousands of years, as it has existed elsewhere in Europe or Asia, but white Europeans specifically can take credit for the largest forced migration in history under the most savage, dehumanizing conditions. White Europeans and European-descended slave traders from the Americas, from the 16th century til the late 19th century, sold manufactured goods and various other products in exchange for enslaved Africans who were then enslaved based on the color of their skin. African slavery, beginning in Latin America and the Caribbean before English colonization in North America, quickly became justified based on the alleged inferiority of Africans. So sure, Africans and Arabs, like everyone else, was engaged in slave trades of some sort, but the specific highly racialized form of forced labor and migration that arose in the Americas, is due to white European racism and nothing will change that fact. White Europeans conquered the Americas through disease, genocide, and forced labor of indigenous peoples, and when that labor pool was exhausted or deemed insufficient, they imported millions of African laborers whose material civilization was the basis for countless societies across the Americas.
Two
There Is No One Group That Benefited Exclusively From Its Fruits
The claim for reparations is premised on the false assumption that only whites have benefited from slavery. If slave labor created wealth for Americans, then obviously it has created wealth for black Americans as well, including the descendants of slaves. The GNP of black America is so large that it makes the African-American community the 10th most prosperous "nation" in the world. American blacks on average enjoy per capita incomes in the range of twenty to fifty times that of blacks living in any of the African nations from which they were kidnapped.
Obviously, blacks have arisen in this nation not because of benefits from slavery, but in spite of it. The wealth for white elites created by black slaves on plantations, homes, urban centers, docks, and in various other fields of agriculture (rice, for instance), technology (Eli Whitney got the idea for the cotton gin from a black slave), music, language, art, literature, and intellectual endeavors was part of a dialectical process with the emergence of modern capitalism. White slaveholders in the South were connected with white elites and businesses in the North, particularly the shipping industry. Slave labor was also instrumental for creating wealth for Whites in the United States but also European colonial powers, such as Britain and France, whose shipping, trade, and manufactures found markets in the colonies and Europe, while also contributing to the development of industrialism in Europe and the Northeast of the US. Where do you think the cotton and other products of the antebellum South were going? Those raw goods were sent long distances to the emerging factories of the Northeast, Britain and other nascent industrial centers which only grew because of cheap sources of raw products that could then be manufactured and traded again. This was also part of the triangular trade in which European manufactured goods, made with products from the colonies or states of the Americas, were sold to Africans in exchange for human labor which went to the Americas to produce a lot of the aforementioned cotton, coffee, sugar, gold, and tobacco. Furthermore, I am speaking in a broader hemispheric perspective, not solely a US context. Enslaved black labor was also instrumental in the North, since many Northern states only emancipated their slave populations decades after the American Revolution.
All of this aforementioned wealth was raised disproportionately for white benefit and has been passed down to future generations of white Americans. Indeed, many white institutions and corporations that arose in the antebellum period owed their rise to the sale of humans or profited of their labor. Since blacks were largely excluded from the monetary system as unpaid, mostly rural workers, succeeding generations were unable to accumulate wealth or property (especially since they could and would be sold off to different plantations, sometimes in different parts of the US, such as the sale of blacks to the Deep South that led to more enslaved blacks being forcibly relocated than the entire number of enslaved Africans who survived the Middle Passage en route to the US (about 500,000 enslaved Africans arrived). Although it is true that the extreme wealth created by African American slave labor has fueled the growth of the US exponentially, and since blacks have forced the nation, through massive social movements and their own active participation in the industrial economy of the 20th century, especially during the Great Migration, to be included, albeit as an exploited labor force, blacks still lag far behind weights. Based on wealth as defined by assets, the average white family is better off, owns higher-valued homes, attends better schools, are not targeted based on race for mass incarceration, and enjoy a lower unemployment rate while blacks, even when a larger proportion of the black population is seeking work, still suffer from higher rates of joblessness. Moreover, the higher GNP of African Americans collectively being greater than that of any of the African nations from which their ancestors came from is irrelevant to the issue of the ongoing racial disparities in wealth, access to healthcare, education, unemployment, and shelter.
Furthermore, the economic conditions of various African states is related to the slave trade, European colonialism, and the exploitative neocolonial, neoliberal economic models and framework which impoverishes many post-colonial states. The continued poverty of African Americans and various African states, therefore, is related to consequences of unequal trade relations, a capitalist world system that thrives on exploitation for production, and the maintenance of white supremacy worldwide. One must be wary of racist attempts by individuals such as Horowitz who endeavor to justify slavery based on the current predicament of economic instability or stagnation seen in many African countries. Indeed, an Arkansas Republican recently stated blacks were better off for slavery, racist sentiments also espoused by Pat Buchanan, Robert E. Lee, and many other whites. The better question is, where would America be without the African American material, intellectual, and cultural contributions that have forced it to live to its ideals against its own will? Where would the impetus have arisen for the Industrial Revolution or the growth of colonial economies thriving on the trade of agricultural products? Would white European settlers have been able to do all the labor? No, African Americans are not and should not be grateful for slavery. Rather, white Americans should be grateful for the black presence that has played a huge role in building this nation and fomenting abolitionism and a democratic consciousness absent in the supposedly universal political ideology and liberalism of the European Enlightenment.
Three
Only A Tiny Minority Of White Americans Ever Owned Slaves, And Others Gave Their Lives To Free Them
Only a tiny minority of Americans ever owned slaves. This is true even for those who lived in the ante-bellum South where only one white in five was a slaveholder. Why should their descendants owe a debt? What about the descendants of the 350,000 Union soldiers who died to free the slaves? They gave their lives. What possible moral principle would ask them to pay (through their descendants) again?
True, only a tiny minority of Americans ever owned slaves. However, their descendants and the descendants of whites who did not own slaves have intermarried, so the divisions are not always clear or known. For instance, some American presidents with roots to the North, are descended from slaveholders. Also, whites who did not own slaves benefited materially, socially, and psychologically from being light-skinned, white European-descended. Their white skin saved them from perpetual stigmatization or forced labor because of their skin. This is not to suggest that all contemporary white ethnic groups never suffered in the past. Clearly, Jews, Irish, Italians, and many others were also, for a time, oppressed by Protestant Anglo-Saxons. However, they, because of their white skin, were quickly able to join the white race, a notion constructed based on opposition to a black, allegedly inferior racial group easily distinguishable. This confers white privilege on these European-Americans, and since they were and are not black, they have been allowed many benefits, such as access to higher education, more social mobility, political rights such as suffrage, better schools, and membership in a constructed race defined as normative for American society. White privilege also entails additional likelihood for accumulating wealth, being able to live in a community without fear of housing segregation (although, historically, many white ethnics were excluded from certain neighborhoods, such as Jews), and more chances for varying types of employment. Blacks, on the other hand, were often excluded from trade unions, repressed politically, suffered disproportionately from mob violence and lynchings, were and are rejected for loans, targeted for subprime loans, more likely to attend underfunded schools in high-poverty areas, and excluded from many professions and colleges.
In addition to whites, regardless of descending from slaveholders or not, benefiting from white privilege, society's collective debt to redistributive economic and social policy, taking the form of reparations or otherwise, would have to include the present since whites still benefit from the historic and current oppression, exploitation, exclusion, and suffering of African Americans. The Union soldiers who died to the free the slaves is also a problematic, and poorly worded assertion from the white supremacist Horowitz. If blacks really needed liberation from above, from white Americans, they would not have caused the Civil War. In truth, if blacks were not already resisting slavery in various ways, Southern states and "free" states would not have come to conflict regarding slavery and its immorality. Besides the importance of slave resistance prior to the Civil War and during the conflict, many blacks took it upon themselves to serve in the Civil War, with over 200,000 African American men serving for the Union during the war and thousands of black women also participating in the war for their own liberation. One must also not neglect to mention that many of these white soldiers, especially the Irish in NYC, were drafted against their will because they did not care about black slaves. This is not to suggest that the consequences of the war, the 13th Amendment, and the abolition of slavery, except for criminal offenses, were not great, but these whites who served in the war and who led both sides were committed to white supremacy by and large. The North betrayed democracy and blacks after Reconstruction, ensuring the maintenance of virulent white racism, and whites from all regions of the US participated in this process as moderates indifferent to the plight of others in their midst or by actively contributing to racial inequality through racist practices, attitudes and behaviors.
Four
America Today Is A Multi-Ethnic Nation and Most Americans Have No Connection (Direct Or Indirect) To Slavery
The two great waves of American immigration occurred after 1880 and then after 1960. What rationale would require Vietnamese boat people, Russian refuseniks, Iranian refugees, and Armenian victims of the Turkish persecution, Jews, Mexicans Greeks, or Polish, Hungarian, Cambodian and Korean victims of Communism, to pay reparations to American blacks?
Yes, American society is multi-ethnic, but this nation, founded on racial slavery, genocide, and thievery against indigenous peoples, has an obligation to ensure redistributive justice, which must result in strong affirmative action and reparations. Most Americans do have a connection to slavery, since white privilege has directly impacted all white Americans in the US, regardless of how recent their entry. Other people of color besides blacks are also affected since the maintenance of white supremacy with black and brown poverty makes it quite clear that white supremacy is thriving at the core of this increasingly multi-ethnic society. Vietnamese boat people and victims of oppression not directly caused by or encouraged by the US government domestically should still receive additional aid and reparations through redistributive social policies that would ensure equality of opportunity and outcome for everyone, regardless of race. The white supremacist Horowitz wants to pit non-whites and victims of oppression against each other, but the collective interests of people of color against whites necessitates reparations for blacks as well as a broader left that fights for economic change and reform. Moreover, no nation operates in complete isolation, and US imperialism has a significant if not overarching role in the suffering of Vietnam, Russia, Iran, Mexico, and other groups.The battle for reparations for African Americans must entail a broader leftist struggle for social justice that includes collective uplift for all people of color and marginalized members of society. Thus, the rationale for other groups to support reparations to American blacks would be a common goal of dismantling white supremacy and ensuring the aforementioned equality of access and outcome for all members of American society.
Five
The Historical Precedents Used To Justify The Reparations Claim Do Not Apply, And The Claim Itself Is Based On Race Not Injury
The historical precedents generally invoked to justify the reparations claim are payments to Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, Japanese-Americans and African- American victims of racial experiments in Tuskegee, or racial outrages in Rosewood and Oklahoma City. But in each case, the recipients of reparations were the direct victims of the injustice or their immediate families. This would be the only case of reparations to people who were not immediately affected and whose sole qualification to receive reparations would be racial. As has already been pointed out, during the slavery era, many blacks were free men or slave-owners themselves, yet the reparations claimants make no distinction between the roles blacks actually played in the injustice itself. Randall Robinson's book on reparations, The Debt, which is the manifesto of the reparations movement is pointedly sub-titled "What America Owes To Blacks." If this is not racism, what is?
Once again, right-wing racist Horowitz endeavors to paint black Americans demanding reparations as "racist" when his dialogue clearly indicates tremendous ignorance of African and African American history, as well as white privilege. Once again, the numerous accumulated benefits of black slave labor for whites and the white-dominated US includes numerous accumulated black disadvantages that are generational. Blacks were not allowed access for centuries to accumulate wealth and many other social capital whites have, by and large, had within reach. Yes, some African Americans were not slaves and some were able to accumulate wealth or become slaveowners, but that does nothing for the overwhelming majority of African Americans who were still in bondage. Moreover, a nuanced perspective on class dynamics of African Americans throughout history would reveal the greater chances for decline in social mobility among the black middle class, so prosperous blacks from the antebellum period or Jim Crow-era were not necessarily passing down their wealth to their progeny as successfully as whites. Whites, with legal resources and the plethora of privileges that came with their skin, were and are better able to survive economic crises, such as when corporations or Wall Street screws over an entire national economy, disproportionately obliterating black wealth.
Therefore, regardless of whether or not African Americans were directly affected by slavery, their slave ancestors never received their 40 acres and a mule, and their descendants had to live through nearly a century of Jim and Jane Crow that further curtailed black human rights, inevitably having a negative impact of blacks' socioeconomic status to this day. The New Jim Crow, detailed in Michelle Alexander's great book, also details the current mass incarceration of African Americans that resembles the conditions of slavery. Furthermore, since most blacks were not free or slave-holders, and the particular instances of blacks owning other blacks is not fully explained by our whites supremacist friend, his observation has no bearing. It's also not surprising that some members of an oppressed group collaborate with the oppressor group, since that usually raises their status or may bring some immediate short-term benefits. Some Jews collaborated with the Nazi regime, but does that mean Jews don't deserve reparations for the Holocaust? Our racist friend is unclear.
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