African American
Related: About this forumThe Case for Reparations
Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
MAY 21, 2014
Clyde Ross, photographed in November 2013 in his home in the North Lawndale neighborhood of Chicago, where he has lived for more than 50 years. When he first tried to get a legitimate mortgage, he was denied; mortgages were effectively not available to black people. (Carlos Javier Ortiz)
I. So Thats Just One Of My Losses
Clyde Ross was born in 1923, the seventh of 13 children, near Clarksdale, Mississippi, the home of the blues. Rosss parents owned and farmed a 40-acre tract of land, flush with cows, hogs, and mules. Rosss mother would drive to Clarksdale to do her shopping in a horse and buggy, in which she invested all the pride one might place in a Cadillac. The family owned another horse, with a red coat, which they gave to Clyde. The Ross family wanted for little, save that which all black families in the Deep South then desperately desiredthe protection of the law.
In the 1920s, Jim Crow Mississippi was, in all facets of society, a kleptocracy. The majority of the people in the state were perpetually robbed of the votea hijacking engineered through the trickery of the poll tax and the muscle of the lynch mob. Between 1882 and 1968, more black people were lynched in Mississippi than in any other state. You and I know whats the best way to keep the nigger from voting, blustered Theodore Bilbo, a Mississippi senator and a proud Klansman. You do it the night before the election.
The states regime partnered robbery of the franchise with robbery of the purse. Many of Mississippis black farmers lived in debt peonage, under the sway of cotton kings who were at once their landlords, their employers, and their primary merchants. Tools and necessities were advanced against the return on the crop, which was determined by the employer. When farmers were deemed to be in debtand they often werethe negative balance was then carried over to the next season. A man or woman who protested this arrangement did so at the risk of grave injury or death. Refusing to work meant arrest under vagrancy laws and forced labor under the states penal system.
Well into the 20th century, black people spoke of their flight from Mississippi in much the same manner as their runagate ancestors had. In her 2010 book, The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson tells the story of Eddie Earvin, a spinach picker who fled Mississippi in 1963, after being made to work at gunpoint. You didnt talk about it or tell nobody, Earvin said. You had to sneak away.
Read More: http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/
Cross posted with some changes from here.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024987227
phil89
(1,043 posts)Just curious what people think and why.
sheshe2
(83,861 posts)It may help answer your question, phil89.
gwheezie
(3,580 posts)I really enjoy Coates, this is a well written and researched article. Very thought provoking, I have not formed an opinion yet as I plan to reread it. My only comment so far is, so what should we do?
sheshe2
(83,861 posts)First, IMHO I believe that we need to listen to AA when they speak and not talk over them. Sadly, that seems to happen here on a regular basis. Listening would be a start.
Second, I have no answer to what we should do. I learned a lot from that article, it was indeed thought provoking and it pained me to read.
There is this too.
Rep. John Conyers re-introduces H.R. 40 on reparations for slavery and discrimination
Category: Repair and reparations Tags: H.R. 40, Rep. John Conyers, Reparations for slavery, U.S. Congress
Representative John Conyers (D-Mich.) has re-introduced legislation before the 113th U.S. Congress to acknowledge slavery and racial discrimination, study their impact, and propose remedies.
H.R. 40, numbered in recognition of the unfulfilled promise to freed slaves of 40 acres and a mule, has been introduced by Rep. Conyers at the start of every Congress since 1989. The bill bears the following formal title, as it has in previous years:
To acknowledge the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery in the United States and the 13 American colonies between 1619 and 1865 and to establish a commission to examine the institution of slavery, subsequently de jure and de facto racial and economic discrimination against African-Americans, and the impact of these forces on living African-Americans, to make recommendations to the Congress on appropriate remedies, and for other purposes.
If the past is any guide, the short title of H.R. 40 is likely to be, Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act.
H.R. 40 has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee for further consideration. Rep. Conyers is the ranking minority member of the Judiciary Committee, and chaired the committee the last time there was a Democratic majority in the House.
http://www.tracingcenter.org/blog/2013/01/rep-john-conyers-re-introduces-h-r-40-on-reparations-for-slavery-and-discrimination/
kwassa
(23,340 posts)A nation outlives its generations. We were not there when Washington crossed the Delaware, but Emanuel Gottlieb Leutzes rendering has meaning to us. We were not there when Woodrow Wilson took us into World War I, but we are still paying out the pensions. If Thomas Jeffersons genius matters, then so does his taking of Sally Hemingss body. If George Washington crossing the Delaware matters, so must his ruthless pursuit of the runagate Oney Judge.
what an amazing article.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)I have not read the article, but I will.
Although I knew all stated in the OP as my parents told me growing up. They descirbed it as evil.
So vile that they left the South a hundred years ago. They couldn't fight there, and they were white.
Blacks had no chance to get justice there. And I have always said that about what Conyers says...
The promise should have been kept after the Civil War and it was not. The degradation of POC in this country has been a festering wound forever.
We must change our nation's priorities!
sheshe2
(83,861 posts)It is an educational read. Also find a clip of Melissa Harris-Perry show today on the subject. I only caught
15 minutes of it. Will have to find a link myself when I get home from work. If you find one would you let me know.
Thanks freshwest.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)As to Conyers, yes, I saw that thread since I posted, it even had people dissing him for no good reason. But I hope he will be back and push this study.
For those who would freak out about this and run away, don't panic. It's a study and should be studied across this nation. People should think about what's really important and extend their horizons.
Number23
(24,544 posts)This the most powerful thing I've read here in a long time.
K&R and I'll be doing the same to the post in GD because this place is crawling with clueless, ignorant people here that need to read this.
sheshe2
(83,861 posts)JI7
(89,262 posts)in the threads posted on this.
there was a time when i thought mostly right wingers were that ignorant and made such bigoted hateful comments.
one especially ignorant one is "my family had nothing to do with it" "other races would resent it" and other typical bs.
my family didn't come until after civil rights, but i know many non black minorities benefited from those who fought for equal rights before. it was the civil rights movement and other stuggles for equality which made immigration policies more favorable than before for minorities that came afterwards.
i expect ignorance and lack of critical thinking and having no historical perspective from the right wing but you are seeing that shit on a site like this.
sheshe2
(83,861 posts)They are certainly telling. So is the fact that of all the threads on this they are largely being ignored.
kwassa
(23,340 posts)Most of those arguing against it don't have the most basic knowledge of civil rights in the US. They know nothing about Jim Crow or Reconstruction or the housing policy in this article.
sheshe2
(83,861 posts)and many of those that comment refuse to get past the subject line, kwassa.
For some that believe that this is only about slavery, need only look back a couple of years.
Plunder in the past made plunder in the present efficient. The banks of America understood this. In 2005, Wells Fargo promoted a series of Wealth Building Strategies seminars. Dubbing itself the nations leading originator of home loans to ethnic minority customers, the bank enrolled black public figures in an ostensible effort to educate blacks on building generational wealth. But the wealth building seminars were a front for wealth theft. In 2010, the Justice Department filed a discrimination suit against Wells Fargo alleging that the bank had shunted blacks into predatory loans regardless of their creditworthiness. This was not magic or coincidence or misfortune. It was racism reifying itself. According to The New York Times, affidavits found loan officers referring to their black customers as mud people and to their subprime products as ghetto loans.
We just went right after them, Beth Jacobson, a former Wells Fargo loan officer, told The Times. Wells Fargo mortgage had an emerging-markets unit that specifically targeted black churches because it figured church leaders had a lot of influence and could convince congregants to take out subprime loans.
In 2011, Bank of America agreed to pay $355 million to settle charges of discrimination against its Countrywide unit. The following year, Wells Fargo settled its discrimination suit for more than $175 million. But the damage had been done. In 2009, half the properties in Baltimore whose owners had been granted loans by Wells Fargo between 2005 and 2008 were vacant; 71 percent of these properties were in predominantly black neighborhoods.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)I knew about this as a kid in single digits. It wasn't like it was any secret, that good, moral, hard working people with a strong work ethic and good hearts were being robbed in broad daylight. And if they resisted, there would be violence of one way or another.
Not that the stealing of the property or what work created wealth isn't a form of violence. Just listen to the Libertarians, Tea Party, Birchers, etc. scream about paying taxes to help the disadvantaged. But they reap benefits without looking at who they rob daily. Are they ignorant, or does it pay them to pretend they don't know the basis of their own prosperity?
In the past, I've countered those who complain about programs which they claim benefit POC more than non-POC, that they were back door reparations being wormed out of those who still at heart believed POC were inferior just the way the Confederacy did. The Civil War didn't end their mindset, they still think it a virtue to fight the government that freed the slaves, because in their texts, it was against God. I never express in full my bitterness from learning their bullshittery. The despicable business practices in the article are no mystery to me.
We see the level of treason they are still willing to engage in because they refuse to pay the piper, as if 'freedom' is 'free stuff' for them when nothing is free. Clear cut the forest that took centuries to grow, that destroys natural wealth. Drive people of their land they tended, that destroys the social order to create a different one, but no better than the former. In some cases the theft if so great there is desolation for people and the Earth. This kind of foolishness will destroy us all.
And the 'Tenthers' who are just 'states rights' pushers are an offense to the spirit of the Constitution they claim as their Holy Book. The Civil War was about ending stealing property, work, entire lives to the 'North.' To the 'South' it was about continuing their 'free ride' on the backs of blacks.
This was the lens through which I grew to despise business interests and the family values crowd. The nauseating hypocrisy of how they only saw what benefited them, and not the cost to others.
Peace Out.