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Reparations simply
means repair for injuries,
harm and damages. As it has been pointed
out,
over and over again, we were made chattel and
worked for more than
three-hundred years without
pay or other compensation for the value of
our labor.
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At
this current stage of history in the African (Black) Liberation
Movement, it is important that key concepts be revisited and
re-discussed in our continued efforts to seek clarity on certain ideas
that are fundamental to the white supremacy foundation of America.
First, there is the idea and concept of the “Maafa.” When we discuss
genocide against African People in America, we must also discuss the
Maafa, because it was this Maafa that has historically created the
on-going genocidal conditions inflicted against African People in
America.
When we use the term “Maafa” we are talking about an African term used
to describe tremendous suffering, indescribable atrocities, disaster,
calamity, catastrophe, or injustice. This term is used to refer to the
protracted suffering of African people and culture as a consequence of
the Transatlantic Slave Trade System. As the African Maafa researcher
Michael Scott explains— “No African was waiting as a slave to be traded
to the Europeans. In all regions of Africa, from which Africans were
transported, the African was involved in a brutal war declared by the
European aggressor, interested in exploiting the human and natural
resources of the richest continent on the earth.”
Further, Brother Scott reveals, “These Africans who became prisoners of
war were placed in detention camps and then transported to the Americas
to be enslaved by the benefactors of their captors.
No African began his or her ordeal as a slave. Africans were reduced to slavery by conquest.”
It is important for African People to understand and internalize these
brief historical facts. Just as the Jews, or any other group of people
in the world, internalize their holocaust, and act on it,
African People must come to the collective reality of our Maafa and act on it also.
Finally, Brother Scott instructs us that, “Our foreparents were
innocent victims of these heinous system of forced labor. They were
never able to comprehend being seized in early morning attacks on their
villages by vicious raiding parties. They were never able to understand
why they were being sold by the avaricious middle men. They could never
fathom why they were being marched in fetters and chains to the coast
where they were bartered for European merchandise especially rum and
guns. They could never appreciate 'why they were being warehoused in
hell-like dungeons in Elmina or Goree.”
So now that we have some insight into the idea and concept of the
Maafa, it should make it easier to understand the idea and concept of
genocide. In Olumenji’s book, White Genocide, Black Obsolescence, The
Question of Black Survival In White America, he defines genocide very
succinctly.
He says genocide is the “deliberate and systematic destruction of Black
people by white American socio-economic and cultural forces.”
According to Brother Olumenji, America has created an ideology that
justifies the annihilation of African people in this country. This is
the function of genocide by those who inflict it on a mass of people.
That is, they create a rationale for the annihilation and then try to
explain that it does not exist.
This was the case in the CIA involvement in cocaine distribution in Los
Angeles in which the profits were used to finance the CIA backed Contra
army in Nicaragua. This involvement of the CIA caused a proliferation
of the distribution and sale of crack cocaine across the African
Communities of
America, causing serious devastation to our communities. The United
States Government tried to downplay the CIA's involvement in this
incident by saying that this is an isolated situation and in fact this
is not true.
As a result of the Maafa and the genocide against African People in
America, we must step up the demand for Reparations as the National
Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, N'COBRA, is advocating
as are many other African organizations throughout the world.
Reparations simply means repair for injuries, harm and damages. As it
has been pointed out, over and over again, we were made chattel and
worked for more than three-hundred years without pay or other
compensation for the value of our labor. The white man and white woman
stole and criminally
appropriated the services and the value of three-hundred years of labor
and then passed it on through inheritance to their children. This
process helped create the United States of America and this is
fundamental to our demands for Reparations.
We must continue to discuss these ideas in our efforts to dismantle our
mental shackles. Every race and every ethnic group in the world protect
their interests and African People should and must do no less.
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BlackCommentator.com Columnist, Conrad W. Worrill, PhD, is the National Chairman Emeritus of the National Black United Front (NBUF). Contact Dr. Worrill and BC.
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 is published every Thursday |
Executive Editor:
David A. Love, JD |
Managing Editor:
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Publisher:
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