Tiffany Tubman and Amoun Jamilu Mahmoud

August 21, 2017

The U.S. government is long overdue in paying reparations to the Black people of America and or Africans in America that are the direct descendants of slaves currently being held as POWs, for the harmful, damaging, long lasting results of racism / white supremacy that have impacted our community financially, emotionally, and psychologically for decades post the partial abolition of slavery in the 13^th Amendment to the US Constitution.

For centuries, this nation’s “Government of, by and for the people” did not include the Black race of Africans in America. To present day, the slogan “justice for all” found in the pledge of allegiance and various other court documents has proven itself to be untrue for all Melanoid people currently in America.

Without government support, neither Slavery nor Jim Crow Segregation could have long endured. These practices have been empowered and emboldened by the global system of white supremacy. All of these factors have contributed to the inappropriate distribution of resources, wealth, and power to rest predominantly in white communities with the white members of America.

The economy we have today was built on nearly 400 years of legal chattel slavery  and black oppression.  England/America brought over kidnapped / stolen Africans  to America as Free labor which is illegal, where America extracted wealth from the lives of enslaved Africans in Americans. Blacks now in America have historically accounted for 13% of America’s total population. This continues to be true today according to the US Census Bureau.

After the civil war, institutional injustices through the system of white supremacy focused on stealing our land and jobs and ensuring that African Americans did not build wealth as fast as the rest of Americans. Any community we had for economic/cultural empowerment (Rosewood, Black Wallstreet) were burned down to the ground and destroyed by white Americans.

Furthermore, an example of Government help refining racism / white supremacy is the result of the Bill Clinton administration’s legislative policies and Hillary Clinton infamous speech, (clip): ‘They (thugs / Blacks / Africans), are super predators and need to be brought to heel’ led to higher imprisonment rates or the refinement of Jim Crow / Slavery.

High imprisonment rates of Melanoid people have been documented at 70% of the total prison population, while Black people only make up 12% of the total American population as of 2010 as the result of such racist / white supremacist oriented policies.

In contrast 62% of the American population is White (non-Hispanic) and 17% White (Hispanic) for a total of 79% and while 70% of those White people are arrested only about 35% go to are punished with sentencing to include probation.

White on white crime statistics have been erased from any narrative and are a mystery to the average American while Black on Black crime statistics, (the result of Racism / White Supremacy and or deceptive statistics), are the main stream American narrative.

The government has apologized to all other groups to whom it has committed offenses and provided reparations to those groups except Black / African people.

Throughout Americas history, Black people have borne the burden of every obligation this nation has had since 1619. Black people did not confiscate nearly 2 billion acres of land from Native Americans. White people did. However, for more than four centuries, Black people in America paid taxes and their lifeblood so that White people who did confiscate the land could develop and enjoy the benefit  and reap the profits of it.

Money out of Black Americans pockets supported a Federal Native / Indian Bureau and State Commissions that gave Natives / Indians benefits, (Including $5 fake White people impersonating Indians), that Black people in America never received.

Black people in America did not start WWII, but money from Black people in America’s pockets made up the $13 billion that rebuilt Germany under the Marshall Plan and as well as Japan under the Point Four Plan. Black people America did not intern Japanese in America during the 1940s but helped to pay $22,000 in reparations awarded to each descendant in 1992.

The U.S. government, that Black people in America pay taxes to, has given reparations to every other group except Blacks in America! The first reparations were given to white Americans in the form of the English Poor Laws in 1601. The English Poor Laws were then revised in 1834 and  a second distribution to White Americans was granted. Thus yielding two forms of reparations granted to the same group for the same purpose, to benefit White Irish, Italians and English (England enslaved it’s own people) Americans that were originally enslaved.

Information extracted from: Source

Real racial Justice for Blacks in America does not have to begin with an apology. As it is meaningless without policy changes, action plans and delivery of the reparation / compensation.

An acknowledgment from the government that millions of Blacks in America were wrongfully used and killed as a result of racism / white supremacy is a start.

Economic justice and reparations in the form of compensation is the constructive / productive result that must naturally follow the race discussion, policy changes and action plan.

The financial compensation model:

The value of the stolen labor, for the period 1790 to 1860, at today’s US minimum wage of $7.25 per hour is as follows. (Note that using today’s minimum wage automatically corrects for valuing the historic currency to its present value.)

70 years (1790 to 1860 period only)

X

2 million slaves (average number in the period used)

X

365 days per year

X

10 hours of work per day (at a minimum)

X

$7.25 per hour

=

$ 3.7 trillion

Next, we apply the 2% interest rate (compounded annually). This gives a multiplicative factor of (1.02)^140 = 22.4, for the 157 years from 1860 to 2017. Further compounding could be applied to bring us to the present. (Again, this is a minimum estimate.)

Compounding to 2017, therefore, gives:

$ 3.7 trillion

X

(1.02)^157

=

$ 82.88 trillion

The latter one-time payment would be easy for the USA to make, since its annual GDP is $15 trillion. (Think of a wealthy person’s annual salary relative to buying a house in a safe neighborhood.) The USA would not even need to sell any assets to achieve this modest payment.

For the 40 million Black slave descendants in the US today, the calculated reparation means that US white society owes each and every Black slave descendant a MINIMUM payment of $2.2 million, which is long overdue.

The policy changes and action plan in addition to monetary compensation should include:

1. Wholesome Housing for Generations without threat of imminent domain
2. Useful, Constructive Education with No Debt resulting
3. Health Care from Birth to Death
4. Useful Transportation and Maintenance Free

It’s not just about the erasure of Confederate Statues / Symbols of racism / white supremacy. It’s about the repair, the reparations / compensation for the abuse and death that resulted from racism / white supremacy and the end to the POW/political prisoner model that the United States has long ago implemented for Blacks in the United States since Jim Crow ended.

Replace the system of racism / white supremacy NOW with a System of Justice along with forwarding the reparations / compensation to the Blacks in America that are the descendants of enslaved men and women from Africa.

JUSTICE guarantees that NO person is mistreated and that ANY person who needs HELP the MOST, gets the most CONSTRUCTIVE HELP.  Justice is better than Racism / White Supremacy.

The debate regarding Civil War Monuments is irrelevant. All conversations need to be focused on long term correction of the core of these racist policies with the solution being reparations.

Strategically, this is our best chance to start pushing our agenda for reparations. http://www.ncobraonline.org/press-release-28th-annual-national-coalition-blacks-reparations-america-convention-dallas/

Reparations Timeline

Questions/Comments and to get involved with the grassroots push for Reparations please contact Tiffany Tubman (Twitter: @montswife16 and Email: tubmanfights@gmail.com)

Thank you,

Tiffany and Mahmoud

A Michigan Congressman has re-introduced legislation to provide reparations to African Americans before the 115^th Congress.

At 87 years old John Conyers is unrelenting. The legislation, known as H.R. 40 seeks to do the following:
“To address 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 study and consider a national apology and proposal for reparations for the institution of slavery, its subsequent 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.”

Conyers said, “I’m not giving up” and that “slavery is a blemish on this nation’s history, and until it is formally addressed, our country’s story will remain marked by this blight.”

Beginning in 1989, Conyers a member of the House Judiciary Committee has repeatedly introduced HR. 40, a bill that would establish a commission to examine the institution of slavery in the U.S. and its early colonies, and provide appropriate recommendations.

On August 18 2016, the United Nations concluded the history of slavery in the United States justifies reparations for African Americans, “In particular, the legacy of colonial history, enslavement, racial subordination and segregation, racial terrorism and racial inequality in the United States remains a serious challenge, as there has been no real commitment to reparations and to truth and reconciliation for people of African descent,” the report stated. “Contemporary police killings and the trauma that they create are reminiscent of the past racial terror of lynching.”

Some would argue that former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton offered apologies, however, their action were merely symbolic that purposely left out monetary claims.

The U.S. and select nations of the world have provided reparations to marginalized groups in the past, for example in 1980 for Japanese Americans who were placed in U.S. internment camps during World War II, restoration of lands to Native Americans, and the billions that Germany paid to Jewish Holocaust survivors.

Conyers bill, H.R. 40, is numbered in recognition of the unfulfilled promise to freed slaves of “40 acres and a mule.”

The harm caused by slavery has impacted descendants. After decades of Jim Crow segregation there has been racial discrimination and policies that still affect many African-Americans today in education, housing, healthcare, and the criminal justice system Conyers told Congress in a letter.

Sanders has also been well-received because of the notion that he would be a “better alternative” to Donald Trump– and in many ways Hillary Clinton as well– because in the minds of many Melanoid people here in the States, voting Sanders in would ensure that the two aforementioned candidates would be excluded, thus creating a “lesser of three evils” situation in the process.

While it is no secret that Melanoid people have been systematically mistreated and oppressed at every possible turn, common sense would lead people to realize that compensation for our 400-plus years of pain and suffering would suffice. However, virtually every other group has received some form of government assistance and/or tangible resources that would bolster those respective groups’ socioeconomic (and in most cases, political) standing in this country.

For much of the past century and-a-half, the concept of compensating African slaves–and their descendants–for their involvement in the inhumane institution of chattel slavery (and post-slavery discriminatory practices such as Melanoid people’s involvement in cruel eugenics experiments, the Jim Crow laws, the prison industrial complex, etc) under the U.S. government’s promise of “forty acres and a mule” to Blacks has been an issue.

 However, it hasn’t been until the past couple of decades that the reparations talk has been revisited–and gained more momentum. Even Prestigious Black attorneys such as Johnnie Cochran pushed for reparations for Melanoid people in this country until his untimely death in 2005.

Fast forward to slightly more than a decade, and no progress has been made in regards to Melanoid people receiving what has been owed to them. In the past decade since the last serious reparations push alone, many politicians have seduced Black Society with their cult of personality, only to offer them no viable solutions to countering the system of white supremacy with a system of justice; and filibustering when confronted/asked about the economic empowerment of Black Society.

Today in 2016, Bernie Sanders has to be placed in this same category of other politicians who play on the emotional heartstrings of Black Society with no real intentions of addressing its most pressing issues.

As of late, it has been shown that Sanders has gone on record to take his stance on his opposition of reparations for Melanoid people, even referring to the idea as “divisive”.

If that wasn’t alarming enough, then the following information will possibly shed more light on Sanders’ political agenda, and Black Society’s role in it–or lack thereof. It has been reported by Fusion  that in 2012, Sanders supported a bill that would pay Holocaust survivors reparations…a stark contrast to Sanders’ staunch opposition to Black people receiving payments for being victims of our own heinous, yet longer-lasting regime than the Holocaust–the African slave trade, and the centuries-long Black experience in America in general.

Unless he changes his tune on reparations for Black people (which is highly unlikely), Bernie Sanders is yet another charismatic political figure from the dominant society who has not given Melanoid People a concrete reason as to why we should continue to back him on his run for the presidency.

B. Clark

Last week, The Philadelphia Tribune reported that a group of American-born Melanoid people met with The UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent (a U.N.-sanctioned panel) to discuss recommendations on how to compensate Black Society with the long overdue reparations.

The current–and longstanding–climate in which Melanoid people have dwelt since the onset of slavery has become cause for alarm among U.N. officials, prompting Mireille Fanon Mendes-France of France (a U.N. chairperson) to express “extremely concern about the human rights situation of African-Americans”, as it was stated in a report that was discussed in the aforementioned meeting.

 The irony of the story yet again exposes the U.S.’s blatant denial of the gruesome history of slavery/racism that has crept into every nook and cranny of its 50 states. It also illustrates how this nation has gone to great lengths to deny Melanoid people the resources we deserve.

B. Clark

]]> https://www.melanoidnation.org/the-united-nations-is-in-favor-of-reparations-for-black-people-in-u-s/feed/ 233 https://www.melanoidnation.org/did-you-know-that-thousands-of-free-black-people-were-killed-in-concentration-camps-in-the-u-s/ https://www.melanoidnation.org/did-you-know-that-thousands-of-free-black-people-were-killed-in-concentration-camps-in-the-u-s/#comments Wed, 21 Oct 2015 05:42:37 +0000 http://melanoidnation.org/?p=2752 There is a closely guarded secret that has been deliberately buried by mainstream media and historians: After the Civil War (and during the war) , millions of freed Black people were funneled into concentration camps in America and killed through forced starvation, and other means.

Many of these locations were called “contraband camps”, and they were hastily built internment camps that were generally in proximity to Union army camps.

One gruesome camp in particular was located in Natchez ,Ms. The Devil’s Punchbowl is a place located in Natchez, where during the Civil War, authorities forced tens of thousands of freed slaves to live in these American death camps. Researcher Paula Westbrook said that, “The union army did not allow them to remove the bodies from the camp. They just gave ’em shovels and said bury ’em where they drop.”

“When the slaves were released from the plantations during the occupation they overran Natchez. And the population went from about 10,000 to 120,000 overnight,” Westbrook said.

“So they decided to build an encampment for ’em at Devil’s Punchbowl which they walled off and wouldn’t let ’em out,” Don Estes, former director of the Natchez City Cemetery, said.

In Natchez Mississipi alone, official estimate that in the time span of just one year, over 20,000 free Black people were killed in the concentration camp called The Devil’s Punchbowl.

Here is a news story about these death camps for Black people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgUG1K4ueSs

President Obama recently earmarked millions of dollars in reparations to Jewish survivors of the Nazi Germany holocaust.  When are Melanoid Americans going to received reparations for antebellum slavery, the contraband camps after slavery, the Jim Crow era terrorism, 100 years of ritualistic lynchings, and other state sanctioned terrorism aimed at Black people today still?

Surprisingly, there have been many of Black Society’s notable figures who have taken an opposing stance on reparations for the descendants of Melanoid people who served as slaves to the wealthy white slave owners. Concurrently, white supremacists–and suspected white supremacists alike–are vehemently against Black America’s case for reparations as compensation for our racial group’s subjugation in this country.

In spite of whether detractors of reparations exist or not, the fact of the matter is that slavery in America was an oppressive and demonic institution that has traumatized the descendants of its immediate victims to this very day. That being stated, Those who are pro-reparations often debate what we in Black America should receive as stipulations of what is due to us. Here are a few suggestions, listed below:

1. Counseling/Therapy

As previously mentioned, slavery “did a number” on us in Black Society, and because of the system of racism/white supremacy that exists to this very day, our overall morale is severely wounded, despite recent attempts to recover from the lingering effects of systematic white supremacy. Because of this, counselors of our sorts should be at our disposal to aid us in our attempts to recoup our historic greatness as a people.

2. Money

This is hands down the most popular–and obvious–proposed provision of reparations due to Black America. With non-Black groups in America such as the Japanese already having received financial compensation for their own collective mistreatment, reparations in the form of cash payments could definitely serve as a direct path to empowerment for Black America.

3. Real Estate

The supposed “American Dream” includes home/land ownership. With groups such as the Native American Indians having received land allotments in the form of reservations which include wealth-generating businesses such as casinos and hotels, Melanoid people in this country deserve similar compensation. With gentrification posing as one of the primary factors for Melanoid people being shut out of neighborhoods and cities across the country, the right to own our own shares of real estate shouldn’t be in question. After all, the same people who cultivated the land of America  (Black people working under free slave labor) are entitled to the land as well.

4. Instant Credit Repair

Although the United States as a corporate entity recently saw a reduction in its credit rating, its individual citizens are still encouraged–and in many cases required–to maintain excellent credit. For Black America, credit repair for those in dire need of it would enable us to do anything from buying a home to starting our own businesses, thus putting us back in the race to be competitive with our counterparts in the dominant American society.

5. Business Start-up Initiatives

In order for Melanoid people to protect ourselves from a recently heightened level of racism/white supremacy here in the States, it has been widely recognized and agreed that building an economic base isn’t a luxury, it is necessary. With other racial groups setting up shop with their businesses in the States going through little or no red tape involved, every other group has a leg up on Black America when it comes to creating the necessary businesses that constitute a viable economy in their respective communities.

6. True Rehabilitation of Blacks Returning to Society 

Melanoid people in this country are by far the most affected group of people who suffer from mass incarceration. There are an overwhelming number of Blacks who are contrite about their former lives on the “other side of the law”, and seek to start new chapters in their lives as productive and beneficial members to society upon their return from the prisons. It is wrongfully assumed that the countless institutions across the country “rehabilitate” criminals, when we in fact know this to be false. The numerous Brothers and Sisters who return home from incarceration often find themselves entrapped in the same vicious cycle that saw them get “locked up” before. The solution? Provide sustainable options for these unfortunate victims of mass-incarceration in the form of an extensive (and accredited) college educations, an abundance of trade programs, job placement services, in addition to a host of other legitimate incentives for true rehabilitation….BEFORE their release from prison. This properly prepares them for society, and enables them to avoid the pitfalls that polluted the environments they were brought up in.

7. Protection From Race Soldiers

Since the long-standing problem of law enforcement officials murdering Melanoid people en masse has garnered global exposure, it is only fitting that policies be implemented to specifically eliminate the unjust killings of innocent Melanoid people. If animals such as the bald eagle are protected by law, then it is only fitting that human beings in danger of being eradicated–such as Melanoid people in this country–be protected as well.

The items listed above are a few scenarios of Melanoid receiving our well-deserved reparation compensation as a result of centuries of subjugation under such an unjust and murderous system of racism/white supremacy. A consensus has been reached in Black Society that we were by far the most mistreated group of people to ever reach the shores of the U.S. To further state our claim, this country was built off of our blood, sweat, tears, and intellect. It’s time to pay up, America.

 B. Clark