Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Show Me the Money: Of Slavery Reparations, Foot Baths, Hugs, and North Carolina's Eugenics Program


Commenter Makheru Bradley's helpful observations about the decision by Republicans in North Carolina to deny the survivors of the state's decades-long eugenics program is a nice connection to our goings back and forth in this post about the neutrality of the law and the existence of institutional racism.

Law is a social construct. While some may appeal to concepts such as universal or natural law, I have always been of the mind that this social glue does not transcend time and space. In all, the law is a particular arrangement, of a given society, located in a specific moment in time.

By implication, if a society is structured in inequalities of race, class, gender, ethnicity, or sexuality then its laws will reflect those arrangements of power. The law is a channeling of Power, the ability to normalize certain behaviors, to mark other behaviors as deviant or aberrant, and works to protect certain classes of people from the consequences of their actions: there is a reason that the gangster capitalists on Wall Street who stole billions (and wrecked millions of lives) are "white collar" criminals, who may in a perfect world do a few years in a country club prison, while the guy who steals a television can end up in jail for years or decades.

The former group (and those of their class) make the law; the latter live in a society under statutes and dictates that the first group designed.

For the victims of North Carolina's tyrannical eugenics program, whose justice claims were denied by the Senate Republicans, and that have seen their appeals ignored by the courts, what would justice look like?

Apologies are symbolic acts which do not have any monetary value--and yet are nonetheless resisted (see the many white folks' grumblings about Clinton's quizzical and weak apology to Africans for the enslavement of black Americans). However, apologies do have some amount of moral currency. But, can you take moral currency to the bank and cash it in? Can a person transform the moral high ground into fair compensation for the resources and inter-generational transfers of wealth denied your community by the self-interested and vicious acts of others?

In  Makheru Bradley's allusion to the Tulsa race riots, he signaled to those larger questions. During the red summers of the late 19 teens and early 1920s African American communities were subjected to organized, white mob violence which was aimed at destroying the political economy of Black America in the post World War One era. 

Looking back almost 100 years, and evaluating the future resources destroyed by those pogroms and riots, the black-white wealth gap in the 21st century is clearly related to these acts of economic mass destruction. Ultimately, if the goal of white mob violence in the 20th century was to hobble black people in the decades going forward, it would appear that such a plan was extremely successful. 

I have watched the above video about the Tulsa, Oklahoma race riots many times. I am repeatedly saddened, as the ancestors of those black people who were driven from their homes, and killed by white thugs, seem resigned with having a church service, and a monument constructed to "honor" the suffering of their people. I also cringe when watching similar moments of racial "healing" such as the ceremonial foot washing by white folks of the ancestors and kin of the African Americans who were driven from their homes and communities in acts of mass ethnic cleansing. 

Empty hands, and an "I am sorry," are materially inconsequential gestures. Apologies have little meaning if you are not willing to transfer resources back to those who were unjustly stolen from. Show me the money! 

Aggrieved peoples around the world, from countries such as Israel, to some First World and indigenous peoples, and including nations like South Africa, India, and elsewhere, have been compensated for group disenfranchisement and suffering. I acknowledge that slavery reparations are a non-starter in the United States for this or any other lifetime. This is not a dismissal of the legal or ethical grounds of such a claim. It is simply an acknowledgement of racial realpolitik. Ironically, the election of the country's first Black President was the last nail in the metaphorical coffin of what is/was a very legitimate and legally sound project. 

Nevertheless, I must still ask why are so many African Americans content with symbolic hugs and quasi-apologies that come with no substantive or material transfer of resources? Is this a symptom of exhaustion? Are folks just that broken and beaten, where symbolic acts are all that they feel justly entitled to?

I would argue that African Americans do not need hugs and a foot bath. We need individuals who are willing to use every legal means available both domestically and internationally to advance our justice claims.

Where are such men and women of courage? Have the lions been culled from herd?

Alternatively, please do teach me something. Are the courts so rigged, and Power so omnipresent, that such efforts are just so much wasted energy? 

28 comments:

CNu said...

Can you take moral currency to the bank and cash it in?

No.

As a matter of fact, staying identified with "moral currency" is the psychological equivalent of trying to spend Monopoly money. You may have won the game of Monopoly fair and square, but at the real-world point of sale - you will only be ridiculed and dismissed.

Can a person transform the moral high ground into fair compensation for the resources and inter-generational transfers of wealth denied your community by the self-interested and vicious acts of others?

The "moral high ground" is nothing more than harboring old grievances that will not be either considered or honored. Where is the profit in that psychological self-flagellation?

Empty hands and an "I am sorry" are just that...empty gestures.

At least get a dayyum casino and a tax-free cigarette concession out there on the reservation...,

Why are so many African Americans content with symbolic hugs and quasi-apologies that come with no substantive or material transfer of resources?

Lacking the balls, cunning, gumption, and ruthlessness to fight, what else you gonna do?

Remember, the revolutionary war was fought by <.03% of the colonists, materially supported by <.1% of the colonists.

If one were to survey the demographic involvement of negroes in the civil rights movement, I speck one would find similar lopsided demographics, and the only fighting being done there was in courts utilizing teevee to court public opinion.

I would argue that African Americans do not need hugs and a foot bath. We need individuals who are willing to use every legal means available both domestically and internationally to advance their justice claims.

At a bare minimum. You also need some credible killers out there in the mix doing a little more than shooting up one another in their own neighborhoods in carefully engineered high-risk/low-yield retail drug wars. There precisely is where the ongoing cull has been effected for the past 25 years.

Where are such men and women of courage? Have the lions been culled from herd?

Yes!!!

Are the courts so rigged, and Power so omnipresent, that such efforts are just so much wasted energy?

No.They.Are.Not - but - it would take a highly organized and sustained effort to make use of the courts - and right now - many of our best trained, best educated minds have been lulled into utter complacency in their pursuit of the gold ring of a career in media. From the professoriate to the stage of airy-fairy public intellectual chindribblery as unelected and unaccountable heirs to the thrones of Rev.'s Al and Jesse....,

Anonymous said...

"I acknowledge that slavery reparations are a non-starter in the United States for this or any other lifetime. This is not a dismissal of the legal or ethical grounds of such a claim. It is simply an acknowledgement of racial realpolitik. Ironically, the election of the country's first Black President was the last nail in the metaphorical coffin of what is/was a very legitimate and legally sound project."

Well, now, let's not be too hasty here. Less than a decade ago erbody thought the same thing about the idea of a black president: "Not in our lifetime". You pragmatic thinkers have no imagination. This Barama nail in the coffin seems about to backfire. And when that happens there will be a small window of oportunity tp perform a ju jitsu move on the PTB, the forces that put him in office. By accomplishing this impossible feat they created a kind of unity among the black and white political left. That unity can be capitalized upon if the leftleft can wakeup you left centrists to the Obama deception and the need to obliterate it. The power of the left would be released to seek true opposition to racist warmongering right. With the demise of Obamism, a real window of opportunity will open. But only if we don't claim the emperor is still wearing clothes.

Hey, I don't mind if you support Obama, though he is not the lesser evil. He is, by being more effective, the greater. Obama or Romney? Kang or Kodos. Vanilla or chocolate. It's still ice cream. But if you ain't criticizing the hell out of him while you're supporting him; not only are you doing black folks a disservice, you're doing the nation (and the world) a disservice.

Anonymous said...

I wholeheartedly agree with you, African Americans do not need more symbolic hugs or foot baths, nor do we need more professional basketball and football players. What we need more than anything else is some real revolutionaries (or killers) who are willing to sacrifice their lives for true Black liberation. In sum, the only thing that power respect is equal power and if not equal power, those who are willing to put up a fight until death, even in the face of insurmountable odds.

In regards to, “carefully engineered high-risk/low-yield retail drug wars”, these people out there that engage in this type of behavior are truly uneducated. They need to point their weapons in the direction of the powers that be and not against each other.

Razor said...

Every now and then Cnu says somehting that makes sense, though I must give him credit for consistency in his particular brand of cynicism, it is at times entertaining in an annoying way. While he may have a point with regards to the only type of resistance the controlling elites respect,... cunning, barbarism, ruthlessness and such, that kind of response would never had suceeded against the white controlling power in the US. The genius behind maintaining power by whites inside the country had always rested on their ability to perpetuate the solidarity of the majority white, and honorary whites with their white privileges, which , as you know, had, and continues to have, very substantial economic, social and psychological benefits real or imagined. Race is more than a visual identifier in America. It is literaly taken on quasi-spritual qualities for historically European downtrodden people who would rather die than become "the pre-black Niggers" of Europe or even worse, white trash, which is even worse, given their privileges and opportunities in America. However, there has always been a remnnant of whites who have been, and are, the "salt of the earth" and their courageous efforts should never be forgotten ortaken for granted today and should serve as a sincere glimmer of hope.

I cannot disagree more when Cnu says that black reparations can be achieved through the courts. Thurgood Marshall and those who fought with him were talented and persistent lions, whose time had come which coincided with the effort of others including whites who found enough religion to be shamed into the limited gains that were achieved. Then there were also economic opportunities seen by elites in spite of a majority of white sentiment, and as they go, others are coerced into falling in line.

I agree with Anon that the Obama "true lie illusion" actually does people of color particularly and the Left in general, more harm than the alternative of a Romney, in that most people, particularly Blacks and nearly all Black politicians, have completely capitulated, accepted, voted for and even condoned unconstitutional, inhumane, illegal, unconscionable actions.

Anonymous said...

help me out here, seriously. When i think of the idea of reparations, i have several questions. If black Americans are compensated with some form of reparations, what happens after the money is distributed? From that point on do all arguments in favor of things like affirmative action cease to exist? Do arguments defending government subsidy programs based on historical oppression cease to exist?

CNu said...

I cannot disagree more when Cnu says that black reparations can be achieved through the courts

CNu considers reparations an utter and complete impossibility. What CNu has said repeatedly is that ANY racial grievance which does not - at a minimum - rise to the level of legal presentation and redress is an utter waste of time, attention, and conversation.

Furthermore, that harboring such practically implausible racial grievances is psychologically crippling to those who identify with and harbor them.

Anonymous said...

There is nothing crippling to the psychological make up of a community than surrender and retreat. Seeking justice and inserting a claim for the same is a legitimate grievance that heals the pain of contempt and injustice.

For to long the Black community has invoked the wrong model to secure reparations and grievance based redress. We have model our equity driven reparation model on the template crafted by others.

Our history and grievance is not like Jews, Asians , nor native Americans. Once we acknowledge this truth we can then design a model that works for us

Anonymous said...

We must be the exclusive architectures of any models which augment our future.Once we understand our inherent value will never be adequately calibrated by others we can evolve pass endless chatter about the shortcomings of repraration models that will never come to the market.

So for me these types of discussions do not advance anything because they are flawed from their very construction.

BTW my model includes dual citizenships provisons,relocation grants,contractual benefits,immunity provisions and economic licenses ...

bruto alto said...

@CNu
Who do you see as an important black leader/teacher/speaker. How could we (blacks)focus the energy to act.

Anonymous said...

We are focused 24/7....there are millions of Black leaders in America...CNu is not a leader he is an angry low esteem bitter man who has been crushed and contaminated by the pathologies of white racism... Notice how the white posters on this site affirm him from Fred to others ..

He also is a proxy or sock puppet for CD

CNu said...

Here's my bottomline Bro. Alto. As a people, our collective, popular-cultural mindset has been lopsidedly and obsessively focused on issues, events, and personalities. Consequently, our collective focus has wandered all over the place in the course of my living memory and been at best ephemeral. In terms of what we eat, drink, wear, amuse ourselves with, etc..., it no longer makes sense to consider us anything even remotely approaching a unitary racial/cultural collective.

Who do you see as an important black leader/teacher/speaker.

I don't and there isn't.

Measured strictly by enduring results, I'm not entirely convinced that there ever has been such an one, and that of course includes during the generations over which we had in common our legally subordinate status under Jim Crow in America. Now that we're no longer legally subjugated in any meaningful manner (why I've emphasized the issue of "legality" and the courts) I don't think there's any factor which binds us together as a unitary people any longer that rises to the level of, or trumps the binding factor of, citizenship in America.

Consequently and by default, that makes the Hon.Bro.Preznit.Double-O hands down the.most.important leader/speaker OF ALL TIME - and as it turns out in his case - he just happens to be black. .

How could we (blacks)focus the energy to act

There now is the $64K kwestin Bro. Alto.

What must be first and foremost is to shift local critical mass population subsets into a collective focus on projects and institution building. Those who are interested in and motivated to create change must do so by solving real world problems of sufficient magnitude to provoke mass response. IMOHO there are two areas of activity in which we could create a whirlwind of tangible, useful and ultimately profitable economic activity.

1. Urban agriculture and food security. I believe the GrowingPower and PodPonics models are both viable long-term investments for urban agriculture that is capable of creating jobs, producing food security, and generating a respectable profit.

2. Energy efficiency. In the U.S. on a per capita basis, we use nearly 6 times more energy than do the Swiss on a per capita basis. Energy literacy and awareness are the cornerstones of this type of change, followed in short order by professional services to help folks improve their energy consumption profiles. Genuine and substantial energy savings (lowered costs) are a sufficient incentive to get many more folks to move off the energy glutton dime.

There are wealthy black folks who could be persuaded to invest in a well organized and professionally managed project to get these types of economically necessary activities off the ground. Interestingly enough, if you've not yet read Schuyler's Black Empire, hydroponic farming and solar concentrator energy generation were cornerstones of his economic programme for the black man. Written at the height of the Great Depression, I've long considered the concrete programmatic proposals in that novel to be so presciently far ahead of their time as exemplify afrofuturistic thought and imagination.

makheru bradley said...

“Measured strictly by enduring results… the Hon.Bro.Preznit.Double-O (is) hands down the.most.important leader/speaker OF ALL TIME.”

LOL@CNu talking about “enduring results.”

“Obama in his own elite way has done more and more novel damage to the Black brand than any 10,000 ignants, pants on the ground, grills in they mouf, ignants could have ever hoped to have done.” – CNu

Razor said...

Anon, becoming the exclusive architects of our own reparations model, while sounding euphorically appealing, especially your suggestions regarding dual citizenship and relocation grants, are reminescent of the Back to Africa movement that spawned Liberia, which has been unable escape the long arms of Western post-colonial interference and influence. I do love the premise of the idea, the creative fashioning of our own remedial model. I am afraid that would require the same type of commitment from our oppressors, whichI don't see happening voluntarilty.

CNu makes a good point regarding the appearance of fragmentation of the racial/cultural collective mindset; and likewise, the apppearance of leaderlessness of , today' black society. I believe that as far as appearances go, you are almost right. The Obama effect is in full bloom. Few leaders of color remain un-denuded and non-corrupted. All those who have dared to question Obama have been marginalized by other blacks. See Tavis Smiley and Cornel West for example.
Both are leading the Poor Peoples Campaign and Cornel West is going to jail standing up for all poor people, including blacks. Obama is the only Presisent who has failed to invite Tavis to the White House.Tavis can't get an interview. Congresswoman Lee is a real leader. Meanwhile, you have people like Al Sharpton prostituting himself out at every turn, ie. supporting public school privitization, selling snake oil and such. The Obama Effect has made chic being a complete sell-out for black politicians.

However, CNu, you are being disingenuous to pretend that there has never been a genuine black leader based on "enduring results". You completely lost me there. You are too intelligent to own that statement. Shame on you. Let me give you a clue. You are conclusively a dynamic leader wwhen those in power feel that it is imperative to assasinate you.

CNu said...

LOL@CNu talking about “enduring results.”

Are you laughing at your intentional misquote, or, are you laughing at the fact that Obama has extracted more unanimous black electoral support than any prior black teacher/speaker/leader ever?

Personally, I'm laughing at the fact that the concept "black" had become so shopworn and threadbare that the Hon.Bro.Preznit was able to ruthlessly exploit it the way he has done, and the way he will do it again in 5 months.

What do the 1500 other elderly afro-trekkies, who've now lost their flagship school in Kansas City, propose to do in response to this continuing flagrant subversion of their ethno-religious identity by the long-legged mack daddy?

CNu said...

CNu, you are being disingenuous to pretend that there has never been a genuine black leader based on "enduring results"

lol, nope.

Please enlighten us all with your brief list of "enduring results"?

Here, I'll offer up a little kickstart.

1. A named federal holiday (opposed in Arizona)

2. Renaming of the worst phekking street in the worst part of the hood in every city in America

3. A turrrrrrible statue made in China with damn near epicanthic eye folds..,

what you got?

CNu said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Raxor

Not talking about a Garvey revival more importantly my themes are based upon real time applications not history nor irrevelant models...
BTW it is a waste of time to flatter CNu he is a loser who hates his own skin

CNu said...

lest I forget;

4. A stellar Boondocks cartoon bit, but I think enduring credit for that one goes to Aaron Mcgruder.

5. The Hon.Bro.Preznit.Double-O

Cuh-learly the.most.enduring and simultaneously unexpected and unintended consequence of the whole and entire civil rights movement which made blacks full americans at the cost of absolutely killing substantive and superficially unitary blackness...,

CNu said...

BTW it is a waste of time to flatter CNu he is a loser who hates his own skin

lol, hell hath no fury like a Thrasher scorned...,

Anonymous said...

CNu's proposals are as impotent as his bravado in here always amazes when you take a away the roar of a coward ...what ya got ??? ...A brain dead CNU

Anonymous said...

Our mentor does not hide behind an alias nor does he offer up pedestrian ideas and unlike you his parenting has produced offspring that have ivy league degrees.... Tee Hee

Anonymous said...

One of CNu's ideas was miracle gro. ... Tee Hee

makheru bradley said...

I'm laughing at your "enduring results."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LK6D3HIFne8

Well now, whose identity has really been subverted? Certainly not those who saw The Perfect Proxy as the most brilliant stroke of disguised hypocrisy in American political history from jumpstreet.

Certainly not those who are still thoroughly seduced by “spiritual wickedness in high places.”

It’s those who now realize that they were pimped worse than the real Iceberg Slim’s bottom ho.

“Double-O is about as far removed from what people who voted for him hoped he would be that he is unrecognizable.” – CNu

http://www.amazon.com/Pimp-The-Story-My-Life/dp/087067935X

Razor said...

Anon

I didn't mean to flatter CNu, but like I said, every now and then he has a brush with reason and I didn't want to waste it. I'm interested to hear more about your models.

Another point about the courts and law as a potential vehicle for real change. Don't be fooled by the SCOTUS's recent decision on Obamacare. There is a reason, that for now is hidden, that Justice Roberts broke the tie in favor. We, who are non-robotons know the true heart of five of the justices. We know that they reflect the super-elitist, super-arrogant and non-God-fearing nature of the 1%. There is a very profitable, perhaps backroom deal, that has been evidently brokered. Don't forget, right now everything public is up for sale, literally, or some politicians are trying to pass legislation for it. Clean water, soon public education, inflated college educations, and one day, perhaps, clean air.

In sum, as clearly revealed by the SCOTUS, there is little justice or trust to be found in any branch of government right now. What that means for people of color and poor people signals calamity and disaster.

CNu said...

I'm laughing at your "enduring results."

lol, gnaw, you clowning around at the back of the classroom for the slow kids.

Bro.Mak-Heru - this.is.chess - not.checkers!!!

Mine so cray - you need to put on a skully and give salawat - CNu PBUH - Allahu 'alayhi wa-’a-lih

makheru bradley said...

Razor, Roberts definitely has ulterior motives. We should not forget that Bush and Obama are joined at the hip, if not above. The Friedmanist shock treatment on 9/15/08, which the Bush Administration helped to facilitate, was the critical factor in the election of Barack Obama. Obama has been paying massive dividends ever since.

Here is a real bombshell people should be aware of: Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)

For years we've heard about plans for a one-world government. While people are chasing the imaginary Illuminati, in the real world they are planning a Corporatocracy.

[A thirteenth round of TPP negotiations involving the Obama administration will occur next week in San Diego. There negotiators from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative will meet behind closed doors with their counterparts from eight Asian and Latin American countries. What’s on the table is a 1 percenters’ dream – a corporate power tool of unprecedented scope and might. Think NAFTA on steroids with the whole world.]

http://www.alternet.org/economy/156059/trans-pacific_partnership%3A_under_cover_of_darkness%2C_a_corporate_coup_is_underway_?page=entire

There has been a seamless transition between the policies of Bush and the policies of Obama in a number of areas. What’s absolutely amazing is how much more diabolical Obama has been in some of those areas—the most brilliant stroke of disguised hypocrisy in American political history

Cameo said...

Excuse me if this has already been mentioned but corporations are people now. "Citizens United" was a giant step towards corporate take over of the government. This just continues the process. The road to fascism is paved with bad intentions.

Gaius said...

Do you want to become very rich, famous or powerful in life? If yes then join the illuminati kingdom now and get all you need in life, so contact us now for more information on how you will be fully initiated into the illuminati temple and get all you need in life. Contact: illuminatiwealth@gmail.com or +2347033547811