August 17, 2014

Reparations – the 800 lb. Bail of Cotton in the Room
By Dr. Wilmer J. Leon, III

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - When one gains any level of understanding of American history and the role that Africans in America and later African-Americans played in the economic development of this country, it is easy to understand why so many African-Americans feel that they are due reparations.  The facts are irrefutable.  As Ta-Nehisi Coates clearly lays out in his article "The Case for Reparations" in the June issue of The Atlantic: “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.”  That comes to 435 years of state of national government sanctioned kidnapping, torture, terrorism, and oppression.

Black’s Law Dictionary defines reparations as “payment for an injury; redress for a wrong done.”  Maybe African-Americans should be seeking “restitution” instead of reparations.  Black’s defines restitution as “the act of making good or giving equivalent for any loss, damage or injury; and indemnification…A person who has been unjustly enriched at the expense of another is required to make restitution to the other.”

No one can seriously argue that the 12 to 13 million Africans who were kidnapped and brought to the Americas and the 400,000 to 600,000 who landed on these shores were not injured or wronged.  No one can sensibly argue that they did not suffer loss or damage.  Only a fool would say that American business and America as a country were not unjustly enriched at the expense of those four to six hundred thousand kidnapped Africans who were enslaved in this country and built this nation.

By definition those kidnapped and enslaved people and/or their heirs who suffered injury at the hands of the State, the national government and/or the private sector should be provided redress for the wrongs committed; reparations.  If those same people suffered loss or damage at the hands of the State, the national government and the private sector and all three entities were unjustly enriched, then those same persons should be repaid for their loss; restitution.

A big problem with the reparations discussion has been that it tends to get derailed by the seemingly impossible logistical challenges of how to provide reparations.  One can debate the type of reparations owed. One can debate who or what institutions are eligible to receive restitution? But you cannot logically question the simple fact that based upon the significant loss, damage suffered and the unjust enrichment gained; reparations are owed; restitution should be made.

What most who engage in this debate will not discuss, let alone admit is that in tort, contracts, commercial sales, and other areas of law, reparations and restitution address wrongs committed by one person upon another person. The primary reason that America and Americans cannot deal with its “compounding moral debt”; the reason as Dr. King said, “The Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity...still (languishes) in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land...” is because America and too many Americans never considered those Africans and later Africans in America to be human.  They were chattel – articles of personal property, things that were personal and moveable. To this day too many Americans, our elected official among them, do not consider African-Americans as equals. That attitude towards African-Americans is the 800lb bail of cotton in the room.

As Africans in America and later African-Americans, our history is one of struggle. Too many of us have forgotten or simply don’t understand what’s at the crux of that struggle. Many believe the struggle is based in economics, others believe its civil rights. Those are important issues that have played a significant role in our history and circumstance. However, what we’ve been  fighting to have recognized since those first 20 and some odd “African indentured servants” disembarked from the Dutch Man O War off the shores of Jamestown, Va. in 1619 (395 years ago) is that we are human.  Many of our “Founding Fathers” these so called or self-proclaimed “christians” (I cannot dignify these hypocrites with a “C”) relegated human beings, people that they owned, sold, and bequeathed to their heirs to the level of cows, pigs, and horses.  Last I checked, cows, pigs, and horses have no standing in court.  That’s why in 2009 the US Senate unanimously passed a resolution “apologizing” for slavery, calling it a “collective injustice” but in that “apology” it clearly stated that the resolution could not be used in support of claims for restitution.

Here are a few examples of how over time State and U.S. courts as well as standard practice reduced Africans in America and African-Americans to chattel:

• Virginia Statutes on Slavery, Act I, October 1669 (345 years ago) - What about the casual killing of slaves?– “if any slave resist his master and by the extremity of the correction should chance to die, that his death shall not be acompted felony, but the master… be acquit from the molestation, since it cannot be presumed that prepense malice…should induce any man to destroy his own estate.” We were property, not human – part of the estate.
• The Three-Fifths Compromise Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 of the United States Constitution (227 years ago) which reads: Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.
• The Fugitive Slave Clause, also called the Fugitives From Labor Clause is the provision in Article Four of the United States Constitution, Section 2, Clause 3, read: “No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.” Even after the Constitution was ratified, slaves could not find security in non-slaveholding states.
• The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on December 6, 1865 (149 years ago). Section 1 read: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”  This allowed mostly Southern States to retain access to free labor (mostly African American) as seemingly innocent actions became grounds for arrest and sentencing to chain gangs, prisoner leasing programs and prison work farms.
• Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857) 157 years ago, the US Supreme Court via the majority opinion of Chief Justice Taney held that Negros were never intended to be included as Americans. – It read: Can a Negro, whose ancestors were imported into this country, and sold as slaves, become a member of the political community formed and brought into existence by the constitution of the United States and entitled to the protections of such?  No! They are not and never intended to be included in the word “citizen” in the constitution.  Negros were considered at the time the Constitution was drafted as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the government might choose to grant them.

As local statutes and the Constitution memorialized the legal and social inferiority of Africans in America and African-Americans, Tolnay and Beck in their book A Festival of Violence documented the local practice of lynching to reinforce local mores and values through extra-legal violent means.  They “identified 2,805 victims of lynch mobs killed between 1882 and 1930 in ten southern states.  Although mobs murdered almost 300 white men and women, the vast majority-almost 2,500-of lynch victims were African-American.  The scale of this carnage means that, on average, a black man, woman, or child was murdered nearly once a week, every week, between 1882 and 1930 by a hate driven white mob.”

As a personal aside, these atrocities have touched and impacted my own family. In the small town of Phoenix, SC in Greenwood County (what is now historically known as the Phoenix Riot) some of the African-American residents of the area were trying to vote in a local election. A fight broke out as some of White residents were not happy with those efforts, even though it was legal for the African-American residents to vote.

During this fight a shot rang out, a White member of the community, Bose Ethridge fell to the ground dead with a bullet through his head. Everyone scattered, no one knowing, even to this day who fired the fatal shot.

According to the New York Times, Nov. 10, 1898, over the next few days, Whites from across Greenwood and surrounding counties converged on Phoenix to avenge Ethridge’s death.  Bands of armed Whites scoured the countryside in search of victims. Most people are more failure with the more infamous Wilmington Insurrection of 1898, also known as the Wilmington Massacre.  The Phoenix riot was just a few days before the Wilmington riot.

When the mobs were done about 12 people had been lynched. One of those was my great-uncle Wade Hampton McKinney. Today, lynch mobs have been replaced by the George Zimmerman’s and Michael Dunn’s of the world and sanctioned by “Stand Your Ground” and “juries of their peers”.

As we continue to debate the issue of reparations for the atrocities committed against Africans in America and African-Americans; an unspoken focal point in the debate has to do with the ethnicity of the group or class of people receiving the benefit.  As Dr. King so clearly articulated in 1968, the US government had no problem providing assistance to European immigrants as the country expanded West. “At the very same time that America refused to give the Negro any land, through an act of Congress, our government was giving away millions of acres of land in the West and the Midwest, which meant that it was willing to undergird its White peasants from Europe with an economic floor. But not only did they give the land, they built land grant colleges with government money to teach them how to farm. Not only that, they provided county agents to further their expertise in farming. Not only that, they provided low interest rates in order that they could mechanize their farms. Not only that, today many of these people are receiving millions of dollars in federal subsidies not to farm and they are the very people telling the Black man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps. This is what we are faced with and this is a reality. Now, when we come to Washington in this campaign, we’re coming to get our check.”

At the center of this debate, the 800lb bail of cotton in the room is the ongoing quest for African-Americans to be considered equal; to be considered human.  A US Senate would never recognize the atrocities committed against European American citizens but deny them just compensation for their loss, reparations, restitution.  The inhumanity continues.nd, they built land grant colleges with government money to teach them how to farm. Not only that, they provided county agents to further their expertise in farming. Not only that, they provided low interest rates in order that they could mechanize their farms. Not only that, today many of these people are receiving millions of dollars in federal subsidies not to farm and they are the very people telling the Black man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps. This is what we are faced with and this is a reality. Now, when we come to Washington in this campaign, we’re coming to get our check.

Dr. Wilmer Leon is the Producer/ Host of the Sirius/XM Satellite radio channel 110 call-in talk radio program “Inside the Issues with Wilmer Leon” Go to www.wilmerleon.com or email:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. www.twitter.com/drwleon and Dr.

August 16, 2014

Reality Check

The Numerous Ways That Black Folks Sustain White Supremacy
By A. Peter Bailey

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - We hate to admit it, but the harsh reality is that many, if not most, black people in this country—low income, middle income, upper income—in numerous ways, support the toxic ideology of white supremacy. The list includes:

• Those who have built lucrative careers in the academic, political and journalistic arenas by delighting Whites by consistently attacking other Black folks;
• Those who believe in White standards of beauty and attractiveness, such as keen facial features;
• Those who loudly and consistently use the ‘N’ word in their conversations, songs and ‘live’ performances;
• Those who only have images of a White Jesus in their churches and homes;
• Those who still say that Columbus discovered America and that Thomas Jefferson believed that all men are created equal;
• Those who relish being the only Black person in an otherwise all-White club, organization, school or neighborhood;
• Those whose antics in movies, television programs, music videos and in the streets in urban areas carry on the tradition of Stepin’ Fetchit, Mantan Moorland and Scatman Crothers;
• Those who only have White art in their homes and apartments;
• Those who believe that a degree from the Harvards, Yales and Princetons of the world automatically make them superior to other Black folks;
• Those who believe that a Black person romantically involved with or married to a White person has enhanced his or her social status;
• Those who are dyed or bewigged blondes;
• Those who use the word “Black” as an epithet;
• Those who believe that an all-Black school is inherently inferior;
• Those who believe that striving for academic excellence is “trying to be White”;
• Those who use the description “classical” only for European-created music;
• Those who wreak havoc in Black neighborhood with criminal activities;
• Those who believe that people of European descent always were, are now and will be the dominant force in world affairs;
• Those who smile with gratitude when a White person tells them, “You are different from other Blacks”;
• Those who say that a Black person has “good hair”;
• Those who say that a Black person is “dark but attractive”;
• Those who believe that the enslavement of our African ancestors has turned out to be good because it allows African-Americans access to its ill-gotten economic goodies garnered by White supremacist from the enslavement of African people and the near total destruction of the indigenous people of what is now the continent of North American.

The Blacks who help to sustain the psychological toxic known as white supremacy are the kind of people about whom Carter G. Woodson was speaking when he wrote in his book, The Miseducation of the Negro, “…Starting out after the Civil War, opponents of freedom and social justice decided to work out a program which would enslave the Negros’ mind, inasmuch as the freedom of the body had to be conceded…”

It’s painful to admit that the “program” of those “opponents of freedom and social justice” eyed by Dr. Woodson has had a great deal of success in enslaving the minds of too many Black folks in this country.

August 16 2014

Rising Up Against Police Brutality
By Julianne Malveaux

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - It doesn’t matter if you are state legislator or an alderman, a journalist or a local leader.  If you are in Ferguson, Missouri you won’t get any respect.  You can be the uncle of a victim whose body was left to lie on the street for several hours and you will not be allowed to cover your young nephew.  Not many would let dog lay uncovered for several hours.  Young Black Michael Brown apparently got less consideration that a dog would.

The streets burst into flames, but Governor Jay Nixon couldn’t make a statement until five days after Michael Brown was massacred.  We know Michael Brown’s name; we know how he was treated, but Chief Thomas Jackson refuses to release the shooting officer’s name   The officer, then, is entitled to privacy, but Michael did not deserve enough privacy to have his body covered after he was massacred.

The police, armed with stun guns, pepper spray, SWAT teams and plastic bullets, were heavily armed to “contain” the protesting crowd.  Who will contain the out-of-control so-called officers of the law?  When is it all right to call a McDonald’s a site of trespassing, or to knock reporters around, fail to offer identification, and then get flippant about it.

Charles Dooley, the St. Louis County Executive, gave a facetious news conference where he suggested, “we sit down and talk about it”. Let’s talk about the shooter’s name.  Let’s talk about the fully armed and unreasonable police officers.  St. Louis Mayor spoke of “protecting the innocent”.  Who is innocent?  Certainly not the police officer that shot Michael Brown, but the unarmed folks chanting “no justice, no peace”, are certainly innocent.

With police officers clad in military gear and armed as fully as those who are fighting abroad, the governor said ‘yesterday was yesterday”.  He added, “I’m not looking backward, I’m looking forward.”  In other words, he refuses to hold the officers accountable. “We want to get trust built, say the Governor.  He seems to be totally clueless.  How do you build trust when so-called officers of the law callously and lawlessly fire into peaceful crowds because they could?  The Governor needs to hold officers accountable before he calls for a “Kumbaya” moment.

What do we tell our young men?  Michael Brown had his hands up and he was still shot multiple times.  Many of us who have black teens and young men in our lives. We counsel them to be non-combative, non-confrontational, even humble, so they won’t be shot.  But police officers should be punished or even fired if they can’t share their badge information.  What do they have to hide? There is absolutely no accountability, with police officers being afforded more protection than a murder victim has.

During his August 14 press conference, the governor worked very hard to walk a tightrope as he maneuvered his way thorough a set of pointed questions.  He talked about “healing”, about “conversation”.  Here’s the conversation:  A police officer killed Michael Brown while he had his hands up, in surrender.  Witnesses say that even after Brown held his hands up, the police officers continued to shoot.

What do we tell our young men?  Whether you are compliant or complaining, an elected official or a reporter, you can be harassed without consequence.  There is little safety when you are confronted with out-of control “police”. Son, you can be killed anyway!

The federal government gave Ferguson, Missouri a grant to purchase dash cams to be installed in police cars.  They purchased the cams but they haven’t installed them.  Perhaps if they had, we would have more data about the massacre of Michael Brown.

The African-American community has walked down this path before.  We walked past it when Bull Connor used attack dogs to reinforce racial segregation. We walked this path for Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, Jr.  We can call the civil rights roll and the massacres we have experienced.  James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Shewerner.  Emmit Till, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown.  All these folks killed in different circumstances – seeming for being Black and male in America. Still, all of these folks killed.

The outpouring of rage in Ferguson streets is not a riot, but an uprising.  People are rising up against police brutality, rising up against the massacre of another young man.  Rising up, so that hopefully another mother will not have to suffer again.

 August 17, 2014

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Remember these names!  Eric Garner!  John Crawford III!  Michael Brown!  They are bonded with each other and are bonded with Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis and hundreds of African-American males who attempt to navigate the racist landscape of our nation.

Many watched in horror as Eric Garner was wrestled to the ground by NYC police, allegedly, for selling untaxed cigarettes.  Officer Daniel Pantaleo jumped on Garner’s back and placed him in a choke-hold, "a potentially deadly maneuver" banned by NYC police for 21 years!

Mr. Garner complained loudly and repeatedly that he couldn't breathe, but Pantaleo continued, resulting in Garner going into cardiac arrest and, later, dying in a local hospital.  Garner's wife disclosed that he suffered from diabetes, chronic asthma and sleep apnea. The medical examiner ruled Garner's death a homicide as a consequence of asphyxiation.

Typically, there's been an attempt to justify police actions by highlighting Mr. Garner's criminal record, but does a history of selling untaxed cigarettes equate to an extrajudicial death sentence?

What about John Crawford III, the 22-year-old killed in a Dayton, OH area Wal-Mart?  His family is asking, “Why was Crawford, a customer, shot and killed while holding a BB gun in a store that sells BB guns?"

Under the veil of "an on-going investigation" details of this shooting are sketchy at best. Police state that Beavercreek officers Sgt. David Darkow and Sean Williams responded to a 911 call about a man waving a gun inside a Wal-Mart store.  Allegedly, when confronted by the police and ordered to drop the weapon, Crawford didn't respond and was shot.  He died from this trauma.

Two contradictions ring clear in this incident.  First, why is a weapon that is indistinguishable as a "non-firearm" on open shelves and capable of being handled by the public?  Second, how is the disparity in the treatment of white 2nd Amendment supporters in stores with real loaded weapons explained?  Or how can an 18 year old white male in Aurora, CO, location of the theater massacre, stroll down the street with a loaded shotgun for the purpose of "getting folks used to" seeing weapons openly carried?

Now to Michael Brown, the 18-year-old who was set to begin his collegiate career two days after he was killed by a Ferguson, MO, policeman.  I've never been to Ferguson, but I have a very good friend who lived there while serving in the Army.  He was headquartered in St. Louis and bought a home in nearby Ferguson.  His evaluation gives greater clarity to media reports.

When he and his spouse moved to Ferguson some years ago, they were "greeted" by a next-door neighbor brandishing a revolver while observing them move in.  As is his style, my friend pulled a police-type shotgun from the trunk of his car and stared his new neighbor into a retreat into his home.  The neighbor moved several months later, but my friends perceived the undercurrent of racial animus as long as they lived there.

This feeling was reinforced by several incidents of DWB racial profiling.  Although his appearance epitomized the super-straight soldier, when in civilian clothing he was subjected to the same profiling that is common to African Americans males.

Asked about reports from Ferguson, they were adamant in their belief that community traditions "die hard."  They state that, "Surface changes may occur, but traditions that are deeply embedded in the psyche and spirit of a community remain for generations.  Racist behavior is simply traditional in Ferguson."

With all of the violence in the world; with the efforts of so many to find negotiated solutions to these challenges, a police officer in Ferguson, Mo. finds a reason to shoot another unarmed young Black man.  When will it end?

(Dr. E. Faye Williams is National President/CEO of the National Congress of Black Women.  www.nationalcongressbw.org)