A taste of what's to come Vol. 3

Rebuttal to a more or less open letter from a dear friend and fellow right-leaning politico. Without further ado:

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22OCT2020; 0415, THU

Ah, yes; the red herring/straw-man fallacy combo. That incredibly tempting, remarkably obtuse, and terrible debating tactic favored by the overwhelming majority of those with a strong affinity for implicit bias.

With regards to slavery comparisons, I fathom the logic behind the argument; though, there's a certain element that is glaringly absent. It's reminiscent of the meme featuring a cat pushing a random watermelon out of an ocean: "Invalid".

On the base level— it's a self-evident fact that issuing reparations/restitution to the descendants of the victims of American slavery and the Jim Crow era segregation would be a logistical nightmare. In all but the most surety, we may have to lean heavily on the "honor system".

Yet, even more poignant: the nation has yet to even offer so much as an apology for the vile mistreatment of Blacks in America, to the best of my understanding. "And they haven't even pulled the knife out much less heal the wound. They won't even admit the knife is there."- Malcolm X ('64).

A key point of note— Money alone won't make us whole. There's a general consensus in my Fam that money is little more than an amplifier: If you were a bad person when you were broke... Slightly coldhearted, but alas.

Those who advocate against reparations not only ignore the way Germany paid survivors of the holocaust and how Reagan looked out for American citizens who were Japanese internment camp victims; though, the naysayers willfully ignore the factoid that money is what currently makes the difference between turkey bacon on the table and hunger pangs. Does not compute.

More key points as follows: It's my understanding that reparations go back at least as far back as the days of Moses and his struggle with his former brother, the infamous Pharaoh Ramses II. At risk of sounding biased or prejudiced, America would be nothing without the two and a half centuries of free labor provided by the ancestral people of those who are sun-kissed like myself.

As a student of African American studies, my professor made a salient point that I agree with: American slavery wasn't always a race issue; though, it rapidly devolved into one.

A brief side note: It's my understanding that at least one West African dignitary essentially did everything in her power to fight slavery; and I'm fairly confident that Queen Nzinga was not necessarily a "one-off", if you will. There seems to be a ghastly void of info on her and the other successful campaigns against colonialism in the textbooks of American classrooms.

Another point: the comparisons of versions of slavery over the course of history seems misguided at best. There's no other nation/society/religion that I know of which allowed the vicious and vile practice of "buck breaking" among slaveholders.

Suffice it to say that I lost another level of respect for this "once great nation" upon learning about the atrocities of the matter from a random YouTube vid showed to me by a close friend of the Fam. As we would often say when I was in high school many moons ago, "You just lost some cool points[, America]!"

I have read at least two gut wrenching stories about Reconstruction era lynchings in as many days from the more or less reputable and detail oriented source, PushBlack. I even got a tattoo on my right forearm to ensure that I don't ever let the lynching era completely evade my memory.

To double back to the two tales: A pregnant widow, Mary Turner, who was only hoping to get justice for her murdered husband, was also—wait for it, cut down mercilessly in an odious lynching. Two seniors, Scout Burton and William Donegan were brutally murdered around the same time period (along with seven others from their community) and "the length of Black life is [still] treated with short worth!"- Yasiin Bey, aka Mos Def on 1998's classic collab album Blackstar (12th track titled "Thieves in the Night").

Tl;dr- We "can't just accept the appearance" of reparations/restitution for the descendants of the transatlantic slave trade in the USA as being too lofty a goal. To quote the former presidential candidate Marianne Williamson, who fought valiantly for the Democratic nomination last year, "People heal when there is some deep truth telling" (30JUL2019).

Truly yours,

Darrius