What If? (On Reparations for Still Uncompensated Labor, Hardship, Pain, Rape and Murder)
Advocates have introduced various proposals to answer the demand for reparations in the United States. My ideas here are certainly not “the” solution. I simply want to offer something for your thoughtful consideration.
Dream with me.
If every descendant of those enslaved by this country received a basic income of $250,000 annually, imagine the creativity we would bring forth and the prosperity we would generate! Look at the National Basketball Association (NBA).
The NBA’s league minimum for players is between one and two million dollars. This is after most of them worked for no wages while enriching coaches and universities for generations. Most professional players keep generously reaching back to create opportunities for other youth because they care. Colin Kaepernick, a football star, is far from alone when elevating his people. The compassion and hope demonstrated by these athletes give us a clue of how Black people could change the world if our exclusion and oppression were over. Athletes have started schools, built homes, provided scholarships, and even built hospitals in the Motherland. Poor Black football and basketball players have long worked for nothing on the plantation known as the National College Athletic Association (NCAA). Still, if they had made the “big time,” there would be many more Kaepernicks for us all. In other words, the pros are compensating for what their country refuses to do.
Tennis superstar Serena Williams invests in Equal Justice Initiative (EJI). Equal Justice Initiative works to end mass incarceration, excessive punishment, and racial inequality and help victims of unfair trials. She quotes the below video, “While the 12 years after enslavement initially held great hope, the era gave way to devastating violence by white people against Black communities. Our history of racial injustice requires more attention to address the issues of today.”
A modest $250,000 annually would be the beginning of the end of mass unemployment, mass poverty, and mass incarceration because this is a society that opens doors for wealth. Black folks could transform this country so that the historic and current mistreatment of peoples, including Indigenous, Brown, Muslim, Sikh, and all the minoritized, and not excluding poor whites, would come to an end. We would see the beginning of equity.
And, reparations might bring gravitas and credibility to the United States in the global context. Other countries would look at their own empire-victims as humans, too. Then they could see themselves as humans.
