Reparations: A Moral Obligation. Imagine being beat, burnt, blown and…
By: Nathalie Amazan
Tags: Politics, Race, BlackLivesMatter, Resistance Poetry, Reparations

Reparations: A Moral Obligation

(Spoken Word)

Taken from Black Agenda Report article by Bruce A. Dixon titled ‘What Would A Real Discussion on Reparations Look Like? Have We Ever Had One?’ 28 Jan 2016.

Imagine being beat, burnt, blown and blacked out of history, with no apology

Robbed wealth through captured Black bodies on plantations and streets building one of the world’s largest economies

Bodies as objects maimed and raped in public declarations of power

Ripped apart from families

Babies torn from the breast of their mommies who carried them knowing that moment would come

Black bodies roasted alive hung out to dry bloody red all over closing schools to watch

Make it a holiday postcard

I am not talking about land afar, but right here on this land, in this country, on this shining city on a hill where

Black bodies are drowned buried under liberty’s feet jumping from ships to land unknown to life unknown but knowing captivity could never be

This is American slavery

We are overdue for repentance

I’m calling for truth and justice

To center healing

accountability to the atrocities done to millions

Broken promise of 40 acres and a mule, broken before one could feel freedom come but now I come to you today to talk about modern day reparations for all Black people of African Descent living in this nation

Victims of lynching, enslavement, land-theft, and vending children

Black bodies worked to death to build industry, streets we walk on, the pillars in D.C.

Chattel slavery lives its legacies in contemporary racial disparities: housing, education, wealth, punishment systems

They say the first step in addressing a problem is to name it is there

So I am asking us all to see color

To see the ways its been justified for death and

Black skin dehumanized, told to pick ourselves up from our bootstraps

Forced to integrate into a burning house with no protection

Forced to believe it is our fault we can not put out the fire

We’re supposed to be content with the 13th amendment but

We got convict leasing Jim Crow redlining mass incarceration

All came post Emancipation

Political discourse in these United States indicates that the 2020 election may be one of the most important in our history

But there’s some necessary points missing about healing

We do need class first policies that underestimate the strength of anti-Blackness

like a strong economy necessarily means reconciliation

Politicians saying it’s too late or it’s too divisive

I have never known justice to expire or back down from a challenge

People who think they know more than they do saying those who were slaves and masters are dead forget that unattended trauma can live on through generations

They do not understand that intra-family generational wealth is the major determinant of household wealth right now

More than a quarter of us have zero to negative wealth right now

not allowed to save, destroyed beginnings of our beginnings

Tusla

Reparations is a process of repairing, healing, and restoring a people

About justice, about improving the future lives of Black people in the U.S. to make us matter, to make us full citizens with self-determination

From those physically enslaved on plantations and their families,

to Black bodies shot down in the name of duty,

and our vulnerability to institutions that do not see our human being

Reparations are necessary for our healing.