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Reparation as petitioned here is not a cash allocation plan. It is a Reparation client credit system by which the masses of African Americans will be privileged to invest in the American capitalistic system for advancement and progress.”
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About the Author: William Marion Larsha, Sr., educator, writer, and “republic righter,” was born March 20th, 1924 in Atlanta, Ga. He received a B.S. degree from North Carolina A&T University, and a Master’s Degree from the University of Memphis. William Larsha is a retired public school teacher; a civic activist; and a long-time Democratic Party Executive Committeeman. He is also a political columnist and commentator for several newspapers, including The Memphis Tri-State Defender (for more than thirty years) and the Mid-South Tribune which also distributes his column “Notebook” on The Mid-South Tribune ONLINE and the Black Information Highway (BIH) at www.blackinformationhighway.com. In 2004, a city block was n named in his honor by the City of Memphis, TN.
Previously published on March 20, 2003)
Presenting “WE”
“The Predicament of African People
of
America, and a Reparation Plan
for
Their Extrication.”
BY WILLIAM LARSHA, SR.
No race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree ostracized.
Booker T. Washington, 1895
Preface
“We” is not only a reparation plan. It is also an advocacy for collective “We” togetherness of African American people if reparation is to have meaningful results. “We” has several new concepts.
The overall purpose of reparation here is for the survival and progress of the self-proclaimed descendants of African slaves as listed with the U. S. Census Bureau in 2000 and their offspring, provided they are of African American male and female parents. Secondly, Reparation should be utilized for the socio-economic advancement of African American people and the American whole.
The idea of reparation, otherwise, would suggest that the arrival of African people and their enslavement (1619), and oppression (1880’s +) on this continent would have no meaning other than candidacy for an eventual extermination through racial integration and amalgamation – as cleverly being advanced by a “race does not matter” persuasion.
Reparation as petitioned here is not a cash allocation plan. It is a Reparation client credit system by which the masses of African Americans will be privileged to invest in the American capitalistic system.
“We” also advances evidential justifications for reparation. Two events above all others took place in American history that more than justify reparation for African people: (1) slavery and the civil war, and (2), the war declared against African people in the 1880’s and the lawful suppression of them.
The bloody war fought and ending in 1865 promised to end over two hundred years of African slavery on this land. And after the war, reparation considerations were first addressed by non-African people. One was the famous “forty acres and a mule” promised for persons freed from slavery. It never really materialized. The Freedmen Bureau was a more honest effort by the Federal government to help former slaves cope with living in a free society. But it failed to guard against wicked politicians and public servants.
In 1877, wicked politicians and public servant became free to recreate a new kind of slavery: that is, discrimination, denial of privileges, and forced segregation to suppress and re-subjugate the now new African American citizens. Not only did the early reparation promises disappear, but the promises in both the Preamble and in the Constitution of the Republic of the United States of America disappeared also. Thus, the civil war between the states ended, and the war against African people of American (African American) began.
The presence of African people had become a racial problem. Seemingly, the nation could have found resolution in petitioning – by setting aside land in the habitat of the freedmen for their sovereignty, or for the sake of real democracy and the freedmen’ predicament, a Negro affiliate state of existence could have been established for African Americans and their posterity. But what the country obviously favored was the war to establish exclusive and perpetual “White Rule” rather than “shared rule” in the south which really commenced in the 1880’s.
All and all, African people have been present in this land for almost 400 years, and at no time have the great masses of them enjoyed the full range of privileges promised by the constitution of the nation. Because of the war to establish southern “White Rule,” African people came to experience denials of accessibility to the capitalistic privileges enjoyed by others Americans. Thus, African Americans, as a group in the American whole are far behind other groups in America; that is, behind economically, educationally, and politically.
“We” offers an opportunity for African people to catch up by participating in a reparation plan that will enable them to invest and enjoy the fruits of investments. However, this plan is not a cash-in-hand program. It is a plan to allocate investment credits to African Americans who are recipients of the plan. The reparation credits can be used to invest (1) life insurances, and health/care supplementary plans which will be mandatory; (2) investment in education (undergraduate or graduate – vocational or academic); (3), personal investment opportunities; and (4), Reparation investments for the prosperity of African America.
This reparation plan proposes to correct the wrongs to African Americans effectuated by both colonial continental Americans and the failed promises of the Constitution of the Republic of the United States Americans. Through this plan, therefore, African Americans will have the opportunity to participate, without legal prejudices, in the universal enterprise system of America. And with reparation investment credits, they will have a chance to provide a comfortable way of life for themselves and their posterity, plus contributing to the progress of America..
Mental Autograph.
This writer believes in republic rights (rights of the American Republic as expressed in the constitution of the United states). and in the African American philosophy of ethnic co-existence which includes principles of behavior that influence coalescence, ethnic “effectivism,” ethnic affiliation rather than nation-in-a-nation, reciprocal relations above asymmetrical relations, socio-economic endeavor, “Pure God morality, and collective “We” togetherness among African Americans, functioning to make themselves better and to keep both “themselves and their country,” America, strong..
Neither does this writer believe in the “race doesn’t matter” concept which will eventually lead to “utopian” or “melting pot” integration that will cause more disintegration among African Americans. More frightening, the “race doesn’t matter” concept causes African Americans to forget the past and praise the folly of “free at last” which leads to amalgamation and in the end, the self-destruction of the race – what was, will be no more closer.
If the last measure of the existence of African American people is to remain in this country, they, themselves, must ignore the “I have a dream” inducement of being absorbed in some mainstream body that floats in some melting pot in order to become a new American race – a race of mutants.
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