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REPARATIONS

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Messenger: Nefertiti Sent: 1/4/2006 9:32:50 AM
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This was posted to me at MYSPACE...i pass it on


AND i just realized that sis irijah posted this all ready.....give thansk and priases...for those of you who missed it last time....

Why We Owe Them
By Carol Chehade

"Stop living in the past and move on after slavery!" This is what we often
tell African Americans. Well we certainly forced them to move on. We moved
on to Black Codes, Jim Crow, lynching, de facto segregation. We moved on to
White knights hiding behind ghosts of themselves while religiously lighting
crosses in praise of a Satan they were fooled into thinking was God. We
moved on to the cities of Tulsa, St. Louis and Rosewood, where we,
apparently, were unaffected by the burned and seared flesh of Black people.
We moved on to laws that upheld racial oppression over and over again. We
moved on to the many Black men placed on death row because they fit the
description. We moved on and made sure that Emmitt Till would not be the
last fourteen-year-old Black child whose unrecognizable corpse was the price
paid for supposedly whistling at a White woman. We moved on to exclude
African Americans from rights of democracy by blocking avenues to
employment, education, housing, and civil rights. In the final decade of the
last century the slow, consistent racial apocalypse started showing signs of
even more things to come when a Black man's head was seen rolling behind a
pick up truck in Jasper, Texas. By the time we racially profiled our way
from Texas to New York we find a city plagued with plungers and forty-one
bullets. Every time Black people have tried leaving the shackles of slavery
behind, we find that we were the ones that couldn't stop living in the past.

How dare our own racial arrogance say that reparations are too much of an
apology for the Black lives we've tormented. How dare we simultaneously
declare that the statue of limitations has expired for African Americans yet
is limitless for other people in the world whom are non-Black. Half of the
nations in this world are in the midst of fighting long and hard battles to
get justice for things that happened in the past. Some of these battles have
roots that go back further than the birth of the United States. African
Americans' quest for justice is looked down upon in comparison to ethnic
groups like Jews and Palestinians. Black people would be ridiculed as
unrealistic and outlandish if they were to ask for a piece of land like the
Jews and Palestinians have done and are doing. Unlike the Jews and
Palestinians, at least African Americans are asking rather than forcing us
through the barrel of a gun to take responsibility.

The international stage has taken issues of reparations much more seriously
than we have. The Jews received statehood as a form of reparations for their
brothers and sisters who were exterminated. Coincidentally, many Jews who
immigrated to Israel and benefitted from reparations were not even close to
the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Dachau. Although millions of those
whom the reparations were intended for died, that didn't mean that their
death equaled an expired statue of limitations for their descendants who
were left to deal with the psychological consequences and the nagging fear
of what it means to be hunted down and collectively violated because of
ethnicity. Jews even went on to win further reparations through lawsuits
against corporations such as banks.

Again, these demands for justice were instigated by a generation of Jews
that never even lived in Germany, let alone been there during the Holocaust.
The Jewish experience serves as a prime example as to why reparations for
African Americans are not unrealistic and outlandish.

About Me: An activist and writer, Chehade's new book is Big Little White
Lies: Our Attempt to White-Out America. Her essay 'Why We Owe Them' can be
read in its entirety at www.reparationsthecure.org/articles/chehade1.shtml


Messenger: Eleazar1234 Sent: 1/11/2008 4:59:05 PM
Reply

A great song by Tupac Shakur

"White Man's World"

I ain't saying I'm innocent of all this
I'm just saying
This song is for y'all
For all the times I mess up
when we mess up

Dear sister
Got me twisted up in prison
I miss yah
Crying
Looking at my nieces and newphews picture
They say don't let this cruel world get yah
Kinda suspicious,
Swearing one day you might leave me
for someone thats richer
Twist the cap off the bottle
I Take a sip And see tommorrow
Gotta make if I have to Beg and Borrow
Reading love letters
late night, locked down, and quiet
If brothers don't recieve their mail
Best believe we riot
Eating Jack mat
Staring at walls of Silence
Inside this cage
Where they captured all my rage and violence
In time I learned a few lessons
Never fall for riches
Aplogizies to my TRUE sisters
Far from bitches
Help me raise my black nation
Reperations are due
Its true
Caught up in this world
I took advantage of you
So tell the babies how I love them
Precious boys and girls
Born black in this white mans world
and all I heard was

[Chorus]

Who knows what tommorrow brings
In this world where everyone lies
Where to go
No matter how far I find
To let you know
That You're not alone

Being born with less
I must confess
Only adds on to the stress
Two gunshots to my homies head
Died in his rest
Shot him to death
and Left him bleeding for his family to see
I pass his casket
Gently asking
Is there heaven for G's?
My homeboys doing life
Begging mama be stressing
Shedding tears
When her son finally ask that questions
Where my daddy at?
Mama, Why we live so poor?
Why you crying?
Heard you late night
Throught my bedroom door
Now do you love me mama?
Why do they keep calling me nigger?
Get my wieght up, with my hate
and pay 'em back when I'm bigger
Still thugging in this jail cell
MIssing my block
Hearing brothers screaming all night
Wishing they'd stop
Proud to be black
But why do we act like
We don't love oursleves
Don't look around
busta (you sucka)
Check yourselves
know what if means to be black
whether a man or girl
we're still struggling in this
White man's world

[Chorus]

(we must fight)
Who knows what tommorrow brings
In this world where everyone lies
Where to go
No matter how far I find
To let you know
That You're not alone

So tell me why you changed
Choosing new direction
In a blink of an eye
My time away just made perfection
You think I'd die
Not gonna cry
Why should I care
Like we holding on to love
Thats no longer there
Can you please help me
God Bless me please
Keep my seeds healthy
Banging on my enemies Bleed
While my G's wealthy
Hoping they bury me
With ammunition, weed, and shells
Just in case they trip in heaven
Ain't no G's hell
Sister sorry for the pain
That I caused your heart
I know I'll change
If yah help me
But Don't fall apart
Rest In Peace
To Latasha, Little Yummy, and Kato
To much for this cold world to take
Ended up being fatal
Every women in America
Especially Black
Bear with me, can't you see
We're under attack
I never meant to cause drama
To my sister and Mama
Will we make it
To better times

In this white man worlds

[Chorus]

[Along with revolutionary talking]



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