If John Brown Were Alive, Could He Help in Ferguson?

 This year marks the 155th anniversary of John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. Although he isn’t the most revered figure in American history, he most certainly is honored as a revolutionary and a hero ranging from the likes of Malcolm X to Quentin Tarantino. A contemporary of Brown, famous author, poet, naturalist and abolitionist Henry David Thoreau, wrote an essay called “A Plea for Captain John Brown” and recited it publicly many times before the execution of Brown. He pleaded abolitionist supporters to remember him as a true hero, a martyr, and not as a fool for giving his life for what he believed.

If John Brown, abolitionist, insurrectionist, and self-proclaimed martyr, who called for the immediate end to chattel slavery in the United States were still alive, he most certainly would be of great help in Ferguson, Missouri. His enthusiasm, passion, and belief that no person should be subjugated to slavery or injustice is what people of color in the United States need from the white majority. Although what is happening in Ferguson isn’t slavery, John Brown’s call to action during his lifetime motivated members of the white community in the 1800’s willing to support direct action efforts of achieving equality and justice for the African-American community.

John Brown was born in 1800 in Torrington, Connecticut, where he grew up in a religious household. His father, Owen Brown, was not only an abolitionist by belief, but also an active participant in the Underground Railroad, a network of people, safe houses, and pathways that helped fugitive slaves escape to free states and Canada.  John Brown’s name has been etched into American history for his famous raid on Harper’s Ferry, Virginia (now part of West Virginia). On October 16, 1859, John Brown along with 20 other men attacked an arsenal in Harper’s Ferry, Virginia with the intent of stealing enough weapons in order to start a slave revolt. His plan failed and he was eventually captured by local soldiers and U.S. Marines led by Colonel Robert E. Lee. John Brown was tried, convicted of treason, and executed by hanging on December 2, 1859. His legacy lives on as a polemic character in American history whose martyrdom is honored by some members of the black community and condemned by others who described him as simply a terrorist.

So where does John Brown fit into contemporary American social issues? One can argue that a person like John Brown hasn’t existed in the white community since his death.

When white Americans says,  “there is a lack of leadership in the black community” they must recognize that there is also a lack of leadership in the white community regarding racial equality and the call to justice for all people living in the United States. John Brown would be a perfect example of a leader for the white community who could command them in their efforts to combat institutionalized racism and injustice.

The shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed African-American, has sparked a new wave of protests condemning not only the use of excessive police force, but also racial profiling, the criminal justice system, and the apparent apathy white Americans have for the plight of minorities in the United States. Michael Brown was shot by Darren Wilson, a white police officer on August 9, 2014. Although there is overwhelming evidence and witness testimonies conveying that Michael Brown had indeed tried to surrender to the police officer with a “hands up” motion, he was shot multiple times by Wilson. At an estimated distance of 35 feet from the police cruiser, and no visible weapon possessed by Brown, witnesses heard Wilson fire approximately 10 shots. Based on the evidence present, one can conclude that officer Darren Wilson did not act in self defense, and that Michael Brown was murdered in cold blood.

Two months after the shooting of Michael Brown, Darren Wilson is still on paid administrative leave and has not yet faced charges or arrest. The state and federal investigations are taking a long time to reach a conclusion. Protesters believe this is deliberate, concluding that the local government is hoping that protests in and around the Ferguson – St. Louis area of Missouri will die down. The fact that charges haven’t been formally brought up against Darren Wilson is just the tip of the iceberg for the African-American community as they can foresee the murder of Michael Brown going unpunished. Below the murky waters of American race relations there is a lot of racist backlash against African-Americans coming from the white community with respect to demonstrations and vociferous opposition to unpunished white-on-black murders.

The fundraising efforts of people who support Darren Wilson was one of the first things outside of the investigation that struck a nerve within the African-American community in Ferguson. There were wristbands that read “I am Darren Wilson” being worn by members of the Ferguson police (as if to say that they also supported extrajudicial killings of suspected criminals). There were online fundraisers that had raised more money, about $400,000 for Darren Wilson and his family than for the family of the Michael Brown.

The amount of money raised for Wilson is nothing compared to the vitriol and racial hatred perpetrated by television news pundits and online social commentators. Young black men, who dress, act, or look a certain way are victims of verbal abuse in the media when they are all referred to as “thugs” “gangsters” and “hoodlums”. There has been an additional racial polarization in the United States regarding white America’s negative perception of young black males, hip-hop culture and whether they are innocent/guilty in the eyes of the law. As if the election of Barack Obama, the first African-American president of the United States, wasn’t enough to cause deep-seated racism to surface, the killings of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, and John Crawford, by white men has opened up old wounds in the African-American community, reminding them of lynchings and unpunished murders, which lasted from since the end of the American Civil War up until the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960’s.

The American prison system is disproportionately filled with African-Americans compared to white Americans. It is estimated that “one in three black males will end up in prison”. Similarly, African-Americans, along with other people of color, make up approximately 30% of the U.S. population, but represent 70% of all arrests and 60% of the prison population.

Constant police surveillance, police brutality, harsher punishments and longer sentences for people of color is akin to modern-day slavery and social injustice. John Brown would condemn the American prison system and fight tooth and nail until all unlawfully imprisoned people of color were released. Missouri is one of the states continuing the tradition of disproportionately sending people of color to prison.

John Brown definitely could be of good help in Ferguson in order to show other white people what true support for justice looks like. After a few weeks of protests and demonstrations in Ferguson, Governor Jay Nixon deployed the Missouri National Guard. Protestors were met with excessive force in the form of tear gas, flash grenades, riot police and soldiers with high-grade military equipment. It basically looked like a war zone in Ferguson during the Governor’s “invasion.”

A parallel can be drawn between how white Americans feel about social injustices, whom they support, and how the media portrays key players during a controversial event. One example comes from the Cliven Bundy standoff. Bundy is a Nevada rancher who has been disputing with the United States Bureau of Land Management over unpaid grazing fees. With the threat of government repossession of Bundy’s cattle, protests ensued and armed militias, mostly right-wing white Americans, came out to support Clive Bundy in an armed standoff against federal agents. Although those who supported Bundy were armed and aggressive, the government agents didn’t fire cans of tear gas, flash grenades, nor did the Governor of Nevada send in the Nevada National Guard. Conservative news media personalities like Sean Hannity were quick to support Bundy and his anti-government crusade, but soon realized how racist Bundy was when he made comments like “are black people better off as slaves?”.

How would John Brown respond to Cliven Bundy’s remarks about black people being “better off as slaves”? He would have killed Clive Bundy and all who attest to racist ideology. John Brown would have joined the protestors in Ferguson, Missouri to support the African-American community against the local police, the state police, the National Guard, and federal agents. He would have mounted his own militia of fellow whites to help protect the African-American community from white aggression.

The importance of having white people fight alongside people of color in Ferguson is tantamount to how the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s was such a success. In the same way, John Brown represented the ideologue of vengeful justice through direct action since before the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln, well known for upholding his abolitionist beliefs and declaring war upon the Confederacy for breaking up the Union, later paid for his beliefs with his life. Later on, during the 1960’s, John F. Kennedy was killed for unknown reasons, but speculation has it that he was killed for trying to end the Vietnam War, and for trying to give civil rights to African-Americans.

Although John Brown’s personality and legacy as a Christian religious fanatic and insurrectionist can be seen as somewhat of an ethical dilemma for pacifists, atheists, and the United States government, it would be interesting to see how much could been achieved as far as civil rights in America if a person like John Brown were around. John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry on October 16, 1859 is said to have been one of the key factors in polarizing the country so much that it started the Civil War, which restored the Union and ended slavery. The positive aspects that came after the most devastating war in United States history is difficult to justify on both sides. In the spirit of the 155th anniversary of John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, there is Ferguson October, which is a call for action and civil disobedience pleading for justice not only for Michael Brown, but all American citizens victimized by the prison-industrial complex. There are some things that aren’t as simple as being labeled as liberal or conservative. Morality, liberty and justice have no political party, and therefore, more people should abandon party affiliation and fight injustices for all people regardless of race, class, or gender.

By: Opton A. Martin

Possible Solutions to Increase Efficiency of Voter Participation and Representation

¨When the State uses high technology, it´s usually working against the population in that personal information is forcefully collected, distorted, and made to intimidate us into thinking that we´re all criminals, without due process. When the general public uses high technology, it´s usually for entertainment, which blinds us into thinking everything is just great.¨

The power of numbers and statistics allows people to gather enough information in order to act on solving or causing an expanding or contracting situation involving a population. As digital and fiber optic technology reach speed of light velocity, people can be quick to react to stimuli in their surrounding areas. One example of a rapid development contrived by social media is the Arab Spring of 2010-present. Some people give credit to social media like twitter for helping connect people before, during and after protests, so that people could offer all types of services, aid, and exchange of ideas. This is one way social media wasn´t used only for entertainment.

As much as some people would like to ¨live off of the grid,¨ which is to say, ¨auto-sufficiency, out of the government´s eyes,¨ people all over the world still have to use state services to obtain simple things like a driver´s license, a passport, pay for taxes, go to a university, graduate high school, and enlist in the military. Registering to vote is probably the last thing on this list of things Americans would want to do involving the State, but would more voter participation procure a society that were more representative, and better?

Voter participation is at an all time low in most countries in the world, the United States in particular is dropping fast possibly due to Congress having record low approval ratings.  What I hope to offer are possible ideas that could advance voter registration and representation to ameliorate, or lessen, systematic racism, sexism, gentrification, xenophobia and all other forms of minority discrimination.

Voter participation is lower in U.S. compared to economic allies.

Above: data from 2011 from http://www.idea.int/vt/ & https://lifeinthecsu.wordpress.com/tag/civic-education/

Here is a list of things that could be changed in the United States to get people into the habit of participating if they want to.

1) Change the voting day to Sunday: The United States is possibly the only country in the world that votes on Tuesday. Most other countries, about 42 of them, that have higher voter participation than the U.S., vote on Sundays. It is the day of the week when more people are available. Although one would imagine that American politicians are against Sunday voting because it is ¨God´s Day,¨ recognize that there is no official religion in the United States, it is not a theocracy, and voting on Tuesday does not seem that efficient. Data has been collected suggesting that 17% of Americans use the excuse of  ¨conflict with schedule¨  for not voting. This could be due to the fact that ¨Election Day¨ is not a holiday – the majority of people still have to work – and work comes before voting for someone who is eventually going to disappoint you anyway.

2) High School graduation rates are up to about 75%,offer registration: I remember being able to register to vote before I graduated from High School. Students who were seventeen-years-old, were able to register to vote at school, if their 18th birthday fell before Election Day in November. Those who were interested registered because student clubs made it their priority to try to register teens. School should be able to offer this service to all students who want to.

3) 85% of Americans have a driver´s license, offer voter registration: Government agencies like the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) U.S. Mail (for passports) and the local city hall are government services that collect all of your personal data: residence, age, height, weight, prior convictions, marital status etc, they should offer to register people to vote. They don´t have to collect data about your political party, but it could easily be a point for voter registration.

4) Give Felons the right to vote back: What are the politicians afraid of? That all the felons in the United States will unanimously vote to legalize crime? Either change the Constitution or honor it. Under the 14th, 15th, & 19th Amendments to the Constitution, the state must not deny a citizen´s right to vote because of their color, race, sex(gender), or previous condition of servitude. Grant them the right to vote! People ignorant enough to regurgitate political talking points about what the Founding Fathers said, did, or wrote in the Constitution, fail to implement and support basic human rights. One would think that going to prison is punishment enough for a crime when in actuality, you become a target for entrapment, abuse, constant surveillance and disenfranchisement. There are about 6 million American felons who cannot vote, even after serving their time in prison.

5) Stop gerrymandering and implementing voter identification laws:  There isn´t much a person can do once an elected official decides during his or her term in office that prohibiting voter turnout by trickery or requiring special identification is best for their citizens. Racism plays a huge part in the repartitioning of local and state districts that are predominately black, latino, asian, white, native american etc, in order to consolidate their constituents. Knowing that the majority of Blacks vote Democrat and happen to live in isolated, concentrated parts of metropolitan areas, Republicans are ¨gerrymandering¨ or redrawing the map in order to exclude African-Americans from voting in a particular area. Voter ID laws are also directed towards people of lower income who might not be able to afford a car, or the price for a voter ID card.

Becoming Naturalized Citizen in the United States has some generally requirements including passing a an exam. Citizens born in the United States generally have no idea what the process of becoming a citizen is, also, an embarrassingly low number of them could not actually pass a citizenship exam or have much knowledge of civics. One of the questions on the Citizenship exam is: ¨What is the greatest or most important right granted to U.S. citizens?¨ The answer: the right to vote. If voting is the most important right, why has it been taken away from so many people? Why is it so hard to get those rights back? It just goes to show that ¨rights¨ can be less important than privileges if they can be taken away for more time than you spend in prison. There are currently 6 million Americans who have had their right to vote rebuked.

(list of disenfranchised citizens:http://felonvoting.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000287)

Becoming an actual candidate in an election is a whole other story. U.S. voters cling firmly to red and blue – Republican and Democrat. The Reds and the Blues team up when a possible third party or fringe group intends to wedge their way into their voting block. The current Tea Party, Libertarian Party and Independents are unfortunately satellite parties of Red and Blue in that they use the mainstream parties as their surrogates in order to carry their ideas to the people. Although Red and Blue might be ¨too big to fail,¨ it also helps to force these candidates to discuss tough issues by introducing a third, fourth, fifth, sixth party – might as well form a parliament – to the political scene to represent the 317,000,000 American citizens.

By: Opton A. Martin

Old World Guns v. New World Guns

“Execution and defamation is a New World Order tactic for censorship.”

“The New World Order seeks to destroy traditions and monuments, some hundreds or thousands of years old. It’s an international club of powerful men who have more in common as military, political and economic partners than their own countrymen. They exterminate and slander those in their way, those who they hope will be forgotten.”

Only sometimes is death preventable.  Sometimes knowingly, mostly unknowingly, we engineer dangerous societies with flawed socio-structural elements that are designed to push certain groups of disenfranchised people to the periphery. The lower class are limited by economic, educational, and representational boundaries, which are supported by the suburban middle class who vote for these policies.  Those living at the periphery fight against one another because they compete for the little resources that have been left for them. The the “center” is off limits, because it is being guarded – this is where legislative, political and economic power control the elements of the state – the semi-failed state.

Gun violence in the Americas (with the exception of Canada) from the United States to the tip of Argentina and Chile is very different than gun violence in Africa, Europe, Asia, and Oceania. It differs in the motives behind how gun violence is distributed and executed and the prevalence of such. The similarities between Old World Guns and New World Guns is that it all comes down to who controls the territory, space, land, turf, region, zone, state, country, caliphate, community, block, city, roadways, access, building complex, county, town, island, trade route, port – and above all natural resources (money). Although robberies could account for much of the world’s use of firearms illegally, the Americas have the problems of heavy drug trafficking and the drug war which makes up part of regular, day to day gun violence.

The flow of drugs through the Americas normally flows South-North and ends up into the hands of North Americans and Europeans to be consumed.  The citizens of the United States of America consume more illegal drugs than any other country in the world. Brazil, Columbia, Venezuela, Mexico and everywhere in between has been plagued with intense violence from gangs who amass their empires and personal protection from the money generated by the drug trade, extortion and bribery of police forces. The illegal gun trade is just as much a part of the illegal drug trade in that one is needed to protect the other – they go hand and hand. Central American and Caribbean countries suffer a great deal from the drug trade because of their geography. It is a narrow passageway for cartels coming up form the South American mainland. At about 82 homicides per 100,000 residents, Honduras has the highest murder rate of any country in the world. Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador are also stretched thin by narco-trafficking and violence, which has caused a humanitarian crisis that is the irregular immigration of children to the United States.

The current war-like levels of violence and armed conflicts in Central America was propagated from the foreign policy campaigns under Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush who supported the Contras (anti-leftist commandos), in covert operations and coup d’etats against left-wing ideologies including Marxist-Leninists, Communists, or any political fraction in support of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro’s revolution. Reagan authorized the CIA to help fund and train the Contras to fight against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. And who can forget the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989 to dispose of Manuel Noriega, former CIA employee, and narco-trafficking military dictator. The U.S. government effectively helped to establish Latin American drug cartels with out-of-work Contras  who before fought against leftists. The Iran-Contra Affair of the 1980s was real, not a fabricated conspiracy, which highlights how little we know about how deep these operations run in Latin America.

The drug war continues in mysterious ways as the U.S. government helps to create some of the chaos, especially with their “Fast and Furious” operation of 2006-2011 in which the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) sold weapons to those they believed were tied to Mexican drug cartels (in an attempt to “track” them).  Eventually those same weapons began appearing at brutal crime scenes in Mexico, and the Mexican government was perplexed as they were not informed of these American operations.

As American police crack down,  drug prices go up, the cartels make more money, they buy more guns, they become more violent, then they control more territory. Drug cartels continue to look for newer routes for transport of guns and drugs, which at times causes the violence to “bottleneck” in small countries like Honduras, El Salvador, and Jamaica, which have the highest rates of homicides (per 100,000 people) by guns in the world. Jamaica has become especially violent since cocaine and other drug shipments have diverted to travel through the Caribbean via Jamaica. If drugs were legalized or at least partially legalized, drug cartels would have less demand ergo less money to fund their armed conflicts. Or Americans and European could stop doing drugs all together, which will never ever happen.

In Europe and Asia gun violence is far less prevalent than in the Americas. Legislation in these geographic areas generally only permit gun purchases for hunters and law enforcement officers. In Spain for example, if you want to buy a shotgun, you have to get a hunting permit, hand guns are rigidly regulated. In the United States, buying a gun doesn’t require much of anything besides money. The United States Constitution states that bearing arms and forming a militia is part of independence and homeland security, therefore, gun-ownership is a cultural thing in the United States. It is a direct result as to why there are about 88 guns per 100 Americans, making the United States the most gun-packing nation on Earth. It might also shed light on why cities like Chicago boast 500 homicides a year, the majority of them being gun-related. High gun related homicide rates in U.S. cities over 100,000 people are common – they shouldn’t be.

Some countries in Europe have relatively high gun ownership rates, but don’t suffer the amount of gun violence present in the Americas. A European capital like Madrid, Spain, which has a population similar to Chicago (including metropolitan zones) suffers from only about 30 homicides a year, with only a fraction of them being gun related. Oceania, which includes Australia, New Zealand and island nations in Pacific, have similar gun related homicides to Northern Europe.

Only Switzerland and Finland come almost close to the United States in gun possession at about 47 guns per 100 Swiss and Finns in their respective countries. Gun violence is rare in Europe even among police:

” According to Germany’s Der Spiegel, German police shot only 85 bullets in all of 2011, a stark reminder that not every country is as gun-crazy as the U.S. of A. As Boing Boing translates, most of those shots weren’t even aimed anyone: “49 warning shots, 36 shots on suspects. 15 persons were injured, 6 were killed.” – thewire.com

In the United States on the other hand, it is not uncommon to hear a story about a single police officer who shoots a person 90 times.

Crime and police protection with the theme of race and ethnicity are part of what make America an unsafe place for minorities as they are treated differently than European Americans. In 2002, police officers in the United States killed about 313 African-American men. Gun violence and police execution of a minority group has been calculated as “Every 28 hours a Black man is killed by the police in America.” Gun violence comes from those who have completely lost their sense of humanity – it’s the mechanization of murder.

In Asia, China and Japan have effectively gotten rid of gun violence. Japan has almost 1/2 of the U.S. population (128,000,000 est. 2010) crammed into an area equivalent to California, yet might have about ~2 gun-related homicides per year.  Buying a gun in Japan is an enduring process, there are strict limitations on the type, there are psychological and metal exams, a course must be taken, and it is subject to government inspections. In China, private possession of firearms is practically forbidden for citizens. The lack of guns and lack of gun related violence are clearly related, but the subject is more complex in countries less industrialized.

One of the main things that separate gun violence in the United States to gun violence in Europe and Asia is culture. Americans feel the need to have a gun because it was instrumental in carving out the North American continent in a Wild Wild West fashion, whereas Europe and Asia have older nation-states that were conquered by marriages, diplomacy, trade routing, epic battles with swords, cannons and mammoths crossing the Swiss Alps; in Europe and Asia, they have other ways of having fun besides shooting at things in their back yards, or shooting at people in their front yards.

The continent of Africa and the Middle Eastern region have some gun violence, but these current “Old World” conflicts are New World Order endeavors. Ancient African and Middle Eastern kingdoms were cut out centuries ago the same way kingdoms were formed in Asia, India, and South America until they were abruptly invaded, and geographically redrawn by Europeans in the 18th,19th, and 20th centuries. Current places like India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Algeria, Sudan, Egypt, and Israel were all cut up by the British and the French who ignored cultural, linguistic and ethnic elements when they crammed different people into a states.

Conflict zones like  Syria, Libya, Sudan, Mali, Israel, Yemen, Pakistan and more, require guns and armaments to be sent from Western nations (i.e. North America, Europe and Russia). As these zones become flooded with more weaponry, the violence continues as new fractions seek to redraw the lines that were left there by the Europeans in the first place. It is a revolving door of violence, but the Westerns nations profit the most so long as the guns keep firing.

Though it might seem simple enough as to just restrict firearm availability to reduce firearm homicides, it might not be that simple. If people want to kill each other, they will do it. In South Africa, where the homicide rate is higher than in the United States, firearm homicides account for only 45%, while in the United States the rates is about 67%.  There are deep-seated social problems that lead to friction between groups of people. The availability of firearms only exacerbates social tension of lack of resources. What is certain is that in the Americas, where many countries are at “peace” , they have just as many or more casualties, as current war zones. These problems must be addresses as to not coerce the governments of the Americas to deploy  futuristic, dystopic, and Orwellian permanent military police who will monitor the streets with tanks, machine guns and stun grenades. The police states pre World War II of the 20th century were bad, the police states of the 21st century will be worse.

by Opton A. Martin

Are Reparations Still Relevant? Who Deserves it and When is It Acceptable?

 The controversial topic that debates whether or not monetary reparations are justifiable for people of African descent in the 21st Century.

It might be too late for some reparations, but not soon enough for others.

The question of whether or not European and American governments should give reparations for slavery to people of African descent in the form of money or land comes from a few different sources: African-Americans (in all of the Americas); Haiti, for declaring their independence in 1804; and the people of the continent of Africa, for the European Scramble for Africa.

Every region of the world has experienced epic tragedies that involved the massive loss of human life in the most inhumane ways possible. In order to recuperate from past injustices of human culture, sovereign nations have been trying to readjust their societies in order to prevent dissent, violence and mass-murder, but when profits are to be made from chaos, consolidation of power, and human exploitation, morality takes a dive, and unethical laws are written in order to protect the ruling class from future prosecution.

Using the logic of those in favor of reparations, there are a myriad of historical events in which those who had suffered, or their descendents, should also be given compensation for their suffering: The Nigerian Civil War, the Colonization of the Americas, Rwandan Genocide, Genocides in Armenia, Cambodia, and Bosnia are just a few examples of people being singled-out because of their religion or race, and subjected to imprisonment, forced labor and death.

Reparation activists worldwide point to the fact that other peoples have been offered reparations by governments for forced labor, genocide, confiscation of lands, and for losing an armed conflict (war reparations). West Germany paid $35 billion to Israel between 1953 and 1992 in an attempt to pay for subjecting the Jewish communities to forced labor, “apologize” for the rise of Nazi Germany, and for how they were brutally and systematically round up, forced into concentration camps, tortured, and killed. They were stripped of all their assets, wealth, and above all, were subject to genocide as part of a fascist, anti-Semitic ideology.

African-American reparation activists point to other examples of reparations like the Native-American community and their inclusion in the U.S. Government’s policy of establishing Indian Reservations and paying out millions of dollars to compensate for 19th Century Manifest Destiny land grabs.

Reparations for people of African-American descent: Should it be a reality? The answer is, it should have been, but now it is too late. Those who had lived through slavery, or at least their children, were going to be honored a small compensation for their labor in the form of property ownership, one of the pillars of capitalism, but the U.S. Government at the time had a history of breaking promises not only to Native-Americans, but African-Americans as well. Considering that the British and U.S. Governments had broken over 500 treaties with Native-Americans over profitable and valuable land, African-Americans were also denied what was promised, especially those promises that were made after the American Civil War during what historians refer to as the Reconstruction Era.

40 acres and a mule was an agreement met between African-American ministers, abolitionists and Union General William T. Sherman, who promised to some 40,000 freedmen land and seafront property, which was confiscated from the Confederates. Sherman’s Special Field Order No. 15, which occurred shortly after the American Civil War, was a way to punish the South for their attempts at succession, attacking the Union, and to break the link holding the finances between southern slavery and the Confederacy (not because of 250 years of chattel slavery). The 400,000- acre strip of land from South Carolina to Florida could have changed almost everything about modern American society and race relations in terms of education, culture, equality, and wealth in the African-American community.

The reason why so many people, black and white, are against reparations is that there is a cultural and temporal disconnect with previous generations in that Americans do not want to be held accountable, and are generally ashamed for their ancestors’ actions. Most importantly, in terms of the U.S. economy, the methodology of calculating and paying out 250 years worth of labor to descendents of Africans and African-Americans is culturally complex in that people will always contend whether or not some people of African descent deserve remuneration or not.

Whether or not reparations should be paid out, it will never happen because there are conflicts between American culture and economics. The majority of Americans are against reparations. The idea of giving a minority group of people ¨free money¨ because of a past injustice might not have the effect one would think from a cultural point of view.

Reparations for the people of Haiti: Should it be a reality? The answer is yes. The Haitian Revolution that resulted in the declaration of independence from France in 1804 came with extreme consequences. France demanded that Haiti pay 90 million gold francs for the loss of slaves and the French side of the island Hispaniola, which was called St. Dominique at the time, or risk another French invasion. From 1825 to 1947 Haiti continued to pay its “declaration of independence debt” to France, which was estimated to be more than $20 billion. Decades of economic warfare by the international community; the coup d’ état, which was suspected to be supported by the U.S., France, and allies; and the 2010 earthquake, which killed 100,000 civilians or more, were all recent events that have further crippled the sovereign nation of Haiti. At the very least, Haiti’s external debt was cancelled amidst the devastating earthquake, and $9 billion was giving in relief efforts, but it still falls short of the $20 billion that was extorted from Haiti post-independence.

Reparations for the people of Africa: Should it be a reality? The answer is yes, but not in the form of a simple payout. Reparations will come only in the form of true socioeconomic development. But first, bribery, corruption, and theft of capital must be identified, exposed, and dealt with in a way that prevents net wealth from leaving the continent.

An obvious, but not popular solution to corruption and embezzlement is transparency. Being able to track the flow of money between companies, governments, and banks will better inform the public of how their labor is paid, taxed and redistributed. To prevent government leaders from funneling money back to the U.S. or Europe, limiting the amount of money one can have in foreign bank accounts could help. However corrupt dictators may seem to the Western world, there are always enablers (Westerners) who permit this collusion of foreign aid by giving Africa money with one hand, while robbing with the other.

During the past few decades, government-to-government aid has not worked at all for economic development on the continent. Although the continent receives about $50 billion in aid each year, it is estimated that $1 trillion is stolen each year.  Most of that money ends up right back in Europe, the United States, and island tax havens. One of the best ways for economic development is to stop foreign aid as Zambian-born economist Dambisa Moyo describes in her critique of decades of failed policy.

“A constant stream of “free” money is a perfect way to keep an inefficient or simply bad government in power. As aid flows in, there is nothing more for the government to do — it doesn’t need to raise taxes, and as long as it pays the army, it doesn’t have to take account of its disgruntled citizens. No matter that its citizens are disenfranchised (as with no taxation there can be no representation). All the government really needs to do is to court and cater to its foreign donors to stay in power.”

Economic development cannot occur if local markets are flooded with free goods that could be produced locally. Agriculture and manufacturing take a big hit when products are routinely sent to Africa. One might think that it is generous to do so, but it effectively puts local companies out of business. Moyo offers another simple example of how foreign aid is having a reverse effect.

“A Western government-inspired program generously supplies the affected region with 100,000 free mosquito nets. This promptly puts the mosquito net manufacturer out of business, and now his 10 employees can no longer support their 150 dependents. In a couple of years, most of the donated nets will be torn and useless, but now there is no mosquito net maker to go to. They’ll have to get more aid. And African governments once again get to abdicate their responsibilities.”

In order to properly gird these concepts into the theme of reparations I must say that foreign aid to Africa does not count as reparations. The scramble for Africa by European powers in the 19th and 20th centuries absorbed all but two (Ethiopia and Liberia) sovereign states into their empires, and the amount of wealth that was stolen by declaration of war against indigenous people continues to this day with the extraction of minerals and precious metals and the round-the-clock coup d’états that occur with the help of Western interests. The exigency in which raw materials are extracted from the continent to be sent to manufacturing plants in the European Union, China, U.S.A. and Russia, leave very little to be circulated within the continent – the flow of raw materials needs to be diverted inward.

The best kind of reparation high-income nations can give to Africa is to offer something tangible like renewable energy in the form of wind turbines and solar panels to help with their energy crisis. Combining the aforementioned with proper water irrigation systems and desalinization plants are also other true forms of economic development in which all citizens could eventually build upon and stabilize their societies. Only then will much of the conflict areas soon turn into places with cultural standards in which subsisting on foreign aid and pity will be a thing of the past.

 

By Opton A. Martin