Fanatic of the “R” Word: The Next “Progressive” Litmus Test
One of my favorite scenes from the movie Ocean’s 13 is when Don Cheadle, in disguise as stuntman Fender Rhodes, asks Al Pacino, as Mr. Banks, a simple question, “Do you know what Chuck Berry said every night before counting off 1–2–3–4?” To which he answers, “Pay me my money.” Following six centuries of theft, rape, murder, genocide and the destruction of original African bloodlines, it is still deemed unacceptable and/or untenable for Blacks in the African diaspora to make such a statement.
This despite the fact that we have witnessed the rightful payment of reparations to Jewish sisters and brothers who experienced genocide at the hands of Nazi Germany, compounded by the unwillingness of Western Europe to intervene immediately. In 1952, the Israeli Knesset agreed to receive reparation payments from West Germany, which led to a $845 Million payout to Israel in 1953, the equivalent of $7,698,492,075 in today’s dollars when adjusted for inflation. And in 1999, following the complaints of forced labor in concentration camps, German industries, including Deutsche Bank AG, Siemens, BMW, Volkswagen, and Opel, in concert with the German government, established the foundation, “Remembrance, Responsibility and the Future,” with assets of roughly $5 Billion to pay slave and forced laborers still alive at the time of the settlement, as well as their descendents. In aggregate, over 140,000 Jewish survivors from more than 25 countries received payments.
But if you think that resistance to the idea of reparations to the descendents of U.S. and Latin American Black and Brown slaves is limited to GOP bogeymen and bigots like Senator Ted Cruz and Representative Steve King, please allow me to apply some organic, kale-based sniffing salts and invite you to wake up. In January 2016, Brother/Comrade Ta-Nehisi Coates released his piece, “Why Precisely is Bernie Sanders Against Reparations?” Therein, Sanders replies, in part, “No, I don’t think so. First of all, its likelihood of getting through Congress is nil. Second of all, I think it would be very divisive.” This answer coming from the same brother who recently energized the so-called “progressive,” so-called “movement” by introducing Medicare for All legislation, which has become one of the primary rallying cries for the highly anticipated Women’s Convention in Detroit later this month.
With all love and respect due to Brother Bernie, there is more of a chance that the New York Knicks will be hoisting the NBA Championship trophy than this Congress passing, and Trump the Obamacare Impaler signing, legislation that makes Medicare for All the law of this land — and yet he still demonstrated political valor by introducing a bill to make this happen. So the question becomes, what is actually politically possible and who gets to decide what is? The answer to that question is simple, WE THE PEOPLE. Coates answers this question even better, and more diplomatically than I would have, stating in the same piece, “For those of us interested in how the left prioritizes its various radicalisms, Sanders’s answer is illuminating. The spectacle of a socialist candidate opposing reparations as “divisive” (there are few political labels more divisive in the minds of Americans than socialist) is only rivaled by the implausibility of Sanders posing as a pragmatist.”
There is more and more evidence that simply passing laws is not nearly enough to place African Americans and other People of Color at equal footing with their white counterparts who have enjoyed a global investment in white dominance for years and centuries. This week, the New York Times showcased this reality in a piece entitled, “End of Apartheid in South Africa? Not in Economic Terms.” As stated in the piece, “In the history of civil rights, South Africa lays claim to a momentous achievement — the demolition of apartheid and the construction of a democracy. But for black South Africans, who account for three-fourths of this nation of roughly 55 million people, political liberation has yet to translate into broad material gains.” The same is true in the United States as we have seen little evidence that passage of the Voting Rights Act (which was all but overturned by the Supreme Court in 2013) and the Civil Rights Act (which was essentially rendered impotent by the Supreme Court in 2001 via Alexander v. Sandoval) has done anything to fully address racial inequality — at this point, both laws can be referred to as half-step, incomplete justice that leave more to be desired than recent Guy Ritchie movies.
It’s surprising, disappointing and flummoxing that Sanders, who was heavily criticized, for seemingly believing that economic populism alone would in effect solve all social ills, including systemic racism and white supremacy, does not support the idea of reparations — one could go as far as to characterize his form of a trickle down paradigm as abject tartuffery with license. Equally troubling is the fact that many white, so-called “progressives” share his paradigm of the potential divisiveness that would come with pushing for reparations — see also “identity politics.” And with Medicare for All projected to cost as much as $2.8 Trillion per year, versus a one time payment, at the lowest projections, of $5.9 Trillion for reparations, or two years of M4All, you have to ask yourself, what gives? Apparently not the “progressive” movement who, for all the heralding of Jeremy Corbyn, have forgotten a key lesson of his Labour Party’s recent victories: We can decide whatever we want to be politically possible…if we’re willing to fight like hell to make it reality.
At the local level, where the so called “Left” has enjoyed the vast majority of its recent electoral successes, we have seen what happens when we define what is politically possible and then knock on doors and up our organizing. From Larry Krasner in Philadelphia who won the primary for District Attorney on a platform that includes ending mass-incarceration and the death penalty, to Mayor Elect Chokwe Antar Lumumba of Jackson, Mississippi who promises to make the city, “The most radical city on the planet,” to Birmingham, Alabama Mayor Elect Randall Woodfin who recently unseated a two-term incumbent on a populist platform that includes free tuition at local community colleges.
There seems to be a new wave of “progressive” litmus tests that range from what year we should become fossil fuel free (2050 or 2035), to Medicare for All, to how campaigns are financed. I would like to suggest yet one more, reparations. And this is a challenge specifically to white “progressives” who have become too comfortable, it seems, with the idea that addressing racial justice is demonstrated with yard signs, signs at, yet another, march/rally and facebook posts declaring “Black Lives Matter.” The upcoming Women’s Convention includes a slogan, “There is no gender justice without Medicare for All.” But I would argue there can be no gender justice without racial justice — indeed there can be no justice of any kind without racial justice. And, whatever single issue silo you relate most with, be it climate change, reproductive justice or economic justice, if racial justice does not form the foundation of your platform, you are not helping and you are a hypocrite. Until we realize this, until we have the temerity to declare now is the time for reparations, Black and Brown people will continue singing the first verse of Eric B and Rakim’s epochal hit, “Paid in Full”:
Thinkin’ of a master plan
‘Cuz ain’t nuthin’ but sweat inside my hand
So I dig into my pocket, all my money is spent
So I dig deeper but still comin’ up with lint
Last year, the United Nations Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, in a report, concluded that “compensation is necessary to combat the disadvantages caused by 245 years of legally allowing the sale of people based on the color of their skin.” This poses a direct challenge to Sanders and his majority white “movement,”: If healthcare is a right for all citizens of the wealthiest nation in the world, then why aren’t reparations the right of of citizens whose ancestors are largely responsible for the fact that it’s the wealthiest nation in the first place?
The venerable Franz Fanon teaches us, “But once we have taken note of the situation, once we have understood it, we consider the job done. How can we possibly not hear that voice again tumbling down the steps of History: ‘It’s no longer a question of knowing the world, but of transforming it.’ White “progressives” would do well to heed these words as the U.S. Black Liberation Movement precipitously eviscerates itself from bourgeois, accommodationist national Black groups in exchange for a more radial dogma and praxis. Because the groups that make up this wave of Black liberation understand that we can’t get to the nation and world we want by prioritizing which social ills to address first, second and so forth — we must address them all simultaneously.
The great Bobby Seales once said, “And we’re going to say to the whole damn government: Stick ’em up motherfucker, this is a hold-up! We’ve come for what’s ours.” In a time of seemingly rising progressivism and awareness of the perpetual injustices experienced by Black people, from state sanctioned murder to economic apartheid, Seales’ scenario should not be necessary. A simple analysis of history reveals that reparations have had positive impacts on the people who received them, so Black people are rightfully asking, “Why not us?” This of course, sadly, is a rhetorical question.
At the same time, there is an answer to this question — systemic, unchecked and unmitigated Afro-Pessimism, which has metastasized into a global, malignant tumor. It’s time for “progressives” to prove they are on the right side and not just the “white side.” Pushing for reparations will do much more to address historic and perpetual terrorism in the form of white supremacy than wearing a Black Lives Matter T-shirt or listening to Run The Jewels.
Put that in your progressive pipe and smoke it.
