BRADBERRY: Reaping what we sow? Not yet

Way back in 1999, the U.S. Department of Agriculture finally acknowledged it had systematically discriminated against black farmers by deliberately delaying or denying loans necessary to most farmers to get through the rough business of planting and then hopefully harvesting a good crop, but the government still has not paid up!

Without the money to plant in the first place, there is no hope of harvesting much of anything; that’s just the way it is in that tough business for everybody — black, white or whatever.

In a settlement aimed at remedying the discriminatory practice, nearly 15,000 black farmers were awarded approximately $50,000 each as the result of the class action lawsuit.

Because word did not get around to thousands of others similarly situated, Congress extended the deadline to give the other 70,000 claimants time to navigate the maze of paperwork necessary to get through the process, but thousands of them have yet to be paid, so a delegation went to Washington this week to try to convince Congress to come up with the money.

As the Courier-Journal, a Louisville, Kentucky- Southern Indiana newspaper put it in an editorial a few days ago, “Shame on the Democratic-controlled Congress that cut the $1.5 billion that President Obama included in his first budget for the black farmers. The president included a similar amount in his budget for the coming fiscal year.

It isn’t a case of whether discrimination has occurred. It did. Nor is this a case of the government not agreeing to pay. It has, which is why the black farmers are rallying in the capital this week.

Without leaving the relative comfort of home, I sat with Randall Robinson in the grandiose rotunda of the nation’s Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., on March 12, 2002.

Such was the magic of reading his book, “The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks,” (Dutton, 2000, 262 pages), a poignant argument for reparations, payment to the American descendants of African slaves who were forced into labor here for nearly 250 years.

Rather than demand cash payment as compensation for the evils of slavery, a concept that meets with more resistance today than the idea of freeing the slaves did in the cotton-growing South before the Civil War, Robinson was calling for the creation of a national trust, funded for “at least two successive K-through-college educational generations throughout the United States with residential facilities for those black children who are found to be at risk in unhealthy family and neighborhood environments.”

He also suggested a study funded by the trust to determine which American and foreign companies, individuals, institutions and others were unjustly enriched by the uncompensated labor of slaves or by the racial discrimination that succeeded slavery.

Robinson, perhaps the most powerful single American influence in the dismantling of South African apartheid and the restoration of democracy in Haiti, is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the former president of Trans Africa Forum, a black think tank emigrated to St. Kitts and authored “Quitting America: The Departure of a Black Man from his Native Land.” He also penned “An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to Kidnapping of a President” (Perseus Books Group, 2007).

At the same time, Congressman John Conyers, D-Detroit, the leading congressional advocate for reparations, has repeatedly introduced a bill “to acknowledge the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery,” but has not been able to get the bill out of committee. But he has not given up hope of a political solution similar to the one which resulted in a Congressional waiver of the statute of limitations defense, paving the way for the black farmers’ settlement a few years ago.

Robinson’s reparations vision does not aim to punish anyone, rather it seeks equitable restitution. He and other historians estimate that 8 to 10 million black Africans died on the Middle Passage. Add to that the millions who survived the journey and lived long enough to work themselves to death on the plantations.

Touring our nation’s capital, he pointed out the intricate architectural and engineering genius that lay behind the grand symbols of America’s founding principles that proudly decorate Washington, D.C.; he reminded me who actually built the huge monuments.

In this awesome place, Robinson told me in graphic detail how slaves worked with their bare hands, using all the strength they had to lift the massive marble slates into place, tearing their flesh with the ropes and pulleys.

Carrying the mortar and bricks on their backs, breathing the dust into their lungs; they were slowly killing themselves, sapping their very lives to build the great shrines to democracy, all for the paltry sum of $5 per month, which was paid not to them but to their owners.

None of the massive monuments they helped construct acknowledge the role that they, the African slaves, played in the development of the nation or the construction of our capital. It is as though we never existed, as if the horrible institution of slavery never really happened.

I was reminded of Bill Feder’s book, “Evolution of an Ethnic Neighborhood that Became United in Diversity: The East Side, Niagara Falls, New York 1880-1930,” and its depiction of the immigrants who came to Niagara Falls to help build the underground tunnels designed to carry water to spin the massive turbines to power America.

Why are there no visible monuments in recognition of their labor? But for his revelations, the result of his industrious research, they and their amazing contributions to the production of electricity for the masses might well have been forgotten forever.

Robinson dwelt lavishly on the apparently deliberate and incredibly successful denial of nearly 250 years of uncompensated forced labor and argued it is time to recognize everyone’s contributions:

“Once and for all, America must face its past, open itself to a fair telling of all its peoples’ histories, and accept full responsibility for the hardships it has occasioned for so many. It must come to grips with the increasingly indisputable reality that this is not a white nation. Therefore, it must dramatically reconfigure its symbolized picture of itself to itself. Its national parks, museums, monuments, statues, artworks must be recast in a way to include all Americans -- Native Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, African-Americans, as well as European Americans. White people do not own the idea of America, and should they continue to deny others a place in the idea’s iconograph, those others, who fifty years from now will form the majority of America’s citizens, will be inspired to punish them for it.”

Are reparations necessary? We will no doubt continue to argue this point until the cows come home, but as the Courier-Journal editorial concludes, “Justice long delayed is ultimately justice denied, and that’s unfair to black farmers, whose numbers continue to dwindle, whose average age today is 60, and who have suffered and patient for so very long.”

Congress, Pay up!

Contact Bill Bradberry at bill.bradberry@yahoo.com.

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