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When exactly did America pay Black people back? [1]
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Date: 2022-11-06
First of all, have I ever met any black people who have this attitude? People who feel that after what America has done to Black people — why should we follow America’s rules?
Yes.
I have met people who feel that way. I’ve met people who feel that America has screwed over Black people, so therefore Black people should be screwing over America back.
The problem is with their method of implementing that idea. Frankly, and honestly, the few people who feel that way generally don’t actually have a way to “Screw America Back” that they can implement. Mostly they end up victimizing other black people, rather than getting back at “Whitey” all that much.
Proportionally Black people are massively over-represented in murder and robbery. Usually, the victims of that murder and robbery are black people.
Similarly, the clearance rate — how often a suspect is identified — for black murders can average as low as 5%-12% while the clearance rate for other murders is about 63%. In some predominantly black neighborhoods you can have situations where everyone has a family member who has been murdered and most of those murders — more than 80% — have not been solved by the police. In that situation, sometimes, people tend to take their own self-protection and the law into their own hands. I’ve seen this first-hand in South Central LA. Now you go from random or targeted murders to revenge killings, and self-defense killings. And then someone tries to get payback for that — and they try to get payback for that too. It’s a Right-wing NRA nightmare of people using guns to “get even” from a previous crime that was never solved, and then that was a payback killing for another killing that was never solved. And so on and so forth, a self-perpetuating cycle that never ends. This explains, at least partially, why the black murder and robbery rates are sadly, disproportionately high — even though that is not true for crime in general.
But how is that getting back at “the man?”
Even when it comes to large public protests and riots — have those been directed against The Man?
No, usually the neighborhoods that have suffered the most damage from giant public protests and riots — have been black neighborhoods. Rather than being a method to “get even” in my experience most of this sentiment has resulted in a self-destruct tantrum that has not made any real difference on the issue of regaining any of what Black people have lost over the last 3 centuries.
And we’ve lost a lot.
First, we need to examine the wrongness of America’s centuries of Racial Terrorism because even from the beginning there were many people who always knew America’s racial policies were wrong, and they said so.
Before the revolution, James Otis wrote “The Colonists are by law of nature freeborn as indeed all men are white or black.”
Benjamin Rush who signed the Declaration of Independence said: “To be deluded into thinking one race is inferior to another is so foreign to the human mind that the moral faculties are well as those of the understanding, are debased and rendered torpid by it.”
Governor Morris, whose pen was used to write the Constitution said: “Slavery would bring the curse of heaven upon us.”
Thomas Paine called slavery “Monstrous” and slavers “Desperate Wretches.”
Ben Franklin’s friend Ben Lay called slavers the “spawn of Satan.”
There were Founding Americans who knew racial chattel slavery was wrong. They petitioned against it, but as we all know — their petitions were unheaded. Despite their protestations, Slavery persisted through the creation of our founding document. Within that document were multiple accommodations for slavery. There was of course the 3/5ths clause, but more importantly, there was the Fugitive Slave Clause.
No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.
This clause gave the responsibility for recovering escaped slaves — to the non-slave states. It was their responsibility to track them down, to capture them and to return them to their original state.
Needless to say, this was a bit of an issue for those states and Americans who didn’t believe in slavery in the first place. In response to this reluctance, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Acts in 1850.
The Fugitive Slave Acts were a pair of federal laws that allowed for the capture and return of runaway enslaved people within the territory of the United States. Enacted by Congress in 1793, the first Fugitive Slave Act authorized local governments to seize and return escapees to their owners and imposed penalties on anyone who aided in their flight. Widespread resistance to the 1793 law led to the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which added more provisions regarding runaways and levied even harsher punishments for interfering in their capture. The Fugitive Slave Acts were among the most controversial laws of the early 19th century. [...] Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 Following increased pressure from Southern politicians, Congress passed a revised Fugitive Slave Act in 1850. Part of Henry Clay’s famed Compromise of 1850—a group of bills that helped quiet early calls for Southern secession—this new law forcibly compelled citizens to assist in the capture of runaways. It also denied enslaved people the right to a jury trial and increased the penalty for interfering with the rendition process to $1,000 and six months in jail. In order to ensure the statute was enforced, the 1850 law also placed control of individual cases in the hands of federal commissioners. These agents were paid more for returning a suspected runaway than for freeing them, leading many to argue the law was biased in favor of Southern slaveholders. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was met with even more impassioned criticism and resistance than the earlier measure. States like Vermont and Wisconsin passed new measures intended to bypass and even nullify the law, and abolitionists redoubled their efforts to assist runaways.
Ultimately, it was this resistance to the Fugitive Slave Clause and Act which the Southern States used as an excuse, as well as the election of Abraham Lincoln and their perception that the north wanted to abolish slavery, that led to their secession from the Nation and the Civil War.
The Articles of Secession from Georgia states the following.
A similar provision of the Constitution requires them to surrender fugitives from labor. This provision and the one last referred to were our main inducements for confederating with the Northern States. Without them it is historically true that we would have rejected the Constitution. In the fourth year of the Republic Congress passed a law to give full vigor and efficiency to this important provision. This act depended to a considerable degree upon the local magistrates in the several States for its efficiency. The non-slave-holding States generally repealed all laws intended to aid the execution of that act, and imposed penalties upon those citizens whose loyalty to the Constitution and their oaths might induce them to discharge their duty. Congress then passed the act of 1850, providing for the complete execution of this duty by Federal officers. This law, which their own bad faith rendered absolutely indispensible for the protection of constitutional rights, was instantly met with ferocious revilings and all conceivable modes of hostility.
The Articles for Mississippi state:
It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union, and has utterly broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain.
The Articles from South Carolina state:
The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due." This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River. The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.
The pact made in the original U.S. Constitution was a deal with the devil. It contained a poison pill that the Northern States could not, and did not stomach, and yet the Southern States demanded it. This clause and law made the entire United States into slave territory. This is why the vaunted Underground Railroad had to lead all the way to Canada. It made the entire nation unsafe for African Citizens, because the claims by the South that they only wanted to retain control of people who were already slaves, the clause and act were actually used to kidnap free African citizens and render them illegally into slavery against the law.
This is exactly what happened to Simon Northup, the author and protagonist of “12 Years a Slave” who was in fact a freeman when he was kidnapped and taken forcibly into slavery.
In 1841, African American Solomon Northup, a free man, is kidnapped and forced into slavery under the name 'Platt' for 12 years. He faces the hardships of being a slave under the hands of a few different slave owners. Through faith, will power, and courage Northup must survive and endure those 12 years as a slave.
Further his issue was the basis for the Dred Scot case. Scot a former slave who had been released by his owner, was recaptured and arrested after that owner passed and his relatives required his re-enslavement. In the end, the SCOTUS led by Southern Racist Judge Taney determined that based on the 3/5th clause and the Fugitive Slave Clause that “No African had the rights of citizenship in the United States”
Taney became best known for writing the final majority opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford, which said that all people of African descent, free or enslaved, were not United States citizens and therefore had no right to sue in federal court. In addition, he wrote that the Fifth Amendment protected slave owner rights because enslaved workers were their legal property.
After the Civil War and the passing of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments which freed the slaves (except for the duly convicted), reversed Judge Taney’s Dred Scot decision by granting citizenship to all persons born on American soil and also granting the right to vote to African and formerly enslaved persons… there came the Black Codes and the KKK which snatched that freedom away and kept Black people in terrorist near-slave conditions for the next hundred years.
Black Codes restricted black people's right to own property, conduct business, buy and lease land, and move freely through public spaces. A central element of the Black Codes were vagrancy laws. States criminalized men who were out of work, or who were not working at a job whites recognized.
After this, we had 100 years of segregation, terrorism, murder by lynching, sundown towns, Jim Crow, voter suppression, job discrimination, loan discrimination, enforced educational poverty, property restrictions and red-lining. We had the Fire-Bombing of Black Wall Street. We had the Tuskeegee Experiment. We had the Race Riots of Chicago.
Finally, in the 1960’s we gained the CIvil Rights Act and Voting Rights act to supposedly preserve and implement the rights we had already allegedly won after the Civil War almost a century previously.
But did that end things?
Did discrimination end? Did Jim Crow and Voting Suppression End? Did redlining end? Did blocking loans, housing, jobs and education opportunities end? Did vicious racial killings and terrorism end?
Fuck no.
In 2011, we still had the Pigford case.
On April 14, 1999, Judge Paul L. Friedman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia approved a settlement agreement and consent decree in Pigford v. Glickman, a class action discrimination suit between the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and black farmers. The suit claimed that the agency had discriminated against black farmers on the basis of race and failed to investigate or properly respond to complaints from 1983 to 1997. The deadline for submitting a claim as a class member was September 12, 2000. Cumulative data show that as of December 31, 2011, 15,645 (69%) of the 22,721 eligible class members had final adjudications approved under the Track A process, and 104 (62%) prevailed in the Track B process for a total cost of approximately $1.06 billion in cash relief, tax payments, and debt relief. [...] On February 18, 2010, Attorney General Holder and Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack announced a $1.25 billion settlement of these Pigford II claims. However, because only $100 million was made available in the 2008 farm bill, the Pigford II settlement was contingent upon congressional approval of an additional $1.15 billion in funding. After a series of failed attempts to appropriate funds for the settlement agreement, the Senate passed the Claims Resolution Act of 2010 (H.R. 4783) to provide the $1.15 billion appropriation by unanimous consent on November 19, 2010. The Senate bill was then passed by the House on November 30 and signed by the President on December 8 (P.L. 111-291).
In 2012 Wells Fargo was sued for discrimination against Black and Brown clients.
A big legal settlement was announced today: Wells Fargo will pay $175 million after it was discovered that outside brokers selling the company's mortgages were discriminating against black and Hispanic borrowers between 2004 and 2009. A government probe found 34,000 cases in which the bank charged black and Hispanic customers higher fees and rates than white customers with similar credit profiles. The case was brought by the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, who earned another victory in court. In December, Bank of America paid $335 million over accusations of discrimination by its Countrywide Financial unit, and in May, SunTrust Mortgage agreed to pay $21 million for the same thing. If approved by the court, this settlement will be the second largest fair lending suit in history.
In 2013 the Voting Rights act was gutted by Republican states and the Right-Wing SCOTUS.
..In a case called Shelby county v Holder. In a 5-4 vote, the court struck down a formula at the heart of the Voting Rights Act, the landmark 1965 law that required certain states and localities with a history of discrimination against minority voters to get changes cleared by the federal government before they went into effect. It’s hard to overstate the significance of this decision. The power of the Voting Rights Act was in the design that the supreme court gutted – discriminatory voting policies could be blocked before they harmed voters. The law placed the burden of proof on government officials to prove why the changes they were seeking were not discriminatory. Now, voters who are discriminated against now bear the burden of proving they are disenfranchised. Immediately after the decision, Republican lawmakers in Texas and North Carolina – two states previously covered by the law – moved to enact new voter ID laws and other restrictions. A federal court would later strike down the North Carolina law, writing it was designed to target African Americans “with almost surgical precision”.
In 2022 we had a $70 Million verdict against a Texas company for job discrimination.
Last month, a jury in Texas delivered a stunning $70 million verdict in favor of 10 employees who worked for Glow Networks. Nine of the ten plaintiffs were Black employees. The case, Yarbrough, et al. v. Glow Networks, Inc., is a potent reminder about the continuing effects of employment discrimination as well as the legal remedies that exist to combat unequal treatment and retaliation at work. [...] The employees filed their lawsuit against Glow Networks in a Texas federal court in December 2019 (Civil No. 4:19-cv-00905, E.D. Tex. 2019). According to their complaint, numerous Black employees faced continuing race discrimination at work, including promotion denials, unequal pay, and a hostile work environment.
We’ve had a massive racial discrimination case at the Tesla plant in California.
Tesla Inc. can’t escape a lawsuit by California’s civil rights regulator accusing the electric-vehicle maker of fostering racial discrimination and harassment at its San Francisco Bay Area factory. A state court judge on Tuesday tentatively denied the company’s request to throw out the complaint by California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing, which described the Fremont plant as a “racially segregated workplace.” The agency said it saw complaints from hundreds of Black workers and uncovered evidence of them being subjected to mistreatment, including harassment, unequal pay, and retaliation, at Tesla’s Fremont plant during a three-year investigation.
And we’ve had a $20 Million case of Redlining.
Trident Mortgage Company, owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, is accused of discriminatory lending in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. The funds will be used to increase credit opportunities in underserved neighbourhoods, prosecutors said. It is the second-largest lending discrimination settlement in history. The practice - known as "redlining" - was a common feature of the 20th Century, but is illegal under US law.
So occasionally, through lawsuits, some discrimination gets found and hopefully fixed. The discrimination still goes on, the crimes are still committed, we just have to hope that after the fact someone complains, someone objects, someone sues and again, with luck, someone is able to win that suit.
But it’s still happening. It still continues. Voter suppression, just like during the Jim Crow age, continues. The George Floyd Police Accountability Act has not been passed. The John Lewis Voting Rights act — which would restore the original Voting Rights Act — has not been passed. The Freedom To Vote Act which would eliminate partisan gerrymandering has not been passed. The Reparations Act — which would only authorize a study to examine the impacts of centuries of Racial Terrorism — has not been passed. It's not blatant anymore, it’s not in your face the way a “Whites Only” sign would be. We don’t have openly segregated lunch counters anymore, we don’t have segregated drinking fountains, but in many ways segregation today in our schools, our neighborhoods and churches is the worst it’s ever been.
A new report from the Civil Rights Project finds that New York retains its place as the most segregated state for black students, and second most segregated for Latino students, trailing only California. The report also makes clear that New York is experiencing an acceleration of demographic changes outlined in the earlier 2014 report. White students are no longer the state’s majority group as they were in 2010. the proportion of Asian students increasing sharply to more than 17% in 2018, and Latino students becoming the largest racial/ethnic group, from 35% in 1990 to 41% in 2018. Conversely, there has been a significant decline in the black student population. The new research also examines the expansion of school choice and charter schools and how they may have contributed to the continued segregation of the city’s schools. The research underscores that many in New York City are engaged in important efforts to integrate schools and there are a significant number of schools showing signs of reduced segregation.
Instead of being overt and obvious, discrimination has gone underground. It’s not proclaimed in large public signs — it’s done in the back room, behind closed doors, behind people’s backs. Swept under the rug. People who feel this way have grown frustrated with hiding themselves, hiding their true feelings. Recently they’ve started to act out, to shout the N-word to the rafters while somehow trying to proclaim the implausible deniability that what they saying and doing somehow “isn’t racist.” They’re demanding their “free speech” rights and increasingly the speech they want to share — is vicious Hate Speech.
As I stated at the beginning of this post more White people rather than Black are arrested for drug crimes. Documentation indicates that Black and White use drugs at about the same rates — so it makes sense that they would be arrested about the same relative rate to their population, except that they actually aren’t. All known data indicates that Black people are actually stopped, search and arrested for drugs crimes at twice the rate of White people. Then they are charged for the crimes at five times the rate and receive sentences for seven times the rate.
So even though more total White people get arrested for drugs, the number of people actually in jail for drugs are predominantly Black and Brown. And since the 13th Amendment still contains a clause that allows for the enslavement of the duly convicted — they are still subject to being enslaved.
Black men are 6% of the overall population, but they make up 40% of the prison population. Is that reasonable? Is that fair?
As Tuberville did, people are using Black people as an excuse to complain about “Crime.” People are using Black people as a scapegoat for “Election Fraud.” They’re using the excuse that learning about factual Black American History is itself “Racism”, that it’s “Divisive” and makes “White people feel guilty!”
Well, who else do you think did all this shit? [Admittedly, a great many white people have also fought against all this shit — from Lincoln to the Freedom Riders — we don’t get to teach that too?]
So are black people owed in America? Also for the record, are Italians, Jews, the Irish, Native Americans, Latinos, Asian and LGBTQ persons owed in America for their horrible treatment too? [Fuck yes!]
What has changed since the Declaration of Independence? What has truly changed since the Revolutionary war? What’s changed since the Civil War and Reconstruction? We may have gained Constitution and Human Rights — but are those rights truly respected or protected?
Any rational assessment has to show you that they are not. We are only granted the grace of fair and equal rights when and where white people are gracious enough to provide them if we’re lucky. Depending on your community this is probably not the norm, frankly IMO, it is an increasingly rare exception.
Many people know that the Racial Terrorism that has been used against Black and Brown people is wrong. Have they fixed it? Have they changed it? Has what was taken from Black and Brown Americans for generations, their freedom, their safety, their autonomy, their lives, their generational wealth, their dignity, their medical health, and in some ways their sanity — been recovered? And I’m not just talking about a financial payback, money is only part of the issue. This is spiritual. This is a repair of our soul, a repair of our community far beyond cold hard cash.
Has that been returned? Has that hole been refilled? Has what was taken even been acknowledged? Has there even been an apology? Just a simple basic admission that what happened was wrong? Has there been a collective effort to ensure it can never happen again?
Tuberville says we aren’t “owed.” Really? Seriously?
When did we get paid back? When was what was broken — repaired?
I don’t agree with the idea that people need to do crime as a way to get what they are “owed.” I don’t agree with Tuberville’s premise.
But just what are we owed? How many lives have been lost and destroyed by America’s racism? How many people have been embittered and turned to self-destruction in their frustration?
When will that finally be fixed?
[END]
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