England: "Apologise for Slave trade, Jesse Jackson Says"

Apologise for slave trade, Jesse Jackson tells Brum

Aug 27 2007

By Emma Pinch

Civil rights campaigners have called on Birmingham to apologise for its role in the slave trade.

Former American presidential candidate the Rev Jesse Jackson said the city should apologise, a call supported yesterday by a leading black churchman who said an apology should be followed by reparation.

Mr Jackson's comment came at a private meeting during his visit to Handsworth last week when he called for black people to use their spending power to boycott services and products where they were not represented.

He was in Birmingham launching a new pressure group designed to bring economic equality to Britain's black communities.

Addressing more than 600 people at Canon Street Baptist Church in Handsworth, Mr Jackson insisted that "the line of slavery" had not been broken.

After slavery, colonialism and apartheid came institutionalised racism, he said, which meant there was continuing poverty for many Afro-Caribbeans.

He demanded that Birmingham - which manufactured chains for the slave trade - apologise for slavery.

Earlier that day London Mayor Ken Livingstone had said sorry for London's role in the transatlantic trade of African people.

Bishop Joe Aldred, the Birmingham-based chairman of the Council of Black-led Churches, yesterday went further by calling for a fund for the descendants of slaves, and a bank holiday to acknowledge the past.

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery, in 1807. Bishop Aldred said the Christian concept of apology meant it went hand-in-hand with forgiveness and repentance, and genuine repentance meant reparation.

"Repentance is not cheap, it demands action. It should be backed by a tangible action which seeks to address the wrongs being apologised for," he said. "Given that Birmingham is one of the centres which benefited from the slave trade and slavery, a tangible form of reparation would be to set up a fund that bears in mind slave traders and owners were recompensed to the tune of £20 million.

"I'm not suggesting every black person gets a pound, but I think a bursary could be set up for the descendants of slaves to get to university or set up a business."

He also suggested a bank holiday on August 23, similar to the UN's World Liberation Day, and forging better trade links with Africa and the Caribbean, in recognition of the prosperity those countries had forged for Britain.

Bishop Aldred, who came to Britain from Jamaica aged 14, said the negative legacy of slavery was etched into black British psyche, making it very much a "live" issue.

"The reason I'm in this country is because of slavery," he said. "I'm here because Europeans went into Africa and took my forefathers and mothers and transported them to the Caribbean.

"The Caribbean suffered so much over so many years - in levels of family breakdowns and deprivation and psychological drift.

"I argue that the high number of people from the Caribbean experiencing mental illness, under-achievement and an inability to catch up, has its roots in the life that was lived as enslaved people. Slavery is very much a live issue."

No-one from the city council was available for comment last night.

The latest calls echo comments by the Archbishop of York and former Bishop for Birmingham, the Rt Rev John Sentamu, who earlier this year urged the then Prime Minister Tony Blair to issue an apology.

Mr Blair had expressed regret for Britain's role in slavery, but did not make a formal apology.

Dr Sentamu said Britain, and the Church, had been involved in a "very, very terrible trade" and added: "It is really important that we own up to what was collectively done."

As well as being a centre of manufacturing for chains and shackles used in the slave trade, Birmingham's 18th century commerce also involved supplying weaponry to West African rulers, with guns being exchanged for enslaved Africans.

However, Birmingham also had some of the leading anti-slavery campaigners, with the Lunar Society - which met regularly in the city - including among its members abolitionists Thomas Day and Josiah Wedgwood.

Newsday NYC:" Could Hillary Clinton also be a 'black' leader?"

Another Les Payne article. This one fields the question: Is Hillary Clinton "black enough"? A very tongue and cheek question but one that makes a good point. You don't have to be African American to support the issues that affect the African American community. We see the exact opposite of this with Clarence Thomas and Condoleezza Rice.

One thing to note from this article is Hillary Clinton is not for reparations. This was asked of her at the National Black Journalists conference in Las Vegas. So my follow-up question would be for her and all the presidential candidates: if Congress passes a bill for some kind for reparations for the descendants of slaves, would they sign it?

Newsday.com
Could Hillary Clinton also be a 'black' leader?
Les Payne
August 12, 2007
Senator Clinton, are you black enough?

The question usually aimed at her darker opponent from Chicago triggered a burst of laughter from Hillary Rodham Clinton. She recovered from the barb and proceeded by not answering it.

This campaign moment occurred Thursday before the Las Vegas convention crowd of the National Association of Black Journalists. CNN White House correspondent Suzanne Malveaux pinned back the former First Lady to explain how she could "sustain black support " while running against an African-American. Ironically, thanks to Sen. Barack Obama's mixed white and Kenyan parentage and campaign mischief, it is he who usually gets to field the "black enough" question.

Although Clinton moon-walked away from Malveaux's direct question, she came before the 2,700-member journalist group with her designer set of promises. As president she said she would "call for a national response" to the crisis of neglect facing young black men. As part of her Youth Opportunity Agenda, she says the initiative flows from her belief that "it takes a [white] village to raise a child."

The national crisis with African-Americans, she said, concerned the "1.4 million young men of color between the ages of 16 and 24 who are out of school, and out of work and too often out of hope. It includes nearly one out of every three young African-American men. They're not earning legal wages or learning marketable skills; many grow up without fathers, locked up in prisons, or end up losing their lives, or taking lives, due to guns and violence."

Clinton said the problem is not a "moral crisis but an economic crisis," rejecting the "broad-brush" notion that paints the young black male "as a threat, as a headache or as a lost cause. I reject it as a string of disappointments, failures and casualties of a broken system. That's not who they are and that's not who they can be." She would call for expanding Headstart programs, increasing funding for schools and rehabilitation projects and tackling the excesses of the criminal justice system that tracks many of these young men into prisons.

"We have to keep talking about race," she said, "because race is a very significant issue for our country, for who we are as a country, for our role in the world." President Bill Clinton's 1995 Race Initiative, she said, was "either ignored or derided as being unnecessary, irrelevant ... I'm encouraged that more people are willing to have that conversation now."

With Obama appearing before the convention the next day, Clinton, not unexpectedly, talked more than usual about race before the 32-year-old organization. She sharply contrasted the diversity of the Democratic candidates with the all-white-male Republican candidates.

"I am really thrilled to be running at a time in our history when, on a stage, you can see an African-American man, a Hispanic man and a woman."

In a smaller meeting with a group of columnists, Clinton said she doesn't "believe in [slavery] reparations," but sees a need to "repair the breach that has left too many of our citizens behind." She was asked about the breach left by the 1995 Federal Communications Commission bill her husband signed that sharply reduced black ownership of radio and TV stations when tax incentives were removed. While admitting to "harsh" Clinton administration compromises with unfortunate consequences during the reign of the Newt Gingrich-dominated, GOP congress, the junior senator from New York said she didn't know what she would do about the resulting "media consolidation," were she elected president.

In a moment of levity with the black columnists, Clinton joked about how, as a flat-toned midwesterner, she sometimes lapses into a drawl in the South and tends to drop her "g's" more around black audiences. In a snide reference to author Toni Morrison's comment that her husband was the "first black president," she mused:

"I do find myself dropping g's. I lived all those years in Arkansas, and, you know, I'm in this interracial marriage."

Newsday: "Who would qualify for reparations"

This is a good and funny article written by Les Payne.

"Who would qualify for slavery reparations?"
By Les Payne
Newsday.com
August 5, 2007

Will Tiger Woods get reparations for slavery? What about Justice Clarence Thomas? Mariah Carey? Chuck D? Will the children of Abner Louima or Amadou Diallo get shares?

No, you've not missed the memo on U.S. reparations.

A blizzard of e-mail responses to last week's column has enlivened the debate over my view that slavery was a crime against humanity for which America must account and be assessed damages. Mixed-race Tiger Woods gets hauled onto the fairway because inquiring readers want to know who exactly would be eligible for reparations. This puts the cart before the horse, as farmers say, but I yield to questions from the floor.

A mixed-race reader from San Francisco, with half of her family white, questions using "one drop of [black] blood" as a criterion for determining eligibility. This standard was once used to increase family slave holdings in states like Louisiana. Later, it determined who got white privileges. Those living as whites with their "one drop" during and after slavery would not be eligible for reparations, since, as the San Franciscan points out, they "have not suffered discrimination."

As for golfer Woods, his mother is from Thailand, and his father's ancestry is African and indigenous American. As a twofer, Woods might claim ancestral tribal lands, but his slave roots are in Kansas. The white blood in Woods' family didn't keep his forebears out of slavery or reserve white privilege for the golf wizard.

During kindergarten in California, Woods has recalled, white sixth-graders tied him to a tree and threw rocks at him after spray-painting on him "Nigger," a word the prodigy would hear at various golf links. Woods was the only nonwhite at that elementary school, and the little darlings struck a blow against only that part of him that descended from slaves. That same blood had kept his father, Earl, from rooming in hotels with his white basketball teammates when Kansas State played on the road.

So the agony behind the stigma of slavery - even for overachievers such as Woods, Justice Thomas, Romare Bearden, Adam Powell, Chuck D., etc. - is visited upon citizens whose only distinguishing characteristic is that they descended from slaves; this condition is almost synonymous with being black in America.

Mere appearance is sometimes enough to bring on the hurt.

Amadou Diallo, 23, was mistaken for a descendant of slaves when, in 1999, New York City cops cut him down in a hail of 41 bullets. The unarmed victim was instead an immigrant from Guinea, a West African country formerly colonized by the French, who likely owe reparations for misappropriating land, human resources and mineral wealth. Though Diallo was due no compensation from American slavery, his parents got a $3-million settlement from the city for misidentifying their son as a fellow descendant.

Cops similarly mistreated Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant they brutalized in a precinct bathroom two years earlier. He, too, was not eligible for reparations. However, in the largest brutality settlement in city history, his civil suit reaped some $8.75 million. Other black immigrants ineligible for reparations have sued municipalities and won big for being subjected to treatment earmarked for the dark-skinned descendants of slaves.

As for who gets reparations - when the time comes - a full share, I submit, should go to those whose forebears endured slavery on these shores, and who suffered the inherited agony themselves. The case charges that slavery and attending U.S. atrocities, some of which are ongoing, have no statute of limitations and must be brought to book and punished before this republic can enjoy any lasting reconciliation between the races.

Of those names opening this discussion, I would exclude only Mariah Carey, whose mother is Irish and father a brown-skinned citizen from Venezuela. Thomas would likely opt out of reparations for himself.

Another loyal, black American, a classy writer and social critic of impeccable taste, accepts the prescribed bill of particulars on reparations. He opts out of reparations nonetheless, offering his share to those building the case.

Should a fair share reach a million dollars, however, he wants in.

Copyright © 2007, Newsday Inc.

Youtube Debate: A Month Old (I know!)

So who loves Kucinich? I do!! He said in the Youtube debate: "Yes I am for reparations," quoting the Bible in fact. That is a very clear answer and one I didn't expect. I am sad that Obama "dipped" and "dodged" the issue. I am sad that no other candidate jump in when Anderson Cooper asked does anyone support reparations, except Kucinich.

Of course Kucinich can't win. I mean how could he since he's for equal rights for all.