Reparations for African-Americans
Remember this bill, it’s name is H.R.40. It’s a commission to study and develop reparation proposals for African-Americans Act. The commission is supposed to examine slavery and discrimination in the colonies and the United States from 1619 to the present and recommend appropriate remedies. Among other requirements, the commission shall identify the role of federal and state governments in supporting the institution of slavery. Secondly, what forms of discrimination in the public and private sectors against freed slaves and their descendants happened. Thirdly, what are the lingering negative effects of slavery on living African-Americans and society?
It’d be nice to have “real” people with a conscious doing the leg work on this history because the Federal Government is a bit reserved. If Black History was voided from history books for school-age children, how will they measure the injustices that went on in 1610 in the USA, to now, in 2020? The easiest way to understand why colonialism was so horrific is to imagine it happening in your own country now. It is invaded, conquered, and occupied by a foreign power. Existing governing institutions are dismantled and replaced by the absolute rule of the colonizers. A strict hierarchy separates the colonized and the colonizer; you are treated as an inconvenient subhuman who can be abused at will. The colonists commit crimes with impunity against your people. Efforts at resistance are met with brutal reprisal, sometimes massacre. The more vividly and accurately you manage to conjure what this scenario would actually look like, the more horrified you will be by the very idea of colonialism.
