Joshua Howard wrote:
>
> the American
> slavery reperations case
We are not talking about a "case" (it's a political not a judicial claim) and we are not talking about "slavery reparations." Didn't anyone on LBO bother to read what Art said in his posts.
Carrol
Here is Art's original post.
*****
Subject: Re: Horowitz/Reparations for slavery
Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2001 23:51:07 -0800 (PST)
From: Art McGee <mcgee at well.com>
Damn,
I try my best to just lurk and not say anything, because I'm too busy doing real activism work and not just chatting and talking bullshit on mailing lists, but as is the case when white folks try to comment on things that Black folks are doing, they are so off track that someone has to speak up:
1. Reparations, as defined by EVERY major reparations organization and activist, are NOT simply about slavery, but about slavery AND the institutionalized discrimination and terrorism that has been inflicted on Black people over 400+ years. It's NOT either or but AND. Understand? We don't think of it as a BINARY opposition. It's NOT slavery only or current discrimination only, but BOTH. Got it? Good.
2. Among those of us who are RADICALS, which includes those who are REVOLUTIONARY NATIONALISTS as well as MARXISTS, reparations is only one part of an overall strategy for the restructuring of society. There are NO radicals that I know of who think that reparations are the solution in and of themselves. Only ignorant white folks, some of them who call themselves Marxists, think that the reparations campaign is a "misguided" or "potentially disastrous" political strategy. These people simply don't know what the fuck they are talking about, and they obviously have little understanding of the Black radical tradition, or contact with Black radicals for that matter. If they did, they would understand that reparations is a single piece in the overall strategic puzzle of societal transformation.
Art