By: Amira Karriem
With all of the recent attention and recording of the violence and blatant murder being committed by so-called law enforcement, a demand for reparations is not only fair, but is necessary. The atrocities committed against black people are numerous. A few that come to mind post-slavery are: Jim Crow, Separate but Unequal, home owner discrimination, gentrification of our neighborhoods, the using of our babies as alligator bait, and white “researchers” continuously being funded for and profiting off of diseases that disproportionately affect black people. I will provide a particular case in the following paragraph.
Allow me to go back to 1920 when the Tuskegee Experiment began, which purposefully and knowingly was backed by the United States government. Syphilis was being given to black men for over 50 years, (the truth did not come out until 1972) through what are now known as “clinical trials”. The men were injected with the disease and were not told about its effects, including how any children that these men fathered could be born with the disease. Consequently, many black babies were born blind, and the subjects were just told that they had “bad blood”. (Gilbert, Sawyer and McNeill. Health Education, 4th ed.)
The clinical trial that was this Syphilis experiment was abandoned when funding ceased and the government knew about it. During Bill Clinton’s term of presidency, the ex-president apologized for the government’s wrong doing and assigned a task force for policing these type of trials. By the time this occurred, there was but one lone survivor of the experiment. The task force or “watch dog” was and is a weak form of action that still does not address any form of reparation for the victims and their families. It simply is a way of saying: This should not happen again, because clinical trials will be better regulated.
Every time a Caucasian person says or insinuates that we should “get over it, it happene a long time ago”, remind them of these atrocities that were committed and are still being committed every day. Since we and our children MUST learn the history of America and about the holocaust and their survivors, everyone should be told the dirty truth of America’s past and present shameful acts that are inhumane and not just apologize in writing or with words, but do so monetarily and with resources. We are the only ones who will stand up for us, we cannot expect a group of people who are benefiting from our suffering, be it past or present to do anything without being forced to do so.
The time for marching and singing and praying is over. We have tried to love our oppressors for centuries and if it has not worked by now, there is never going to be a time where “we shall overcome” will work. The best avenue for justice is to demand reparations NOW and for us to put aside our differences and show unity amongst ourselves. See Reparations 101
