Reparations for black descendants of slaves entered the national discourse when, in June of 2014, Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote "The Case for Reparations" for The Atlantic. Directly after his article was published, Black Kos held a forum to discuss it. Here we are, five years later, and Democratic candidates for the presidency, among them Kamala Harris, Julián Castro, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and Marianne Williamson, have all weighed in positively on the issue.
This is a deeply emotional issue for me, as it has been for many other black Americans.
On both sides of my family, I am descended from men and women who were enslaved in this country. Their lives and histories are well-known to me, passed down by my mom and dad, both of whom knew family members and friends of the family who had been enslaved. My husband is a descendant of great-grandparents enslaved in Puerto Rico and on the U.S. mainland. Hence, for me and mine, slavery is not some long-ago-and-far-away issue, or simply a fact in a history book.
It is real.
Daily, it affects who I am, how I live my life, my fears, my hopes, and my dreams. Being black in this country shapes my life in ways that, if one is not black, cannot always be understood.
For many years, I’ve supported the call for this country to compensate us. This nation, built on land ripped off from Native Americans, accrued its wealth— in both the North and the South—on the backs of enslaved Africans and their descendants.
Reparations are also a personal issue for me. A white man who enslaved some my family members was compensated for losing their “services” when they were emancipated in D.C., which I wrote about here.
from Daily Kos http://bit.ly/2QbsfLW
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