by Ernie McCray
Tried to wax eloquently recently
about reparations,
speaking of it as
a “The checks in the mail”
kind of operation
but now I’m thinking
Reparations?
In this nation?
as I take into consideration|
that Americans
have shown neither the skills
or the will,
by any stretch of the imagination,
to have anything near a genuine
social or political
conversation
focused on bettering human relations,
especially one
regarding compensation
or a people’s history
of pain and suffering
and humiliation.
All that to say
we’re a vision
of how we’ve always been,
a society
that has never once,
for a moment,
openly cared
about its black citizens,
or any others with dark skin.
I mean look at today’s situation,
where a human who is black
has to endlessly subconsciously
be on guard
just due to the fact
that they are, indeed, black,
on the lookout
for the times
they might be harassed
or under attack
for doing something “while black”:
driving while black;
going into Starbucks while black;
trying to enter their house while black;
picking up trash in their yard while black;
swimming or barbecuing ribs while black;
being a nine year old boy accidentally brushing against a white woman’s behind with a grocery bag while he and his mother are grocery shopping while black;
taking a knee, while black, when the Star Spangled Banner is being played as a protest for all the brothas and sistas who are shot down in the street when they’ve committed no crime or they’ve committed a minor crime like waking up in the morning black and going about their day while black;
simply wearing a hoodie while black…
And Uncle Sam
ain’t writing a check
for such as all that.
Bringing it to a vote
would simply fall flat.
So I look at reparations
in other ways,
in the form of ideas
I hear today:
Health care for all,
a huge step beyond the days
when blacks were used
as guinea pigs
in evil ways,
infected with diseases
like the syphilis experiments
in Tuskeegee.
What a reparation that would be!
Living wages
as back pay
for the work done by
people living as legal property
who carried the weight of the
country’s economy
on their backs,
from sunrise to sunset,
for centuries, for free.
$15 dollars an hour
would be an inspiring delight of an item
on a reparation ledger
it seems to me.
Supermarkets in the inner cities,
like those in the suburbs
to end fast food cafes
and mom and pop shops
as the only places
for poor folks
to dine and shop
and then stop
subjecting black children
to a plethora of useless
over crowded dumbed down schools
that lack the technology
learners need to stake a place
in the digital age
and the arts
they need to cultivate
their creativity
so they can get at who they are
and learn to think critically
and then
why not give them
access to universities,
and other learning opportunities,
without charging them exorbitant fees,
as educated folks
are boons to a society,
more prone
to make their world
more loving and kind…
As the 21st Century unwinds,
such potential “bettering of humanity”
reparations with characteristics such as these
could move our minds
to thoughts of us living in harmony.
Photo from pixabay
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