by Fred Logan
A whole lot of Black people still want to, and still try to, deny the Black reparations struggle. A whole lot bad mouth it: “We ain’t never gonna’ get no money!” We hear a lot of talk like that.
But the Black reparations struggle is a real struggle. It is centuries-old. And it is now on the rise in the midst of a critical era in the history of the national Black community, of the United States of America, and of the whole world. The Pittsburgh-area Black community is forced to get on the case.
In the mix, with the rise of the open, self-confessed, and often violent White supremacy now sweeping across the United States, the national Black community is in the vanguard of the mass resistance struggle that is also on the rise.
In contrast, the Irish, Italian, Polish, German, and other European American ethic communities are deeply divided over White right-wing reaction. Donald Trump, Marjorie Taylor-Green, George Santos, Ron DeSantis, the January 6 White folks and their multitude of fellow travels now frighten millions of White Americans who heretofore had absolutely no concern about the historical or contemporary suffering of Black people. That is a major reason why so many anti-right-wing White folks are now earnestly seeking African American allies.
We must be aware that many current avowed White critics of Black reparations are nevertheless closely monitoring the struggle and bidding the time to make their own reparations claims at the opportune moment.
Some will try to co opt the reparations movement for their own benefit. Remember Langston Hughes’ poem, “You’ve taken my blues and gone?” And Jazz music, a world-renown artistic product of African American cultural, is now establishment-sanctioned, “America’s classical music.”
Contemporary US White Ethnic Studies rose on the academic “Campus and Community” groundwork of the Black Studies movement.
The reparations struggle will be and it must be an intense and hard fought inside Pittsburgh’s Homewood, the Hill District, and Northview Heights, just as it will be everywhere predominately African American communities are across the United States. Countless burning questions and issues must be intensely debated, retracted, revised, and revisited in these internal “Black folks to Black folks” struggles.
How do we define the centuries-long historical state and church sanctioned crimes against Black people? How do we prevent reparations “compensation” from being chopped up into individual “compensation” that pits Black people against each other; “Hey, I got mine and gone on, you got to get yours and come on.”
And how does a Pittsburgh Black reparations plan, for example, concur or conflict with a Cleveland plan?
And what role can White folks, no matter how humane, play in the Black reparations struggle? If, say, a Mr. Rodgers or a Kris Kringle, both with impeccable angelic credentials, can’t discuss Black reparations with their own family members, or with many of their closest White friends, or in the White community at large then what can they tell us, and we, you and me about how to struggle for Black reparations?
On a global scale, the reparations struggles rise in the era when post-1945 US global hegemony, global White supremacy is on the decline. In that context, the Black reparations struggle brings to the foreground an unprecedented national struggle over the United States’ fundamental promises and practices related to power, wealth, status, and privilege. We must understand and strategize the African American reparations struggle in that global context.
The Black reparations debate alone has the potential to mobilize, educate and organize the Black community to unprecedented heights.
Some Black Elected Officials (BEOs) will run from the reparations struggle, “Hey! My district is multiracial. I can’t be too-Black” That will be a major struggle.
And some “progressive” multiracial, multiethnic allies of the Black community will fight each over the Black Reparations question. For decades, multiracial self-proclaimed progressive organizations fought tooth and nail in the Black community over “The Negro Question.”
We must get on the case in the Hill District, East Hills, Wilkinsburg, and Northview Heights and keep updated and informed on the progress, issues, and questions in the Black reparations struggle locally, nationally and world-wide.
In June 2023, the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA) will hold its 34th annual conference. What do we know N’COBRA? We must acknowledge the long struggle and heed the invaluable lessons of the Pittsburgh N’COBRA where over twenty years ago the late Rob “Brother Oba” Penny and other N’COBRA members were demanding Black reparations.
Online, we must research the Black reparations movement in California. Online, The Institute of the Black World 21st Century carries extensive coverage on the global Pan African reparation movement. Many other online sources are available.
We must bring the Black reparations struggle to the family dinner table, to our religious and secular institutions, to our social clubs, professional organizations, to the street corners everywhere Black people gather in and around Pittsburgh.
About Post Author
