Stop Asking White People To Pay Reparations; Start Asking “Right People”
by Darryl L. Fortson, M.D.
The Twelve Foundational, Spiritual Principles of AASRT, Inc.: Principle #6
In no way does white skin (or any other hue) confer upon its possessors the requisite character to make good on the unprecedented debt that slavery has imposed upon Black people. “White people” in and of themselves cannot pay this debt; only “right people” (of any and all races, creeds, colors, and nationalities) can.
Black America continues to demand of “White people” the payment of a debt they cannot pay, at least not on the basis of their skin color anyway. We want to receive from the descendants of a certain group of people that which was stolen from us and something of which we were deprived. The prevailing thought is that White people are the ones that took it, therefore, it stands to reason that they are the ones that should “pay it back.”
AASRT, Inc. is a Christian organization. It was not merely designated as such because I am Christian; it was also made so because the Reparational dilemma Black people faced was highly similar to the dilemma humanity faced at the time of the birth of Christ. Namely, mankind had a debt that they would not, and in fact, could not pay. In Christ, God provided an Intercessor that had the resources this great debt required, as well as the requirements of character, will, and spiritual standing necessary to pay it.
Just as mankind lacked what it took to pay that debt; they don’t have what it takes to pay this one either. You say, “White folks HAVE the money!” and you are correct about that in general. What America collectively does not possess however is the character to pay it. It takes character to pay debts that your parents owe to people who deserve it, but are not of your race or tribe. Collectively, White America is so broadly ashamed of the horrors they have inflicted upon so many tribes of people in so many ways for so long that they are largely paralyzed from turning around and fully assessing the damage they have left in their wake.
Many Blacks will at this point insist that White America is NOT ashamed of what they or their progenitors have done to Black people, and for many White Americans, that is the case. But there is an intuitive and deeply ingrained understanding of what is fundamentally right and wrong that is broadly understood across cultures, races, ethnicities, and classes.
Everybody understands that it is wrong to take human beings from their homeland by force and make them work for no pay. Everybody understands that 14-year old-boys should not be beaten, shot, tied to an industrial fan and thrown into a river for an alleged “wolf whistle at a white woman” as Emmett Till was in 1954. And everyone knows that in no civil society are men supposed to die from a nine minute, 29 second asphyxiation by “knee on neck” outside a Minneapolis corner market for the crime of attempting to pass a bogus $20 bill. These internal boundaries of shame are innate to all of us, and so their dismissal by the majority population is actually proof of their existence and presence of their shame rather than of their non-existence or absence. To deny that shame’s existence or to call evil acts right are demonstrations of the ego defense mechanisms of denial and rationalization.
In addition, there is the matter of Fear. Fear is the destination of Shame. It is the equally damned soul that Shame meets when it ends its journey in the darknesses of Future Time. Upon its arrival, Shame asks Fear, “what will the Afflicted and Abused do to me for what my forebears have done and what I myself have done, allowed, or turned a blind eye to?” And the answer is always the same, as the receiver of it trembles: “you will be exposed, and you will be judged.” This is one of the reasons why “White people” per se can’t pay Reparations — many of them are stuck. They aren’t “trapped.” You can figure out how to break free from a trap, or you may be able free yourself with brute force. They aren’t “imprisoned.” You can break out of a prison, or you can serve your time and be released.
The word is “stuck.” When someone is stuck, it means they can’t position themselves in a way that anchors a lever, a fulcrum, or a lift so they can move the rest of their body out of the situation. They can’t get an arm free to pull themselves out, they can’t get a leg free to propel themselves up, or they can’t find enough space to rotate themselves away. They need someone beyond themselves and outside themselves to pull them out or lift them or make room. They need action through a higher level of character that racist thoughts, deeds, and attitudes have corroded out of them over successive generations. They need help — the Holy Spirit’s help.
When I embraced Reparations as my raison d’être, I realized that Blacks folks were “stuck” too. They were stuck on demanding restitution from people who were themselves stuck, and they were trying to obtain it predominantly from government entities largely controlled by those same “stuck” people. And finally, they were stuck in “victimhood.” Getting unstuck is hard enough; trying to get unstuck by someone who is stuck themselves is impossible. So I took upon myself to reach out to someone who is utterly “unstuck” — the most unstuck Brother I have ever known or ever will know. He’s an Attorney.
His name is Jesus. And He took the case, because that’s the type of guy He is.
Since He is an Attorney and all, I wrote him a letter in 2014 in the form of a legal petition, entitled “A Bold Petition To The Spirit Of Righteousness.” I asked Him to submit my legal petition to His Father, who happens to be The Judge. This Attorney has never lost a case; He’s not gonna lose my case either. My request was that He dispatch the Bailiff Of The Court (aka, The Holy Spirit) to collect what is justly due.
One of the many good things about the Holy Spirit is that He ain’t “stuck” on skin color — He does whatever needs to be done with whomever He needs to do it with. Therefore, He is not dependent upon White people to cure this injustice. He will be using every type of person — many of them will be White because they predominantly possess the assets derived from the theft of labor and systems of oppression; but not just White people and not just Americans either. He’s going to put this thing together in His own unique and colorful way — and I really couldn’t care less how. All our organization has to do is “show up for court” and keep submitting “the appropriate legal documents.”
By moving through so many different races, creeds, colors, ethnicities, and statuses of people, what He essentially seems to be doing is “convening the just” in a way that unites us on the basis of righteousness instead of dividing us on the basis of race. Not only is God good then, but He’s “cool” too in how He pulls stuff off, because by unsticking Black folks from a deep and profound economic injustice, He unsticks White folks as well by moving people worldwide to a just remedy that frees them from the shackles of shame and the fetters of fear that their ancestors should have sought to liberate them, from the day General Robert E. Lee signed the Surrender Terms of the Confederate Army at the Appomattox, Virginia Courthouse on April 9th, 1865.
“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”
— 1 John 4:18
“…God is love.”
— 1 John 4:8
Only Love can heal a national wound this deep, both afflicting and damning as many people as it has. In order for all of us to get unstuck, Shame will have to be met by two different forces with a different message along its dark, Future Time path. One is Justice; the other, Love. Justice will be carrying the financial blessings Black people need that can pull them out of being “stuck”; Love (also known as “Mercy”) will be carrying the spiritual deliverance for White people to put the whole sordid mess of American slavery behind them. But it is the righteous who must come together to pay the “bus fare” to get them both there. And it won’t be cheap.
I have not contributed to AASRT’s Reparations Fund to end the net worth equity gap because I owe Reparations. I do not owe them as a person born far after the end of Slavery, and I utterly do not owe them as a Black man. I pay them to be a participant in the right, and the good and great will of the Creator, who, through Biblical prophet Amos, decreed to “let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Going forth, men and women of every stripe will be moved to answer that decree in the matter of economic racial justice. I can hardly wait! God doesn’t care if you are Black people. God doesn’t care if you are White people. He cares if you are “right people.”
12 to 15 million people seized from Africa. 2 to 4 million dead from the journey. 303,000 made it to the United States between 1619 and 1808. 3.9 million enslaved at the end of the Civil War, ending between an aggregate of between 36 million to 72 million years of labor under perversely brutal conditions exerted for no meaningful compensation whatsoever. Labor which, had slaves been paid at the current American average hourly wage of $29.81, would have generated as much as $18.8 trillion dollars or more in today’s wages for Black Americans.
So here’s the question. Are you White? Are you Black? Are you just? And no truer words have ever been spoken in this case than “two out of three ain’t bad.”