The Ultimate Purpose of Slave Reparations Isn’t Slave Reparations — It Is The Glorification of God Through Them
by Darryl L. Fortson, M.D.
The Twelve Foundational, Spiritual Principles of the African American Slave Reparations:
Principle #5: The ultimate purpose of Reparations is NOT for the descendants of African American slaves, the purpose is the glorification of God THROUGH Reparations for the descendants of African American slaves.
When I first decided to dedicate the rest of my life to the end of the racial net worth gap through a Reparations paradigm, I had a severe unctioning in my spirit that this pursuit could not be undertaken merely to obtain money. The losses and suffering had been too profound for too long for monetary recompense to be the sole purpose of this effort. To make it so would be the equivalent of the Universe sequestering money for a tribe of people by waterboarding them for 246 years so their great-great-great grandchildren could have “some money in the bank.” Such a modus operandi had no precedent in the known history of the Divine. My widest view of American chattel slavery was that it had deeply wounded each and every participant; not only the Black slaves and their progeny, but the White architects and perpetuators of the system as well. For while the wounds upon the African and Black American slaves were obvious, there exists a “spiritual physics” of which many are seemingly unaware or choose to ignore.
In the case of American chattel slavery, Newton’s Third Law of Physics is applicable; simply, that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. You sit down on a chair; the chair pushes back up on you. You push on a wall; the wall pushes back equivalently. In the case of Reparations, the slave system, Jim Crow, and institutional/structural/social racism, participants inflict spiritual harm on Black people; the consequences of those injustices push back spiritually on the inflictors. What we have then is a system where no one escapes unharmed and all are in need of remedy.
It is important to realize that the Middle Passage and Slavery in the Americas was not merely an historical event, but a spiritual one as well, as between 12 to 15 million Africans strained to survive a profound injury that itself had eternal implications for the souls inflicting it. So, when we try to understand the purpose of so much suffering for so long in a way that was in no way random, we have to look to the effects of slavery on both parties, if for no other reason than this is the way the Creator looks at such things.
This is not the way Black people generally look at slavery, nor is it the way I think they want it perceived. Our concerns, our experiences, and our achievements — both good and bad — have been ignored or set side so often for so long and in so many situations or fields of endeavor, that it seems almost perverse and betraying to share the “dark limelight” of slavery with White Americans. But American slavery is no more singularly relevant to Black people than the Bible is to Jewish people. Just as in the Bible, the central experience of the Israelite people is a focused human history with implications for all mankind, so too is the Black American experience also central, yet of profound consequence to all participants in both their histories and those people’s future, and beyond. Big, eventful stories evolving over an epoch of time always serve, at least to those with the requisite discernment, to point us to the active involvement of the Divine in the affairs of men.
AASRT, Inc. is a Christian organization. This is not for the purposes of virtue signaling, but to expressly state and actively engage Christ in the resolution of this excruciating American affair. But Jesus is “no respecter of persons.” He is no more or less concerned with the eternal destiny of Black folk than White ones, just as satan is no more or less concerned with destroying and damning either one of them over another. AASRT, Inc. was expressly founded consistent with the Jesuit motto of my high school, “Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam” — “to the greater glory of God.” It is clear that God has allowed the American slavery and its denouement to evolve in such a way that the only way for the problem to be resolved is for children of both victims and perpetuators of Slavery to work together. There can be no resolution of the Reparations dilemma without White financial support, but there can be no freedom from the shame of Slavery’s past and the fear of a “majority minority” future it arouses in White America without Black people’s demands for Reparative justice and subsequent forgiveness. Such a resolution would not merely be “nice” or “good” — it would be Divine, because the Divine abides at “the corner” of “Justice” and “Redemption.” And if the New Testament Gospels are to be believed, that is exactly where the Cross was placed.
When America sets its goals through Reparations on the glory of God — that is, on the tangible proof that He is just and that He makes wrong things right, both through His direct Hand and the acts of just men and women — we all transcend our races and tribes and move closer to thoughts and actions that mirror God’s. It is then that not only the victim and the victimizer see Him and are healed and made whole, but the whole world sees and is inspired. Every continent and every nation in them knows who Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is and what he stood for and did. But we don’t need to see this in one man or woman alone — we need to see it diffusely throughout an entire society; “from sea to shining sea.” We need to see it as big as America. We need to see it as big as God Himself. And with people of every hue, ethnicity, and nationality working together to resolve this matter, we will.