What does it mean when Elizabeth Warren gets on national television and talks of reparations as a way that “…we can as a nation do what’s right and begin to heal?” Who is being healed? Can the very structure that historically and currently subjugates us offer us any means to heal, to undo or make even the damage done? Do we even want to heal the nation? Well, we certainly don’t.
We see this call for reparations by the democrats for what it is, the recuperation of what could potentially be a dangerous demand (or battle cry in an era of black revolt) for the ruling class. We understand that sections of the ruling class are willing to consider the idea of concessions to an ever rebellious and increasingly uncontrollable black population not to heal us but to save the State, and to put themselves in the presidency (and after election season lets see how quickly talk of reparations disappears).
Damn them and, in the name of our ancestors and our futures, damn the nation, too.
Reparations as a demand, like all demands, lends itself to disarmament and recuperation. The same state that subjugates us gets to set the limits and conditions of reparations, for we know damn well that the state is capable of doing everything under the sun but granting that which can threaten it’s power. The state also gets to draw the borders for who’s black enough, who can trace their ancestry enough, who can x, who has y to get reparations. Even in a more radical scenario reparations could mean that we are able to reshuffle the ruling class and distribution of wealth and maybe end up with a “socialist” state, but maintain the same colonial relationships, the same structures and mechanisms that enabled our oppression then and continue to now, and butt up against the same issues of the left in power everywhere.
