REPARATIONS:THE CONVERSATION OF BLACK/AFRICAN SUSTAINABLE ECONMIC DEVELOPMENT

06-26-01 BY PROF. WALTER CROSS SUMMITED TO: DR. WILFRED L. DAVID

AFRICAN STUDIES Ph.D. HOWARD UNIVERSITY

BLACOLOGY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE, culturalscience@cs.com , FT. WASHINGTON, MD 20744

Reparations: The Conversation of Black/AfricansTable of Content

pageI. Introduction 3

II. The Conversation of Economic Development: Dr. Wilfred L. David A. Preface 4

B. The Interpretation of Development 5 C. Values and Ideology in Interpretation

5D. Paradigms and the Growth of Knowledge 6E. Theory, Causation, and policy 7F. Attitudes of Reality: The Bases of Theory 7

III. WHY REPARATIONS? 8A. Just a question: Slavery. Reparations? 8B. Questions start debates 8C. Promises Unkept 10D. Forty acres and a mule 10E. Father of Reparations 10F. Knowledge is Power 11G. A Lot More to Talk About' 12H. A Mind Opening? 13I. Imari Obadele 13

IV. The Legal Basis of the Claim for Reparations 17A. "The Purposes of this Act" 20

V. From Slave Ship to Space Ship 25A. How Africa Developed the West 26B. The Cold War: Globalizing or Marginalizing? 27C. Interim Reparation 29D. APPENDIX: HEGEMONIC GLOBALIZATION 29

VI. Conclusion: Blacological Analysis 31

VII. Definitions 33

VII. References 35 and 36

"Historians and their experts can show without difficulty how the invasion of African territories, the mass capture of Africans, the horrors of the middle passage, the chattelisation of Africans in the Americas, the extermination of the language and culture of the transported Africans, constituted violations of all these international laws. The argument that such crimes were 'legal' under European law, and accepted as normal by most Europeans, would be unavailing. Europeans did not, then or now, constitute all mankind, and the conscience of all decent mankind must always have been outraged by the atrocities which Europeans inflicted on Africans over 400 years. Indeed it can be said that it was the ultimate crime against humanity, to deny human status to a vas section of humankind."

Lord Anthony Gifford, British Queens Counsel and Jamaican

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Reparations: The Conversation of Black/AfricansAttorney-at-Law, Legal Arguments in Support of Reparations

I. Introduction I must begin by first of all explaining my philosophy and thought. My philosophy and thought is that I believe that Black/African people must acknowledge their own body of knowledge that is self-reliant, self-determined and operatively cultural. After research and study of the book, "The Conversation of Economic Development, Historical Voices, Interpretations, and Reality", by Dr. Wilfred L. David, I was much encouraged with my findings in Chapter # 1 The Interpretation of Development and the Preface. These are the sections or topics I felt would agree with my philosophy and also help in the redevelopment of Black/African Economic System. These are not the entire sections word for word, but some quotes that inspired and encouraged and supported my belief that all Black/African People are endowed with the gift of Blacological Thought. My philosophy of independence and self-determination for Black/Africa is based on their cultural knowledge and information handed down by ancestors and scholars. This is a Blacological approach to research and study. Philosophically, I believe that Black/Africans have the solution to the promises, problems, and prospects of future progress in Africa within their very existence. My philosophy is that of Blacology. Blacology - refers to the scientific research and study of the evolution of Black/African People and their culture from the past and present which includes the research and study of video, audio, written, and oral documents. Blacology is the perpetuation and utilization of Black/African ideas, philosophies, theories, beliefs, concepts, notions of the past and present as cultural knowledge. Blacology is the acclamation, affirmation and proclamation of Black/African Scholarship as an Interdisciplinary Cultural Science. These above section in the book tend to agree and encourage the research and study of a Blacological Science.

As a Blacologist my mission is to establish Blacology as a viable discipline within the Local, Global, and International extended Black/African Culture in Africa and the Diaspora. Also to acknowledge there are laws and organizations that will provide support for the research and development of Blacology in the 21st Century on the African Continent. How can Africa be technological when it does not have its own Interdisciplinary Culture Science? Kwame Nkrumah said, "Socialism without science is void".

There was much information to verify my position and theory. The Author Dr. Wilfred L. David pointed out some pragmatic and theoretic philosophies for research and study in the area of economic development. There are opportunities for Blacology in Black/Africa. I have documented a few. This research also proves that Black/Africa has the scholarship and resources to develop reparation as a viable alternative in the Economic Movement of Black/Africa. In order to be ready for science and technology you must have your own scientific thought. In analyzing this book I am utilizing the philosophy of Blacology. The concept of Blacology is developed from the authenticity of Black/African experience, struggle, and culture. I have also provided some definitions to give understanding to my philosophy of the "Cultural Science of Blacology” following my conclusion (see definitions). Blacology may also consist of it's own Cultural Linguistics or Ebonics. In addition, it is not restricted to the Euro-centric Language Arts. This give Blacology it's own significant identifiable writing form. It is the utilization of the ideals, philosophies, theories and Beliefs of Black/African scholars and historians of the past and present. As a Blacologist, I am always encouraged with the creative genius of Black/African authenticity. The future of Black/Africa depends on the utilization of its own cultural knowledge, talents, gifts and resources both human and natural. This research is to show that there is an optimistic future in Black/Africa and that there are resources that may be used to

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Reparations: The Conversation of Black/Africansachieve success in post colonialism. It also shows that my philosophy is prevalent in the evolution of Black/African Culture in the 21st Century.

My objective is to show the evolution Blacological Thought in the Economic Development and Planing of Black/African Culture. The conversation of Black/African Economic Development has emerged and settles on the topic of Reparations. This is the point of acknowledgement among Black/African Scholars through out the Black World. It has become a resounding issue for the growth, development, and future structure of Black/African Culture. When you take a look at the development of all cultures and societies, it is apparent that all have experienced economics inheritance of some type shape or form. In order for Black/African Culture to grow, it must have some economic assets. Labor, talent, gifts, and inheritances must acquire these assets. For the Black/African Culture these resources have been taken through the process of captivity (slavery) and colonialism. In order for Black/Africa to benefit from its natural resources there must be restitution for the injustices of the past. My objective is to show that Black/African Cultural Development is depended on the restitution of reparation. This is a conversation of evolution proportions. My objective is to show that reparations are the most important conversation of the times. My objective is also to show that in order for Black/Africans to plan the redevelopment of their culture, they must have a Blacological solution in mind. If the thinking is not in accord with Black/African struggle, the economic reparations will not be utilized strategically for domestic advancement.

II. The Conversation of Economic Development by Dr. Wilfred L. David A. Preface

The idea of "development" is as old as history itself. Throughout the ages, the belief has persisted that everything could be better than it actually is if all human potentials were to be fully realized, to live an enjoyable or "good" life. Such an existential condition defined as one in which people are free to the greatest extent possible from the forces of anti-development. Concerns has been linked to the optimistic expectation that it is possible to explain and understand why some peoples and countries are poor and others rich, and how an authentic transformation can be effected from poverty to riches. The quest for knowledge and truth has always reflected the optimistic belief that human beings would be freed from the constant struggle to meet their survival needs. From a development perspective, therefore, greater significance should be attached to the level of consciousness or people's awareness of their own potentials, rather than to some abstract conceptualization of such potentials.

The conceptual structure and concrete conditions of abject poverty, inequality, social injustice, and hopelessness that continue to define the lot of billions of people living in the less developed sector of the world. The globalization of both economic progress and human misery along with a plethora of development theories based on different interpretations of human nature, ontologies of social life, value-orientations and epistemological presuppositions. Underdevelopment and forces of antidevelopment that clearly indicates an urgent need for critical interpretation and reinterpretation of the dominant theorems of development economics. The latter revolves around the possibilities of making sustainable improvements in the overall quality of life. To the question of why some people and countries are so rich and others so poor rely on different conceptions of truth, theories of causation, and criteria for explanatory adequacy.

Three related imperatives: the need for a continuous critique of the conventional wisdom; the juxtaposition of rival perspectives and interpretations against each other; and a constant

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Reparations: The Conversation of Black/Africansadjustment or dynamic synergy between theoretical precepts and practical reality. A conversation refers to the formal and informal exchange of ideas through the spoken or written word.

Development economics can be viewed as a pragmatic tool for discovering, interpreting, and reinterpreting truths about particular aspects of social and economic reality. The primary focus is on "dialogue" as distinct from "monologue that can generate originality of insight in scientific principles such as validity, coherence, and objectivity are upheld in a plurivocal world. This entails a retreat from totalitarian perspectives or absolutism. Conversations about development take place not only behind academic walls, but also in the street, in unemployment lines, on farms, in villages, on river banks, and under palm trees. Understanding human conduct in terms of people's own life experiences and self-understandings, of the other.

B. The Interpretation of DevelopmentFrom a human perspective, the idea of development may be interpreted in two broad, but

related, senses. At one level, it can be conceptualized as a valuable end-state, level of well being, or quality of life that has either been achieved, or is achievable, in principle. At another level, it connotes a process of change from conditions of life widely perceived to be undesirable, to others that are much more desirable in human terms. In the former case, the question becomes whether it should be valued as an end in itself (intrinsic) or as a proximate or instrumental end (extrinsic) geared toward achieving higher-order ends or core human values. The intrinsic valuation of development makes it coterminous with certain moral and psychological states that typically reflect essential conditions of human well being. The extrinsic valuation entails that development is desired more because it presumably helps in the evaluation or promotion of other things that people value. The latter range from subjective feelings of pleasure and happiness to more tangible things such as money and the acquisition of material possessions.

That is, economic, socio-cultural, political, and ecological - of the quality of life and related human attributes are embedded in a multiplicity of heterogeneous processes that are rife with tensions, ambiguities, and even contradictions. All human beings are entitled to economic welfare or development, which makes it possible to sustain any form of human dignity, decency, or self-respect. Thereby enlarging the possibilities of human freedom. There is ample historical evidence as well as plausible theoretical speculations supporting the thesis that an inverse relationship may sometimes exist between economic dimensions of the quality of life and individual achievements. A conflict may also arise between economic improvements and the march of freedom.

C. Values and Ideology in InterpretationThere is still a lack of consensus about the actual or potential constitution of

development, the fact that its true meaning remains a matter of interpretation, and helps to highlight the hermeneutic tensions (hermeneutics - the art and science of interpretation). They traverse a wide spectrum ranging from people's definitions of their own situations, how they express themselves, the rationality or irrationality of their actions, to their encounters with other people, societies, and cultures. Interpretation is a ubiquitous feature of all human activity and therefore lies at the heart of our entire approach to the social sciences and the study of development. This brings to mind the value-orientations of social scientists and their conceptions of development and do they believe that authentic development is achievable. The age-old epistemological debate about the validity of "objective" vis-a-vis "subjective" or relativistic dimensions of truth continues to come to mind. It is believed that all

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Reparations: The Conversation of Black/Africansknowledge about development and related matters is contextual, that is, based on preconceptions that are conditioned by ideological, cultural, linguistic, and historically relative influences. This

entails that the "reality" of development or underdevelopment does not exist apart from our psychological, socio-cultural, and mental forms of representation. An independent reality is the point of emphasis that while an array of ideological and socio-cultural factors may influence our thinking, it does not necessarily follow that reality is nothing but the product of such influences.The hermeneutic task and the process of attributing significance or meaning differs as much within cultures as between them. The perspectival nature of interpretation suggests that all understanding is situation-bound, that is, from a given background or context.

Understanding is not passively neutral, but actively structures what it encounters. The hermeneutic or interpretive perspective helps to open our eyes to the fact that we are likely to distort our own investigations by assigning "objective" or "universal" criteria a privileged position of validity or truth over insights derived from specific historical and socio-cultural contexts. The conclusion may be drawn that science and economics are socio-cultural practices whose "objectivity" is politically laden. Interpretation is both a social and political practice. The claim is that all systems of knowledge are ideologies that are shaped by the economic elements of our class position, or well-defined sets of group interests and a philosophical idealism that views ideas as the principal force for changing the world. There is no need to divest ourselves of our ideologies, since they provide a "pre- and extrascientific vision" of the way we see things. The way we see things can hardly be distinguished from the way in which we wish to see them" visions are not abstract or meaningless, but usually say something meaningful about the real world. For example, the timeworn proposition that "all men are equal" can be construed as saying that, as moral agents, all human beings should be guaranteed equality of treatment unless some fundamental differences in cases can be rationally shown.

The overall conclusion is that progress in the study of economic development, as for all forms of social and economic inquiry, cannot be interpreted solely in terms of an analytical procedure. In which the mind of the economist becomes a mere passive and disinterested conduit of so-called scientific and objective truths. Given the same facts, economists with different beliefs, ontological commitments, epistemological presuppositions, value-orientations, and political motivations may arrive at diametrically opposed conclusions, for example, about the desirability or potential impact of a development program. Total skepticism, in the sense that no particular form of knowledge or truth claim can be accepted as valid. Indeed, this is the essence of enlightened conversation.

D. Paradigms and the Growth of KnowledgeThe emphasis placed on interpretation helps to highlight the fact that the growth of

knowledge about economic development. They come to accept as true whatever is the outcome of the normal discourse in the scientific community or culture at any given point in time, including criteria for knowledge and validity. Common standards of scholarship," which "assert the universality and the solidarity of any one scholar with the international fraternity of all other scholars." Contextually, a paradigm constitutes the underlying basic idea of what economists and other social scientists are trying to interpret, explain, and understand. The idea is that the possibilities for the growth of scientific knowledge are always inextricably linked to the historical, psychological, and socio-cultural practices that influence the belief patterns of economists and other social scientists. Fundamental ideas tend to guide our perceptions.

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Reparations: The Conversation of Black/AfricansDevelopment economics has been involved in a constant search for its own autonomy and relevance, on the grounds that different economic principles apply to the more developed visa-vis less developed countries. The point of emphasis, is that the relative strength of a given paradigm or scientific research program usually lies in the extent to which it permits such an

effort. While allowing for hypotheses and theories to be generated within a well-defined conceptual structure, instead of having to be applied to a definition of the structure itself. Development economics became a more or less autonomous subfield of the economics discipline. One reason is that the ideas of development economics have more often than not been used as a justification for unworkable, inefficient, and inequitable policies in the developing world.

E. Theory, Causation, and policyUnderlying the dominant intellectual discourse is a value judgment, albeit implicit, that

the general aim of science is to construct "good" or valid theories. A theory refers to a hypothesis or sets of hypotheses that are proposed as a means of explaining some phenomena or sets ' of events. A theory can take the form of a hypothesis or sets of hypotheses that can be immediately tested by observation. A theory is thought to represent an empirically grounded generalization, which is purportedly a system of ideas or statements providing explanation of a group of facts or phenomena. A common expectation is that theories, are intellectual toolkits. Theorizing becomes an essential device for interpreting, reinterpreting, and synthesizing established laws, and modifying them to fit circumstances that were unanticipated at the time of their conception.

F. Attitudes of Reality: The Bases of Theory Typology Description_______________________________________________________________________ Immanent Explains characteristics of the external world based on assumptions about

their inherent nature, for example, Platonism. Teleological Based on Greek telos ("end" or "goal"), explanation that is rooted notion

that structures and processes of nature are fitted together to bring about determinate results, for example, the Aristotelian belief that reality can be properly studied from the perspective of Self-Justified parts.

Idealist-Essentialist Dominant belief or "orthodox consensus" that phenomena in the or Functionalist real world can be shown to be instances of recurrent and predictable

regularities in which form and function are connected.

Realist-Existentialist Explanation based on attempt to penetrate behind external appearances or "surface structures" as a means of discovering the real causal mechanisms or "deep structures" that lie behind reality. Belief that no meaningful distinction can be drawn between "facts" and "values and economic and social laws are not independent of historical structure. External reality does not exist independently of our preferred concepts, perceptions, and interpretations.

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Reparations: The Conversation of Black/AfricansA theory based on the hypothesis that investment determines economic growth or

development can be elaborated to include causal or explanatory factors such as entrepreneurship, political leadership, good governance, the structure of institutions, and the nature of incentives. The coherence or internal consistency of a theory implies that the conclusions should follow

logically from its stated assumptions and premises. In this context, a burning question remains whether the stated assumptions of a rigorously formulated theory should contradict observationsderived from the world of experience. 'This philosophy suggests that economists should tenaciously subscribe to a faith that there exists some independent body of truth in the discipline and that its properties can be discerned independently of value judgments. Each theoretical perspective points to "an area as matching its description, carefully displays the logic of its argument, and arrives at appropriate policy conclusions" (Cole, Cameron, and Edwards 1991: 5). Theory should play an instrumental role in generating implications about the real world, and corresponding policy proposals should be grounded on perceptions about the available facts. It can be said that all societies must face crucial choices about the collective welfare of the people and have to devise rules for making such choices.

III. WHY REPARATIONS?The subject is scalding hot, untouchable as public policy. Even the brave run from it. And

it is only a question: Should the U.S. government pay reparations to the descendants of slaves? "Just a question," says Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), cool, dispassionate, like he's teaching high school science. "We ask questions about everything. What's in space? What's underneath the water? How did the Earth begin? Interesting questions. But this one has been studiously avoided." Few questions challenge us to consider 380 years of history all at once, to tunnel inside our souls to discover what we truly believe about race and equality and the value of human suffering. Ever since Dutch traders brought 20 captive Africans to Jamestown, Va., in 1619, slavery has been entwined with American history--shaping it, tarnishing it, burdening it with the legacy of truths rarely told. Where is it taught that eight of the first 12 American presidents were major slaveholders?

A. Just a question, Slavery. Reparations.

Facts: Emancipation brought freedom, but not parity. The civil rights movement knocked down Jim Crow, but vestiges remained. Affirmative action created opportunities, but racism persists. So why shouldn't the great-great grandchildren of those who worked for free and were deprived of education and were kept in bondage not be compensated? Ask one question and it leads to another and another and a few more. Why should American taxpayers that never owned slaves pay for the sins of ancestors they don't even know? And what about those ancestors arrived here long after slavery ended? And how would the economy be affected? How do you put a price tag on 2 1/2 centuries of legalized inhumanity? In what form would reparations be paid? How would you establish who's a descendant?

B. Questions Start Debates. Which is all Conyers wants. A Raging Debate. He is speaking from an anteroom off the floor of the House Judiciary Committee, which

this day is debating, by comparison, something tame--physician-assisted suicide. Conyers is the ranking Democrat on the committee, a 34-year veteran of Capitol Hill, dean of the Congressional Black Caucus. But these credentials are not worth diddly when it comes to the subject he has sat down to discuss. In every legislative session since 1989, Conyers has introduced a bill that would

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Reparations: The Conversation of Black/Africansestablish a commission to examine slavery and its lingering effects on African Americans and contemporary U.S. society. The commission would comprise historians, legal scholars, genealogists, economists, and lawmakers--the brightest minds to be found. Hearings would be held across the country. A report would be issued with recommendations for Congress to act on. Should the U.S. government issue a formal apology for sanctioning slavery? Is a debt owed to

the descendants of Black People who helped build this country but spent their lives in forced servitude? These questions would be addressed. "All we're trying to do is compile a body of intelligence and data on the subject," says Conyers. "The most organized body of material on the subject in American history."

You would think a man in his position could at least get a subcommittee hearing on his bill. But the legislation, known as the Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act, has never been debated in Congress. It doesn't matter if Democrats or Republicans are in charge. The bill just sits. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, did not return phone calls, but here's what he said on the subject several years ago: "The notion of collective guilt for what people did [200-plus] years ago, that this generation should pay a debt for that generation, is an idea whose time has gone. I never owned a slave. I never oppressed anybody. I don't know that I should have to pay for someone who did [own slaves] generations before I was born."

Here's what Jack Brooks, the now retired former Democratic chairman of the committee, says by phone from Beaumont, Tex.: "It just didn't seem like it was very urgent or very useful. . . . It just looked like a long shot to me. . . . I don't even think Conyers was pushing it that much. He never mentioned it to me, I don't believe. . . . What do they want to do? Look up all the descendants of slaves and pay them a lot of money, I guess. . . . I think it would be a waste of the committee's time. . . . Wouldn't be much public support. . . . Conyers, of course, would like it. But he'd be about the only one."

Of the 435 members of the House, Conyers has managed to get but 31 co-sponsors for his bill. Not even all the members of the Black Caucus are on board. In fact, two black Democrats on the Judiciary Committee--Mel Watt of North Carolina and Bobby Scott of Virginia--have declined to follow their Democratic leader. Watt issued a "no comment" on his nonsupport. Scott will only say that he has put his energy into the issue of juvenile crime. "You can't focus on everything," he says. The rejections don't deflate Conyers. He leans back in his chair, stares at the ceiling. He is solemn, but it's a wily solemnity, as though he has queried the gods of restitution and knows something the rest of us don't. "I always like to talk to members about it," he says of his bill, "but I'm not pushing it because our day will come." Not pushing it? Even some Conyers supporters think this strategy is wrongheaded. If the bill's not a priority of its sponsor, why should anyone else take it seriously?

Conyers leans forward. His tie is loosened, his pants are hiked up, you notice his socks sag to his ankles. Looking at him, a 69-year-old warrior of so many civil rights battles, one is reminded of those sage elders who hold court in black barbershops on Saturday afternoons. He mentions that he wrote the original legislation calling for a national holiday to honor the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., four days after the civil rights leader was assassinated in 1968. Everyone and his cousin hooted it down. They said Conyers was young and naive. In 1983, the federal holiday was established.

The point: Causes that are worth the struggle require an investment of time. You have to whet the public's appetite, soften opposition, build a case. Turn some folks around. Sometimes the case has to be built behind the scenes first. With scholarship at universities. Lawyers documenting precedents. Meetings in neighborhood basements, firing up the grass roots. All of

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Reparations: The Conversation of Black/Africansthat is happening now with reparations, says Conyers. "I see this as a subject in incubation that is probably going to continue to grow until we finally have to approach it and deal with it like all the other controversial issues we deal with."

C. Promises Unkept It is hard to find an African American who has not heard of "40 acres and a mule." The

phrase has survived Reconstruction and made its way onto baseball caps and hip-hop song sheets and even into comedy routines--a kind of cultural signifier for something promised but never delivered.

D. Forty acres and a mule. The original reparations package. On Jan. 16, 1865, four days after meeting with black ministers in Savannah, Ga., Gen.

William T. Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15. Thousands and thousands of newly liberated slaves were fleeing plantations and following his Union Army through Georgia. This was becoming a problem. So with the War Department's blessing, Sherman set aside land along the Georgia and South Carolina coasts for black settlement. Each family was to receive 40 acres, and Sherman later offered the loan of Army mules. Word of this deal spread throughout the South, and within six months 40,000 freed blacks had settled on hundreds of thousands of acres of land.

Several months later Congress passed a bill establishing the Freedmen's Bureau to oversee the transition of blacks from slavery to freedom. The bureau had under its control 850,000 acres of abandoned and confiscated land, and it had men such as Gen. Rufus Saxton, a former abolitionist who was committed to creating a class of black landowners. But that summer President Andrew Johnson began allowing former Confederates to reclaim their property. This would become history's pattern in succeeding decades: As blacks sought to obtain their due, every small advance, it seemed, was trumped by a setback. Lawmakers such as Rep. Thaddeus Stevens introduced reparations bills in Congress in 1866 and 1867. No luck. In 1915, Cornelius Jones sued the U.S. government, arguing that it had profited from slave labor through a federal tax on cotton. Since the slaves had never been paid, Jones calculated they were owed $68 million. Jones lost his suit.

Even Dr. Martin Luther King took up the cause of government reparations for blacks, a little-known fact of his civil rights advocacy. In his 1963 book, "Why We Can't Wait," King wrote that while "no amount of gold could provide adequate compensation for the exploitation of the Negro in America down through the centuries," a price could be placed on unpaid wages. King was perhaps on to something, but he also was very busy fighting battles on other fronts.

E. Father of ReparationsAt about the same time, however, a Detroit activist named Ray Jenkins took up the fight

and wouldn't let it go. He could be called the father of the modern Black Reparations Movement. In 1963, he formed a one-man organization called Slave Labor Annuity Pay. He distributed leaflets, made speeches, sent letters to black organizations and personalities. Ultimately, he talked Conyers into introducing his bill. Just wore him down. Jenkins was inspired by the memory of his grandfather, Will Mobley, a former slave who died in 1958 at age 103.

To think, the Founding Fathers could have saved Grandpa Mobley from a childhood of subjugation when they wrote the Constitution. Ended slavery in 1790, spared the country this awful inheritance. Instead, the founders made people with dark skin a "property right" of white

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Reparations: The Conversation of Black/Africansprivilege. Blacks as capital assets. Blacks as the materials for a $3 billion industry. Sold at an average price of $778 per person right before the Civil War. That's $14,428 in today's money, the cost of a basic farm tractor. To think, if slavery existed today, somebody's grandpa could be traded for the contemporary equivalent of a mule.

Oh, the thoughts that would go through Ray Jenkins's head. He could never forget how much his grandfather struggled. As a sharecropper--the bridge from slavery--he had to give so much of what he earned to the plantation owner that he never could escape debt. He would go door to door with a sack of corn on his back, selling ears for a penny apiece. "I never got over it," says Jenkins, 72. "When he died, the relatives had to pass the hat to bury him. That kind of shook me up." So Jenkins waged his campaign, so persistently that he earned the nickname "Reparations Ray," A million bucks for every African American, he proposed. He just made up that figure. "People laughed themselves to death when I told them we were trying to get some money from the government," Jenkins recalls of those early days. "But when the Japanese got their $1.2 billion, they stopped laughing."

In 1988, Congress apologized to Japanese Americans interned in camps during World War II and authorized payments of $20,000 each to roughly 60,000 survivors. Canada followed with its own apology and a $230 million reparations package to Japanese Canadians. All of the sudden, the notion of winning reparations for black Americans didn't seem so crazy. Research revealed other examples of reparations. The German government has paid $60 billion to settle claims from victims of Nazi persecution. Various groups of Eskimos, Native Americans, Aleuts and survivors of a 1923 massacre in a predominantly Black Florida town have also received restitution--combined, more than $1 billion. In Australia, the government has apologized for its treatment of Aborigines after an official inquiry called it genocide. Compensation is being negotiated.

F. Knowledge is power. Soon word spread that the impossible was perhaps plausible. The National Coalition of

Blacks for Reparations in America (N'COBRA) continues to sprout chapters, 26 to date, including one in Washington. The group's attorneys are preparing to file a reparations lawsuit. Last year, Bethune-Cookman College convened a mock trial in Daytona Beach, Fla., at which a biracial jury voted to award Blacks Reparations. Meanwhile, the National Commission for Reparations is seeking redress through the United Nations. and a growing number of scholars are publishing thought-provoking articles in economic journals and law reviews.

Economist Larry Neal, adjusting for inflation, calculates that unpaid net wages to Blacks before emancipation amount to $1.4 trillion today. Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley put the gains of whites from labor market discrimination--just from 1929 to 1969--at $1.6 trillion in present-day dollars. "What I'm trying to do," says Richard America, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University's business school, "is make reparations a serious mainstream public policy concept. It's not about guilt. It's not about blame. It's not about a lot of emotional stuff. This is a problem of accounting." The Bureau of Labor Statistics should get involved, America says, so that an official historical audit can be done of income diverted to whites because of slavery, segregation and employment discrimination. He estimates that blacks are owed $10 trillion by their government.

The thinkers are not talking about cutting government checks to individuals. Most have grander ideas--free college tuition to African Americans for generations and generations. One idea, broached by Time magazine columnist Jack White, is to start a reparations fund--a kind of

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Reparations: The Conversation of Black/AfricansNew Freedmen's Bureau--that would finance such things as school construction, housing and job training centers in areas where slave descendants are a majority. White figures blacks are owed $24 trillion, based on unpaid wages denied 10 million slaves, doubled for pain and suffering with interest added. Installments could be made to the fund over the next 2 1/2 centuries. "My bottom

line is the form of reparations that makes sense is an impassioned recommitment to closing the opportunity gap," says Christopher Edley Jr., a Harvard law professor and an adviser to President Clinton on race relations. "That's the reparations we are due. Not 40 acres and a mule, but world-class schools for our kids." Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer once proposed a deal: Aone-time cash payment of $100,000 for every black family of four, to be financed through a 75-cent gas tax over 10 years, "in return for the total abolition of all programs of racial preference." So now, not only are some blacks arguing for what they believe they are owed, but some whites are also arguing that reparations could be the vehicle for ending affirmative action.

Randall Robinson, president of TransAfrica, has joined the battle with a provocative book due out in January called "The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks." Robinson has put up a reparations Web site (www.thedebt.net) that he hopes will draw young people to the cause. "Let me try to drive the point home here: Through keloids suffering, through coarse veils of damaged self-belief, lost direction, misplaced compass, [expletive]-faced resignation, racial transmutation, black people worked long, hard, killing days, years, centuries--and they were never paid," Robinson writes. "The value of their labor went into others' pockets--plantation owners, northern entrepreneurs, state treasuries, the United States government. "Where was the money? "Where is the money? "There is a debt here. "I know of no statute of limitations either legally or morally that would extinguish it. Financial quantities are nearly as indestructible as matter. Take away here, add there, interest compounding annually, over the years, over the whole of the twentieth century. "Where is the money? "Jews have asked this question of countries and banks and corporations and collectors and any who had been discovered at the end of the slimy line holding in secret places the gold, the art, the money that was the rightful property of European Jews before the Nazi terror. Jews have demanded what was their due and received a fair measure of it. "Clearly, how blacks respond to the challenge surrounding the simple demand for restitution will say a lot more about us and do a lot more for us than the demand itself would suggest." "The issue here is not whether or not we can, or will, win reparations," Robinson concludes. "The issue rather is whether we will fight for reparations because we have decided for ourselves that they are our due."

G. A Lot More to Talk About' It is virtually impossible to overestimate the difficulty of the fight. Let's start with the

matter of a government apology for slavery. Here's what President Clinton said during his trip to Africa last year: "Going back to the time before we were even a nation, European Americans received the fruits of the slave trade and we were wrong in that." That's it. And for that, Clinton was pilloried. "Here is a flower child with gray hair doing exactly what he did back in the '60s," said House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.). "He is apologizing for the actions of the U.S." Rep. Tony Hall (D-Ohio) authored what he thought would be a simple congressional apology for slavery two years ago, a gesture of conscience in the effort to advance race relations. Then came the fiery reactions. Mail ran 60-40 against his proposal. Whites accused him of stirring racial anger by lifting history from the dead. Blacks saw his resolution as empty symbolism. "I don't know that we'll ever apologize while I'm in Congress," Hall says, because I'm not sure the country is ready for it.

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Reparations: The Conversation of Black/AfricansI couldn't believe the hate and anger that came about because of it, and I guess this

country is ready for it. I couldn't believe the hate and anger that came about because of it, and I got it. To get even minimum contemplation on the subject, you have to ask the question. The men and women who make the laws of this country and preside over the government are not

ordinarily thinking about the effects of slavery as they go about their rounds. It's not on their briefing schedule.

Vice President Gore is asked for his views. Long pause. "I think that it is a question that needs to be dealt with respectfully and with great sensitivity to those who are interested in the idea, not really for the money it represents," he says in an interview, "but rather for the symbolic Atonement they associate with it. At the end of the day, most agree that it's not a politically feasible idea." Gore is then asked if he would support a bill such as Conyers's that calls only for a study commission. No pause. "I'm for handling it sensitively without conveying a sense that it's ever likely to occur, because it's not." "I'm not trying to duck the question," says Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who is approached outside the Senate chamber after a vote. "I suspect there are a lot of things we could have reparations on. Is it a debate that benefits anyone--black or white? I don't know the answer to that question."

"I have never been a fan of reparations for anything," says Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), who is waiting for an elevator in the Capitol. "There have always been bad things that have happened to people. Slavery was lawful. But I don't think there is anything to be gained by going backward to try to come up with some way to pay for something that you can't put a monetary price tag on." Of course probing questions sometimes yield ironic answers. Suppose there was a financial incentive to prove one's DNA contained the genes of slave ancestors? "It would literally pay to be black," says Armstrong Williams, a black conservative commentator who has just left the office of Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.). Williams is not for reparations. "Everybody and their momma would claim they were black."

H. A Mind Opening? Conyers has heard it all. The jokesters with their wisecracks. The duckers and dismissers,

naysaying away. They don't ruffle him. "In a sense this is just another legal question that has to be answered."  Have Comments to share? Discuss this topic and more with other people. [Join the Conversation] Opponents say there is no precedent for paying people who are dead, that reparations are usually awarded to survivors. Advocates say there can be no deadline for justice, that the consequences of slavery have been borne by the living. Opponents say it is unfair to penalize 20th-century immigrants for a system not of their making. Advocates say it is the responsibility of this nation's government to make amends for the horrors it authorized and promoted. Conyers knows all the arguments. He also knows it is not often that people will even engage the subject. But every now and then someone will surprise him--perhaps a member of Congress who is ready to give his legislation a look. "It's something I certainly would consider," says Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine). "Has anybody held hearings on this issue? I certainly would not be averse to considering it." That's progress, says Conyers. Another open mind willing to wrestle with slavery's impact on modern America. Some day, he adds, "the most hidden, important, silent subject we've ever had in this country" will be addressed. "What we're trying to do now is just get the debate going to see where it will lead us." By Kevin Merida

I. Imari Obadele: The Father of the Modern Reparations Movement!Written By Robert C. Smith

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Reparations: The Conversation of Black/AfricansImari Obadele

The issue of reparations has received increased attention in the last several months. Local and state legislative bodies have taken up the issue; articles have appeared in leading newspapers and magazines; it has been a topic of lively debate on the Internet and local and national television and radio programs; and Randall Robinson's TransAfrica conducted a nationally

televised symposium on the subject. Also, The Boston Globe reports that Harvard's much publicized dream team" of African American intellectuals is considering legal and legislative actions to secure reparations.

In virtually all of this discussion, hardly any mention has been made of Imari Obadele, the individual who probably should be described as the father of the modern reparations movement. That Obadele's work has been ignored is not surprising, given how the mainstream media, Black and white, covers African American politics. This coverage is frequently uninformed and almost always biased and myopic, focusing mainly on the familiar disputes between Black liberals and conservatives and Black Democrats and Republicans, while ignoring - relegating to the fringes - the powerful tradition of nationalism in the Black Community's politics.

Bishop Henry M. Turner was the first African American leader to call for reparations. He did so near the end of the Reconstruction era. The Nation of Islam has, since its inception, called for reparations, and the Republic of New Africa (RNA), organized by Obadele and his Malcolm X Society associates in 1968, demanded payment of $400 billion in "slavery damages." However, the modern movement for reparations did not take organizational form until 1988, when Obadele and his associates formed the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (NCOBRA).

NCOBRA initiates litigation, publishes a newsletter and sponsors national and regional conferences. Professor Obadele gave the closing argument in a mock trial at Bethune-Cookman College in 1998, where a bi-racial jury voted to award reparations. At its tenth annual convention held in St. Louis in June 1999, NCOBRA adopted the "Six Down-Payment Demands on the U.S. Government," which demanded that a billion dollars each be given to ten black colleges, that a billion dollars be placed in a black economic development fund, that $20,000 be awarded to each black family, that a billion dollars be given to black farmers, and that all "political prisoners" be released. For more information, visit the NCOBRA website.

Imari Obadele is currently a professor of political science at Prairie View A & M University, where he has been on the faculty since 1990. A leading scholar of nationalism, Obadele served for twenty years as Provisional President of RNA and is currently a member of the group's national legislative council. The principal aim of the RNA since its formation has been the organization of a plebiscite among African-Americans in order to determine whether they would wish to form an independent nation-state within the current boundaries of the United States. Professor Obadele has written extensively on the right of blacks under prevailing standards of international law to have been accorded after the Civil War the opportunity to choose independent nation-state status rather than forcible incorporation into the United States.

In August of 1971, as part of its COINTELPRO program to "expose, disrupt and otherwise neutralize" black nationalist and other radical organizations, the FBI conducted a pre-dawn raid on the Jackson, Mississippi headquarters of the RNA. In the ensuing gun battle, a Jackson police officer was killed and an FBI agent and another policeman were wounded. Obadele and several other RNA officials were sentenced to long prison terms. He spent nearly five years behind bars, but as a result of national grassroots mobilization and a legal campaign, he was eventually freed. He immediately resumed his leadership work in the RNA. But he also

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Reparations: The Conversation of Black/Africansdecided to combine his life of activism with scholarship, enrolling at Temple University where he earned a BA in 1981, a Master's in 1982 and a Ph.D in 1985. His areas of specialization include American government, constitutional law, international relations and African American politics. Before joining the faculty at Prairie View, Obadele taught at William Paterson College and the College of Wooster.

A prolific scholar, Professor Obadele has written three textbooks, co-edited two volumes (including The Forty Acres Documents, an important reference source on reparations) and in 1984 authored Free The Land, an autobiographical account of his work in the RNA during the 1970s.

I recently spoke to Imari Obadele. Question: When did you first become active in the black freedom struggle?

Answer: I grew up in Philadelpha, Pennsylvania, and managed to join the Boy Scouts at 11, in 1941. My brother Milton, a Lincoln University student, had joined the 99th Pursuit Squadron to begin training as a radio operator. He was commissioned by the Signal Corps as a second lieutenant and then went on to become a fighter pilot. Milton was one of the leading black officers who fought against the discriminatory impositions suffered by black officers, including the inability to be admitted to officers' clubs on various bases, the frequent refusals of white enlisted men to salute black officers. He took his complaints to Air Force Headquarters at Mitchell Field, New York, and was ultimately court-martialed and given an "other than Honorable" discharge. He completed work at Lincoln University without the GI Bill, was then refused admission at Temple University Law School, but was admitted to Yale Law School, from which he graduated in 1947 and subsequently passed the Michigan bar.

As teenagers, myself and my neighborhood buddies, as Explorer Scouts, avidly followed Milton's struggle as it was reported in the Pittsburgh Courier and other Afro-American national newspapers. His dauntless struggle -- particularly as he continued his fight against racism when he returned home -- inspired all of us, including myself, to make a commitment to ending our people's oppression and injustice. In Philadelphia in those early years Milton and I were instrumental in forming a Civil Rights group, which brought W.E.B. Du Bois to town, and which also led to an effort to create a boycott against the segregation in the U.S. military. This case -- with Devreaux Tomlinson of Philadelphia as main plaintiff -- never went to trial, but we believe that Truman's order to integrate the army in terms of units (not within units), as the Korean War began in the summer of 1950, was a response to this campaign. will lead us." By Kevin Merida

Question: What led you to conclude that an independent state is the optimum outcome of the black freedom struggle in the United States?

Answer: My brothers Milton Henry and Lawrence Henry (a freelance news reporter and photographer) met with Malcolm X and shortly before King's "March on Washington" introduced me to the brother. The Detroit organization which we had formed, a civil and economic rights group called "The Group on Advanced Leadership" (GOAL), invited Malcolm X and others involved in the rights movement to speak for us in Detroit. Here he made his formidable "Message To The Grassroots" speech.

This was a turning point in my political life. I was married with four children and employed at the U.S. Tank-Automotive Command as a technical writer, and attending classes at

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Reparations: The Conversation of Black/AfricansWayne State University when I could. GOAL was peopled by many persons, some of whom have become educators and political luminaries in Detroit. Malcolm's speech was early November 1963. Kennedy was killed two weeks later, and Elijah Muhammad, head of the Nation of Islam, suspended Malcolm for having commented that "the chickens have come home to roost." Milton and myself and others in Detroit, and armed brothers in Brooklyn and the Los

Angeles area, who were followers of Malcolm but not members of the Nation of Islam, became Malcolm's support, though we failed to stop his 1965 assassination.

Within three years our Malcolm X Society had called a "Black Government Conference" in Detroit and established a Provisional Government, named the unfree nation as the Republic of New Africa, and charged the Provisional Government with leading the struggle for independence of the Republic. The Declaration of Independence was signed 31 March 1968, the same Sunday that Lyndon Johnson announced that he would not seek re-election as President of the United States. Robert Williams, in exile in China, was named our first President. Milton was named First Vice President and Betty Shabazz was named second Vice President. I was named Minister of Information.

Question: How do you respond to critics who say the idea of an independent black nation-state is a fantasy -- completely unrealistic -- because it is not desired by most blacks, and not achievable even if desired?

Answer: Our effort is to recruit those who do believe that creating a state as independent as Canada is possible and will work to achieve it. People have a right to believe it is a fantasy. But what's new? The United States and its institutions have worked to make all of our people believe that because of the Fourteenth Amendment we have been "made" into U.S. citizens. Even many Black professors refuse to write in their books or teach their classes that New African people -- persons born in the United States and descended from Africans once held in slavery -- had and have after the Thirteenth Amendment the right to political self-determination.

We should have been asked -- as a group and individually -- what we wanted to choose as our political future. Instead, the United States, which theretofore had refused the application of the Rule of Jus Soli [an ancient legal standard that tied citizenship to place of birth] to Africans born in America, assumed that they could deny us the right to self-determination when they passed the Thirteenth Amendment and, then, passing the Fourteenth Amendment two-and-a-half years later, could impose the Rule of Jus Soli upon us. The most modest count indicates that over nine percent of our 40 million population desire independence today, despite the years of U.S. brainwashing. Time and events will bring the reality to the rest of us. The key is information and choice.

Question: Given your long-time involvement in the reparations struggle, what do you think of the recently highly publicized efforts of Randall Robinson and others?

Answer: Mr. Robinson's book [The Debt: What America Owes Blacks] has helped to make reparations a household word, coming after ten years of struggle by NCOBRA. Those who are joining the fight will emphasize, we trust, the importance of the 27-odd chapters across the country continuing their consultations with Black organizations everywhere to decide the forms of reparations and establish elected local organs to deal with the collective aspects of the payment, economic development, education, and release of people from jail based on reviews by elected community parole boards.

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Reparations: The Conversation of Black/Africans

Question: What's your thinking on the Africa-based initiatives led by the OAU and Ali Mazrui? Are there connections, coordination between the African American and African initiatives? If not, should there be?

Answer: We in America and our people throughout the Diaspora must work together. NCOBRA is involved in this work.

Question: Also, to what extent is there communications or coordination between NCOBRA, Robinson and other activists who have recently embraced the cause?

Answer: NCOBRA is a mass-based organization, which includes members like Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, the National Conference of Black Political Scientists, the National Conference of Black Lawyers. The NAACP has passed a resolution asking chapters to work with NCOBRA.

 Have Comments to share? Discuss this topic and more with other people.[Join the Conversation]Question: Some blacks say that while reparations are owed it is not likely that the debt will be paid, and that a highly visible national debate on the issue will be racially divisive (a 1997 poll found that while 65% of blacks supported reparations, it was opposed by 88% of whites) and in the long run harmful to blacks. What's your judgment?

Answer: Many New African people, unfortunately, must have our souls repaired and appreciate our history. We have always achieved things that were supposed to be impossible. The United States will do what all countries do: They pay when they MUST, when paying is the best alternative to what else they face. What is this about racial divisiveness? We are supposed to allow a nation of thieves, the whites, to remain comfortable with the wealth and rectitude stolen from us?

Question: At this point, where do you see the movement going in the next several years?

Answer: Movements reach critical points. In the next several years, reparations will be won and we will begin to use the proceeds in the best manner to repair ourselves as a people and once more provide black genius to the world.

IV. The legal basis of the claim for Reparations: By Lord Anthony Gifford, British Queens Counsel and Jamaican Attorney-at-LawI am a lawyer who has striven for human rights and justice in many parts of the world.

Much of my work has concerned the manifold injustices which are caused by the evil of racism. Especially, I have stood in solidarity with Black people in Britain in their bitter and continuing struggle for equal rights, and with the liberation movements of Mozambique, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa, in the still unfinished cause of complete African liberation. I now live and practice law in Jamaica.

I believe that the cause of Reparations to Africa and Africans in the Diaspora is rooted in fundamental justice - a justice which over-arches every struggle and campaign which African people have waged to assert their human dignity. For the iniquities perpetrated against African

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Reparations: The Conversation of Black/Africanspeople today - whether in South Africa by the apartheid regime, in Mozambique and Angola by terrorist forms of de stabilisation, in Britain and the USA by racist attacks and by systems of discrimination - are the continuing consequences, the damages as lawyers would say, flowing from the 400-years-long atrocity of the slave system.

For me as a lawyer it is essential to locate the claim for Reparations within a framework of law and justice. If this were merely an appeal to the conscience of the White world, it would

be misconceived. For while there have been many committed individuals and movements of solidarity in the White world, its political an economic power centres have evidenced a ruthless lack of conscience when it comes to Black and African peoples.

But in my experience progress has been made when the powers that rule in the white world have been compelled to recognise that the rights of non-white peoples are founded in justice. It is then that forms of legal redress, which may not have existed before, have been devised. For example, it used to be perfectly legal in Britain, only 25 years ago, for landlords or employers to put up notices which said "VACANCIES - NO COLOUREDS". Today any employer who discriminates on racial grounds can be required by a Tribunal to pay compensation. At an intentional level, apartheid in South Africa used to be regarded as an internal affair, however regrettable. But over the years apartheid became recognised as a crime against humanity and a threat to peace, so that international sanctions could be imposed.

This is not to say that the achievement of legal sanctions brings automatic justice. This has not happened either in Britain or South Africa. But these examples show that the demand for justice and legality is an essential element in the struggle for a just cause. So it is with the claim for Reparations. Indeed, once you accept, as I do, the truth of three propositions:

a. That the mass kidnap and enslavement of Africans was the most wicked criminal enterprise in recorded human history,

b. That no compensation was ever paid by any of the perpetrators to any of the sufferers, and

c. That the consequences of the crime continue to be massive, both in terms of the enrichment of the descendants of the perpetrators, and in terms of the impoverishment of Africa and the Descendants of Africans then the justice of the claim for Reparations is proved beyond reasonable doubt.

Those who may say that that is all very true in theory, but that in practice there is no mechanism to enforce the claim, or no willingness of the white world to recognise it. I would answer with a Latin legal maxim: ubi jus, ibi remedium. Where there is a right, there must be a remedy. Lawyers abhor an injustice without a remedy like a vacuum is abhorred by nature. Once the claim is well-founded in legal principle, and well-recognised by the international community, remedies and mechanisms will be fund.

Even so, given the unique, massive and multi-faceted nature of the claim, international jurists will be needed who can show corresponding creativity and imagination. International law has never been static. New structures have often been devised to give effect to recognised principles. The Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal is an example of new legal thinking which brought a measure justice following the atrocities for Nazism. The International Court of Justice, where states could settle disputes with each other by law rather than by war, was unknown at the start of this century.

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Reparations: The Conversation of Black/AfricansThis paper is an attempt to conceptualise a legal framework for the formulation and prosecution of the claim for Reparations. It is argued by reference to seven fundamental propositions.

1. The enslavement of Africans was a crime against humanity. The Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal defined crimes against humanity in these words:

"Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population.... whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country here perpetrated" The Charter also gave jurisdiction to the Tribunal to try cries against Peace ('planning, reparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression...'), and War Crimes ('violation of the laws and customs of war... including murder, ill-treatment, or deportation to slave labour or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory..')

It is considered by international lawyers that the Nuremberg Charter did not create new law, but declared and confirmed concepts of international criminality which had been accepted over centuries. As one writer puts it: • "The tribunal found that acts so reprehensible as to offend the conscience of mankind, directed against civilian populations, are crimes in international law" D.P.O'Connell, International Law for Students

In 1948 the United Nations promoted the Convention of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. It has been ratified by most countries in the world. Again, the Convention was giving a new legal form to an old concept in international law. The preamble to the Convention recognised that "genocide is a crime against international law", and that "at all periods of history genocide has inflicted great losses on humanity. Genocide was defined: • "Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a).Killing members of the group; (b).Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c).Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part..."

Historians and their experts can show without difficulty how the invasion of African territories, the mass capture of Africans, the horrors of the middle passage, the chattelisation of Africans in the Americas, the extermination of the language and culture of the transported Africans, constituted violations of all these international laws. The argument that such crimes were 'legal' under European law, and accepted as normal by most Europeans, would be unavailing. Europeans did not, then or now, constitute all mankind, and the conscience of all decent mankind must always have been outraged by the atrocities which Europeans inflicted on Africans over 400 years. Indeed it can be said that it was the ultimate crime against humanity, to deny human status to a vas section of humankind.

2. International law recognises that those who commit crimes against humanity must make reparation. The right to reparation is well recognised in international law. It has been defined by the Permanent Court of International Justice (the predecessor of the International Court of Justice) in these terms: •"The essential principle contained in the actual notion of an illegal act - a principle which seems to be established by international practice and in particular by the decisions of arbitrate tribunals - is that reparation must, as far as possible, wipe out all the consequences of the illegal act and re-establish the situation which would, in all probability, have existed if that act had not been committed. Restitution in kind or, if this is not possible, payment of a sum corresponding to the value which a restitution in kind would bear; the award, if need be, of damages for loss sustained

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Reparations: The Conversation of Black/Africanswhich would not be covered by restitution in kind or payment in place of it - such are the principles which should serve to determine the amount of compensation due for an act contrary to international law." Chorzow Factory Case, Germany v Poland, 1928

The leading textbook on international law by Schwarzenberge described the recognition of the right to reparation as a process: "International judicial institutions have slowly groped their way towards the articulate formulation of the rule that the commission of an international tort (wrong) entails the duty to make reparations." Most of the case law on reparations concerns the compensation for specific losses such as the destruction of property, buildings, ships etc. But the principle is just as valid in the case of illegal actions on a larger scale which affect whole peoples. Indeed there are direct precedents for the payment of reparations in such cases:

In 1952, the Federal Republic of Germany reached agreement with Israel for the payment of $222 million, following a claim . Israel which was limited to the costs of resettling 500,000 Jews who had fled from Nazi controlled countries. Much later, in 1990, Austria made payments totalling $25 milllion to survivors of the Jewish holocaust.

A number of agreements have been made under the British Foreign Compensation Act of 1950; lump sum settlements were made by Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, Egypt and Rumania, and a Tribunal was set up to make awards from the sums made available. So as to do justice as between many thousands of claimants whose property had been expropriated. A US-Iran Claims Tribunal was set up in 1981 for a similar purpose. Japan has made reparation payments to South Korea for acts committed during the period of invasion and occupation of Korea by Japan. Most recently, the United Nations Security Council has passed a resolution, binding in international law, requiring Iraq to pay reparations for its invasion of Kuwait. It is therefore clear that the concept of reparations is firmly established and actively pursued by states, on behalf of their injured nationals, against other wrongdoing states. In addition, one can identify a second category of reparations which is of great relevance. This is where a state has accepted the responsibility to make restitution, not just to other states, to groups of people within its own borders whose rights had been violated.

In 1988 the United States Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act, which was designed to make restitution to Japanese Americans in respect of losses brought about by "any discriminatory act of the US Government...based upon the individual's Japanese ancestry during the wartime period when Japanese Americans were interned in great numbers. A Commission was set up to investigate' claims. A total of $1.2 billion, or about $20,000 for each claimant, was paid. The Act began by stating the basis for reparations in clear terms which could be applied with the greatest relevance to the claims of African peoples:

A. "The purposes of this Act are to :

(1) Acknowledge the fundamental injustice of the evacuation, relocation and internment of US citizens and permanent resident aliens of Japanese ancestry during World War II;

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Reparations: The Conversation of Black/Africans(2) Apologise on behalf of the people of the US (4) Make restitution to those individuals of Japanese ancestry who were interned...

(7) Make more credible and sincere any declaration of concern by the US over violations of human rights committed by other nations."

Similar provision was made for restitution to the Aleut residents of various Alaskan islands "in settlement of US obligations in equity and at law, for injustices suffered and unreasonable hardships endured while those Aleut residents were under US control".

Some steps have been taken to recognise the rights to restitution of indigenous peoples whose land was plundered and occupied, and whose people were decimated, especially in the United States, Canada, and Australia. Each of these countries have made land rights settlements and/or financial payments to indigenous peoples. These are woefully inadequate gestures, given the atrocities committed in those countries against indigenous peoples. But they represent some recognition that the surviving generations of indigenous peoples have the right to a measure of reparation for the crimes committed against their ancestors.

3. There is no legal, barrier to prevent those who still suffer the consequences of crimes against humanity from claiming reparations, even though the crimes were committed against their ancestors Whether the descendants of the immediate victims of a crime have a right to reparations, will depend on the nature of the claim being made.

The US payments to Japanese Americans were aimed at making restitution for the suffering of those actually interned. The Austrian payment was to survivors of the concentration camps, again to make reparation for the physical and mental agony of the concentration camps. If a victim died before the claim were agreed, his claim died with him, since the pain and suffering were personal to him. But there are many cases where the consequences of the crime committed are visited upon descendants. Where property has been expropriated, the loss is suffered not merely by the then owner, but also by his descendants who have lost an inheritance which would otherwise have been theirs. In such cases, international law gives a remedy, even if the claimant was not born at the time of the expropriation. For example, the Order made under the British Foreign Compensation Act of 1950 provided that the Foreign Compensation Commission should treat as established any claim relating to certain property in Egypt which had been sequestrated by the Nasser government if the applicant was the owner "or is the successor in title of such owner", making it plain that the children and the grandchildren of the original dispossessed owners were entitled to claim.

More recently, since the unification of Germany, claims have been pressed successfully by the sons and daughters of property owners whose lands were seized after the German Democratic Republic was set up. No one doubts their right to claim, even though they may have been children, or even unborn, when their family's land were taken over. Claims have been made not only by descendants, but by the nation state which has had to bear the burden of paying for the consequences of the crime. As noted above, Israel successfully claimed reparations from West Germany for the costs of resettling Jewish refugees - even though the state of Israel did not exist at the time when the Nazi regime committed its crimes against the Jews. It is also significant that West Germany, which felt obliged to meet the claim, was also a different state, territorially as well as politically, from the German Reich which was responsible for the atrocities.

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Reparations: The Conversation of Black/AfricansIn principle, therefore, the passage of time since slavery ended is no barrier to the claim

of African peoples, provided that it can be pro-led that the consequences of the crime of slavery continue to manifest themselves to the prejudice of Africans now living in Africa and the Diaspora. On this point, the evidence of historical experts is clear and unequivocal. On the African continent, flourishing civilisations were destroyed; ordered systems of government were mashed up; millions of citizens were forcibly removed and a pattern of poverty and

underdevelopment directly resulted, which now affects nearly every resident of Black Africa. In the Americas, the slavery system gave rise to poverty, landlessness, under development, as well as to the crushing of culture and language, the loss of identity, the inculcation of inferiority among Black people, and the indoctrination of whites into a racist mindset - all of which continue to this day to affect the prospects and quality of Black People's lives in the Caribbean, USA, Canada and Europe.

While there is no limitation period in international law, unreasonable delay could be a reason for refusing a claim. A state which had a just claim, but which failed to advance it over a long period, could be held to have acquiesced in the wrong or to have waived its right to claim reparations. However, no objection along these lines could properly be made against the claim of Africa and Africans in the Diaspora. In the case of Africa and the Caribbean region, the period of slavery and the slave trade was followed by the period of colonialism. It can be argued that colonialism itself was a crime in international law, for it was a usurpation, imposed by force, of the rights of the colonised peoples to their sovereignty. It was at the very least a crime against peace, and in most if not all colonised territories, crimes against humanity were frequently committed.

In the case of the United States, former slaves were subjected to a system of exclusion, separate development, racial persecution, civil rights denials and ghettolisation, which has only in part been overcome in the recent years following the civil rights movement. The important point is that African peoples, until recently, had no independent voice, nor even any status in the world community. How could, the people of, say, Ghana or Jamaica make a claim for reparations when their country was considered to be an 'overseas possession of the very country whose people had kidnapped and enslaved their ancestors? Still less were African-Americans, as they struggled for the right to be recognised as citizens, in any position to make any claims - even if there was any international forum in which a claim could be brought, which there was not.

Even after the independence of African nations had succeeded from colonialism, the shackles of neo-colonialism have fettered the power of African governments to speak with any real independence against their former conquerors. It is by no means unreasonable or surprising that it has taken some 30 years since formal independence for a claim for reparations to be voiced. Indeed I would argue that now, as never before, is the right time for this claim to be made, as African leaders are speaking with a new confidence and operating in new democratic structures.

4. The claim would be brought on behalf of all Africans, in Africa and in the Diaspora, who suffer the consequences of the crime, through the agency of an appropriate representative body.

So far I have been dealing with the legal basis for the reparations claim. The last. four sections deal with questions which a legal analyst is bound to raise, however difficult it is to answer the:

Who are to be the Plaintiffs, or claimants for reparations?

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Reparations: The Conversation of Black/AfricansWho are to be the Defendants against whom the claim is made?

What are the damages to be claimed?

In what court is the claim to be made?

Here we sail into uncharted waters, since no claim for reparations of this magnitude has ever been brought. Hundreds of millions of people, in different continents of the world, have an interest in this claim. Their losses may seem almost impossible to quantify. Some minds are so daunted by the practical problems involved that they conclude that the claim is unrealistic. I do not hold any such defeatist view. Once the first three propositions are accepted as valid, and the right to reparations is seen to be soundly established in international law, then ways of doing justice can and will be found. Difficulties of scale or procedure should not be obstacles to justice. The unwillingness of the white world to consider the claim is not a reason for giving it up, but rather a spur to mobilising awareness and support around the issue.

However, in addressing these questions I seek to identify the principles involved, rather than to furnish precise answers, which can only be developed over time and experience, and after deep study. Who are the claimants for reparations? The broad answer is that all Africans, on the continent or Africa and in the Diaspora, who suffer the consequences of the crime of mass kidnap and enslavement, have an interest in this claim. I am opposed to any divisiveness in the formulation of the claim. If, for example, we plan for an Africans-on-the-Continent claim and a separate Africans-in-the-Diaspora claim, we will already have begun to splinter into fractions. All Africans around the world] have been affected in some way by the crime of slavery. Even those who have succeeded in a business or a profession have had to face racial prejudice at the least. And while there may be some whose families enriched themselves by collaboration with the slavers, that should not be allowed to undermine the overall truth that the rape of Africa impoverished all Africans, both those who were taken and those who were left behind.

Who should process the claim on behalf of so many? This is a matter which transcends national governments - but governments are the chief implementers of social programmes, as well as being responsible for the repayment of their country's foreign debt. They should neither be excluded from, nor have sole control over, the prosecution of the claim. In any case, African-Americans, African British, French Africans, and others who are in a minority in the country where they have settled, have no government which could speak for them. Some form of appropriate, representative and trustworthy body will be required; its size and composition, and the mechanisms for setting it up, will become clearer as the movement for reparations develops.

5. The claim would be brought against the governments of those counties which promoted and were enriched by the African slave trade and the institution of slavery. Who is responsible for paying reparations? Here it is more appropriate to concentrate on the Governments of the countries which fostered and supported the slave trade, which legitimised the institution of slavery, and which have profited as a result. It would be possible to identify individual companies which could be proved to have made vast profits from slavery. There are plantation owners in Jamaica, and titled families in England, whose living heirs owe their wealth to slaving. Should such companies and families be targeted as individual Defendants to a reparations claim?

In my view such an approach would create more problems than it solved. Enormous research would be needed to identify the companies and families, to determine how much money was made by their ancestors, and to calculate how much should be forfeited by the present

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Reparations: The Conversation of Black/Africansshareholders or family members. The process would inevitably be somewhat arbitrary, and potentially oppressive, and it would be rejected both by the targets themselves and their governments.

I would however make one exception, when it can be proved that a work of art or an artefact, now in a public or private collection, was originally obtained illegally in the course of an invasion or plundering exercise in Africa. In this one case, the international law concept of

restitution in kind could be applied. The reparation process must include the restoration of identifiable treasures to the country which most closely represents the people from whom they were robbed. In reality in these cases of restitution, the individual owner would lose the work of art, but would most probably receive compensation for its value from his own government. This is because the restitution would have been made with the co-operation of the relevant European or other government; and it is a normal principle that compensation must be paid when private property is taken away by act of a government. The reasons why the 'Defendants' to the reparation claim should be governments, are in my view that it is governments which have some measure of control over their national wealth, through their reserves and their taxation powers; it is governments who must in the end be persuaded that reparations are to be paid as a matter of justice; it is governments who can determine whether Africa's debt burden should be unladen from its shoulders; and it is governments which are responsible for making international treaties and implementing them through the passage of laws.

Historians will advise as to which countries have profited most from slavery and the slave trade. The major European maritime trading nations and colonisers can be easily identified. So can the United States, as a country which grew rich on slave labour and the exploitation of African Americans. However, as the next section indicates, the assessment and evaluation of responsibility will be a vast undertaking.

6. The amount of the claim would be assessed by experts in each aspect of life and in each region, affected by the institution of slavery. The assessment of what should be claimed is perhaps the most pressing and onerous task to be faced by the reparations movement. Each affected country will have to be studied, and perhaps even each people with each country. Different considerations will apply to the peoples of the African continent; the peoples of the now independent countries where slavery flourished; and the people who are now minorities in Europe or North America.

The damage may be classified and researched under different headings. There is economic damage, cultural damage, social damage/ psychological damage. To put monetary figures on any of the elements of the claim raises questions to which I have no answers: how do you assess the value of the loss to an African people of a young person, kidnapped and transported over 200 years ago? What figure can be placed on the psychological damage inflicted by a system which is still deeply racist? Can it be proved that the slave system destroyed old and flourishing African civilisations, and if so, how is their value to be measured? What level of restitution is appropriate for the African peoples of the Diaspora?

Another approach, perhaps to be adopted in parallel, is to measure the amount by which various European nations were directly enriched by the institution of slavery. In the Report of the Inquiry into Racism in Liverpool, which I conducted in 1989, I quoted the historian Ramsay Muir, who wrote in 1907. He described the slave trade as '"The pride of Liverpool", for it flooded the town with wealth which invigorated every industry, provided the capital for docks, enriched and employed the mills of Lancashire, and afforded the means of opening out new and every new lines of trade. Beyond a doubt it was the slave trade which raised Liverpool from a

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Reparations: The Conversation of Black/Africansstruggling port to be one of the richest and most prosperous trading centres in the world." Similar evidence could be uncovered about Bristol, London, Bordeaux, and many other ports. And naturally the wealth generates through the ports spread into the whole country. But here too, even if the general picture is clear, the detailed evaluation is not easy. Is it possible to work out the amount of profits which poured into the ports of Europe? If so, how should that amount be

translated into present-day money? Is the process any easier in the case of North America and the Caribbean, in relation to the profits of the plantation-owners?

Fortunately there are many seekers after truth who are trying to find answers to all these questions through careful research. Any figures put on the various elements of the reparations claim will at best be estimates made from a basis of sound historical research. However the Research process itself will have a value far beyond the calculation of figures. It will be an educative process through which the horrors of the past will be re-examined. The more the details of the slave system and its consequences are exposed, the more understanding there will be, among African people and white, of the justice of the reparations claim.

7. The claim, if not settled by agreement, would ultimately be determined by a special international tribunal recognised by all parties. There is at present no court which would be competent to hear a claim for Reparations for Africa and Africans in the Diaspora. The International Court of Justice is competent to hear claims by one state against another for breaches of international law. But this claim is on a much vaster scale than a claim between states. It would need a new mechanism, commensurate with the unique and massive issues of which I have spoken.

The absence of a court is no impediment to the Reparations claim. In the examples given earlier, the legitimacy of the claim was recognised and embodied in an agreement, without there having been any pre-existing tribunal to deal with the grievance. As part of the agreement a mechanism for dealing with individual claims has been established. The nature of the court which makes the binding decisions will depend on the issues at stake and the negotiations which have preceded the agreement.

For example, the agreement made between Iran and the United States for the payment of reparations set up a nine-member Commission, consisting of three American judges, three Iranian, and three from countries not involved in the dispute. It sat in three chambers of three judges, and made adjudication's on nearly four thousand claims.

At this stage, therefore, it is premature to consider the composition of any Commission or Tribunal which might ultimately; adjudicate upon the African Reparations Claim. The adjudicating body will only carry authority if it has been set up with the concurrence of all parties to the dispute. The international recognition of the justice of the claim is a condition precedent to the setting up of any judicial machinery. This, then is the great task in which lawyers have a specific but significant contribution to make. They are only a small part of the panoply of forces which will be needed - historians, archaeologists, artists, writers, politicians, sociologists, psychologists, and beyond them all people of good will, of all races, which perceive that the crime of slavery was a monstrous evil, for which atonement and reparation is long overdue.

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Reparations: The Conversation of Black/AfricansV. From Slave Ship to Space Ship: Africans between Marginalization and Globalization

By Ali Mazrui, African Studies Quarterly, Vol. 2, issue 4 22 April 1999When we formulated the title "From Slave Ship to Space-Ship", we did not have Senator

John Glenn's 1998 space odyssey in mind. By coincidence this odyssey was happening at the same time as this panel in November 1998. We did have in mind a link between the slave ship and the subsequent Western capacity to launch space ships or space shuttles. Africa and the African people made a far bigger contribution to the technological revolution of the West than the West did to industrial change in Africa. Walter Rodney was concerned about how Europe

retarded Africa's development. But is there not another big story--the story of how Africa accelerated Europe's development? Did not Rodney also contribute to this second debate? Especially in Chapters III and V of his book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.

A. How Africa Developed the West Each step in Africa's contribution to the development of the West was itself a stage in the

history of globalization. I referred to these stages in my M.K.O. Abiola Lecture for the African Studies Association of the United States in 1994. The era of the labor imperative was when the labor of Africa's sons and daughters was what the West needed for its industrial take-off. The slave ship helped to export millions to the Americas to help in the agrarian revolution in the Americas and the industrial revolution in Europe simultaneously. The enforced dispersal of Black people to serve Western capitalism was itself part of the emerging globalization. In the era of the territorial imperative, the West docked the slave ships away forever and launched the gunboats in their place. This was the era of imperialism and gunboat diplomacy.

Whatever happens, we have gotthe maxim and they have not! The West stopped exporting Africa's sons and daughters and colonized Africa itself.

Imperialism and gunboat diplomacy were part of the ugly side of globalization. Raw materials for Western manufacturing industries became a major temptation. Then came the era of the extractive imperative. Africa's minerals became the next major contributor not only to Western economies but also to Western technology. Uranium from the Belgian Congo was part of the original Manhattan project which produced the first atomic bombs. Other minerals, like cobalt, became indispensable for jet engines. There were times when Africa had 90 percent of the world's known reserves of cobalt, over 80 percent of the global reserves of chrome, and a hefty share of platinum and industrial diamonds.

Africa's impact on the West's technological history in this phase was heavily based on Africa's industrial minerals. The space ship was slowly in the making. As we have reminded ourselves at this conference, Walter Rodney's most popular book looked at how Europe underdeveloped Africa (the slave ship syndrome). The other side of the story is how Africa developed Europe (the space ship potential). Rodney is better known for the negative consequences. We need also to investigate the positive consequences of Africa's impact upon Europe from economic production to space communication and how Walter Rodney contributed to this other debate. Also relevant was Eric Williams's examination of the interplay between capitalism and slavery.

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Reparations: The Conversation of Black/AfricansWe now come to areas of metaphor. Walter Rodney's stay in Tanzania coincided with the

promulgation and aftermath of the "Arusha Declaration on Socialism and Self-Reliance". Arusha is the name of the town where the Declaration occurred in 1967. But what does the word "Arusha" literally mean? It means: "He makes fly (into the skies)." In standard Kiswahili the word is anarusha. In other dialects it is simply arusha: "He makes fly into the skies." Who makes fly? Ancestrally it was God. In 1967, the year of the Arusha Declaration, it was Julius K. Nyerere. He made socialism and self-reliance (ujamaa na kujitegemea) fly. In the space age it could be an astronaut or a cosmonaut who makes a space ship fly. Why is Arusha town called "He makes fly into the skies"? Because the town is located close to Mt. Kilimanjaro, whose pinnacle is the highest point on the African continent. Kilimanjaro is the roof of Africa--from whence God makes things "fly into the skies."

It has been alleged that Walter Rodney's inadequate command of Kiswahili was no handicap for his communication with rural Tanzanians. I beg to disagree. We must not trivialize the relevance of language in human communication; otherwise we might sound like the song:

You don't have to know the language -- With a girl in your armsand the moon up above,you don't have to know the language!

Of course Walter Rodney could relate in friendly terms with rural Tanzanians. But being friendly is different from being Socialist, let alone being Marxist. He could not convey his socialism linguistically to the Tanzanian peasant.

In Africa in the 1960s and the 1970s one could not be a Marxist without being substantially Westernized through a European language. Walter Rodney could not reach rural Tanzanians as a socialist or as a Marxist. He could only reach them as a friendly man. In reality a friendly man could belong to any ideology. A dialectic faced Walter Rodney in relation to the twin policies of Julius Nyerere's Tanzania. Under the Arusha Declaration, Nyerere's policy of socialism brought the national ideology of Tanzania closer to Walter Rodney's own leftist paradigm.

On the other hand, Nyerere's simultaneous language policy of greater Swahilization made Tanzania less and less accessible to Walter Rodney's ideo-cultural skills. Nyerere's socialist policies were opening up ideological doors to Walter Rodney, while Nyerere's Swahilization policies were closing down cultural doors to Walter Rodney. Every stage of Africa's contribution to globalization was also a stage in its own marginalization. Rodney was all too aware that African captives who were turned into slaves entered the emerging world of international capitalism. But those captives were simultaneously a symbol of the marginalization of the African peoples. Imperialism and gunboat diplomacy made colonized Africa part of world-wide empires. But colonized people are inevitably marginalized people. The extractive imperative made African minerals fuel the world economy. African minerals enriched other economies rather than Africa's own.

The space ship was also born out of the rivalries of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies. Sputnik in the firmament in 1958 put the Soviet Union first into orbit. The Soviets borrowed a lot from Western technology, but carried it further. The process of "Arusha" had been sparked out. Soviet Yuri Gagarin was also the first man in space. The West was temporarily beaten at its own game. The "Arusha" space enterprise had been accomplished. A resurgence of American resolve under John F. Kennedy inspired the U.S. space program and enabled the United States first to circle the earth (John Glenn) and later to land the first man on the moon.

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Reparations: The Conversation of Black/AfricansB. The Cold War: Globalizing or Marginalizing?

Africa's involvement in the Cold War was another globalizing experience, but in this case marginalization was temporarily suspended. The rivalries between the two super powers temporarily increased Africa's global strategic value and enhanced Africa's influence in the United Nations, UNESCO, the Commonwealth, and a number of other international forums. It was the end of the Cold War which reactivated Africa's marginalization. The end of the Cold War was a kind of "dis-globalizing" experience. Part of the dis-globalization was good news. The end of the Cold War has initiated the second phase of the French decolonization of Africa. This is the gradual reduction of the French informal empire in Africa. Rolling back French neo-colonialism from Africa is partly the result of the decline of the strategic value of Africa and

partly due to the rise of French economic aspirations for the newly liberated former members of the Warsaw Pact.

The good news is that the end of the Cold War has helped to initiate the second phase of decolonization in Francophone Africa, although there is still a long way to go before real independence for any part of Africa is achieved. The sad news is that while Phase II of French decolonization in Africa is part of the happier story of progress towards African independence. French decolonization is simultaneously part of a more sorrowful story about the end of the Cold War and that is the wider marginalization of Africa in the world. Indeed, perhaps the worst news about the end of the Cold War for Africa is that Africa has been marginalized even more deeply in the following ways: (a) Most of Africa has lost its strategic value which motivated the Big Powers to take it seriously; (b) Africa has lost its socialist friends in world affairs and in the UN; the former members of the Warsaw Pact are now more eager to please the West than to support Third World causes; (c) Africa has lost its one third numerical advantage in the United Nations. Some twenty new members have been admitted to the UN since 1990, only two of which are African (Namibia and Eritrea). The others are former Republics of the USSR, collapsed Yugoslavia, and divided Czechoslovakia; (d) The end of the Cold War has turned the West's old adversaries into Africa's rivals for the West's resources. Aid and investment will increasingly give greater priority to former members of the Warsaw Pact than to Africa; (e) The triumph of "market Marxism" in China and Vietnam have turned those countries into new magnets for Western resources, partly at the expense of old African friends of the West; (f) The collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War have contributed to the renewed liberalization of India which in turn is developing into a new magnet for additional Western investment and aid, inevitably at the partial expense of Africa; (g) The end of the Cold War has undermined part of the old Western rationale for foreign aid as "enlightened self-interest" and so Western legislatures are allocating less and less money for foreign aid. There is less motivation for foreign aid in the absence of rivalry with the USSR; (h) The end of the Cold War has reduced the internationalization of African education. The golden days of diverse scholarships for African students to study in Moscow, Prague, Warsaw, Budapest, and Belgrade seem to be almost over and rival scholarships to study in Western countries have been drastically reduced; (i) The golden days of Czech, Hungarian, and Polish professors teaching at African universities are almost over and resources for Western visiting professors have been drastically reduced. (j) Just as the end of the Cold War has deprived the West of a cornerstone of its foreign policy, it has also deprived Africa of a cornerstone of its own foreign orientation. Although the nonaligned

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Reparations: The Conversation of Black/Africansmovement is still alive and well in the post Cold War era, yet is the word "nonalignment" relevant any longer for African policy after the Cold War? (k) While the West's triumph over Nazism and fascism in World War II helped left wing parties immediately after the war, the West's triumph over communism has helped right wing parties which are less internationalist and less compassionate towards either the domestic poor or poor countries abroad. And such old left wing parties as Labour in Britain have moved to the right. (l) Finally, the end of the Cold War is eroding French commitment to Africa and reducing the level of France's financial contributions to its former colonies. The debate between Europeanists and Africanists continues in France; that a US president could visit in 1998 a former French colony (Senegal) is a sign of French withdrawal. Is there anything that the international

community can do to help Africa? At the moment the flesh is weak and the spirit is not even willing. But we need to set goals. Apart from bilateral aid to individual African countries for economic development, the three long term African oriented goals to be supported should be:

C. Interim Reparation (a) Establishing or strengthening region-wide African institutions and promoting regional integration for greater African self-reliance. (b) Encouraging and helping to institutionalize national trends towards democratization in Africa, with resources for building democratic foundations (free press, election monitors). (c) Strengthening truly global coalitions for Africa including new funding actors like Japan, Taiwan, China, and South Korea, as well as traditional Western friends of Africa (partners as well as reparationists). The international community can also help in the long term solution of the problem of Rwanda and Burundi which will require immense resources. (a) The genocidal behavior of the Hutu and the Tutsi toward each other can only be contained in the context of wider regional integration. (b) Therefore, persuade Rwanda and Burundi to federate with Tanzania, thus disarming Hutu and Tutsi armies. In the new wider society, the Hutu and the Tutsi would rediscover what they have in common. In the political process of the greater Tanzania, Hutu and Tutsi might even form political coalitions against other Tanzanians in the democartic process. (c) But what would make today's Tanzania accept federation with Rwanda and Burundi? The international community would have to make it worth Tanzania's while with large injections of funding for development and resettlement in all three countries. It should also be remembered that all three countries once constituted German East Africa, and all three countries have been substantially Swahilized. In any case, as matters now stand, Tanzania is constantly forced to accept hundreds of thousands of refugees from Burundi and Rwanda every time there is a blow up in those two countries. Disarming the Hutu and Tutsi and making them part of a much larger country under Tanzania's own control might be worth the risk. A final word as to the choice of title "From Slave Ship to Space Ship". While the slave ship can be regarded as the beginning of globalization, the spaceship is, by definition, a symbol of post- globalization. The space ship takes us beyond the globe. Do we really want to go beyond the globe? Senator John Glenn has a wander-lust into space. Indeed, do we really want to be globalized ? "To globalize or not to globalize." That is the question for us and for Arusha, a town in Tanzania steeped in symbolism.

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Reparations: The Conversation of Black/Africans

D. APPENDIX: HEGEMONIC GLOBALIZATION Globalization carries two inter-related consequences whose English words sound similar--homogenization (making all of us look similar) and hegemonization (making one of us the boss).Homogenization(expanding Homogeneity)

Hegemonization(emergence of Hegemonic centre)

Increasing similarities among world societies. Increasing world domination by a specific power or civilization.

At the end of the 20th century people dress more the same all over the world than they did at the end of the 19th century.

But the dress which is the same is overwhelmingly Western dress code.

At the end of the 20th century the human race is closer to having world languages than it was in the nineteenth century - if by a world language we mean one which has at least 300 million speakers, has been adopted by at least 10 countries as a national language, has spread to more than one continent, and is widely used in four continents for special purposes.

But those world languages at the end of the 20th century are disproportionately European - especially English and French - although Arabic is putting forward a strong challenge as a world language in a different sense.

At the end of the 20th century we are closer to a world economy than we have ever been in human history. A sneeze in Hong Kong or Tokyo can send shock waves around the globe.

But the powers who control that economy are disproportionately Western - especially the G-7 (USA, Germany, Japan Britain, France, Canada and Italy in that order of economic muscle).

At the end of the 20th century the internet has given us instant access to both information and mutual communication across huge distances.

But the nerve center of the global internet system is still located in the United States and has residual links with the US Federal Government.

The educational systems at the end of the 20th century are getting more and more similar across the world - with concepts of "associate professorships" and "twosemester" years; with paradigms shared across the globe.

But those shared academic ranks, semesters and scholarly paradigms are disproportionately drawn from the United States and and Western Europe.

The ideological systems of the world at the end of the 20th century are converging.

The people who are orchestrating and sometimes enforcing marketization,

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Reparations: The Conversation of Black/Africans

Market economies are triumphant. Liberalization is being embraced or enforced. Even China has adopted market Marxism. Egypt is pushing the frontiers of Intifada. India is liberalizing.

liberalization and privatization are Western economic gurus - reinforced by the power of the USA, the World Bank, the IMF and the European Union. Indeed, Europe is the mother of all modern ideologies--good and bad--Liberalims, Capitalism, Marxism, Fascism, and Nazism. The most triumphant is Euro-liberal Capitalism.

VI. Conclusion: Blacological AnalysisBlacologically speaking, when one thinks about ontology as a Black/African you must

give consideration to the Soga of slavery and colonialism. The struggle of Black People has been such that we must be educated on the concept of reparations. It would not be real for a Black person to live his/her life without knowing the inhumanity that has been brought on our ancestor and on us today. The social, psychological and all Euro-centric interdisciplinary scientists are of the epistemology of their thinking and act accordingly. It is time that Black/Africans establish how they have come to the truth and stand by their finding and develop those facts into their own system of thinking. These two words, ontology and epistemology, let us know as Black/African scholars that the development of a Blacological Interdisciplinary Science is not just for those who are not Black. Black/Africans must have their own Cultural Science developed by Black/African Scholars. The Act and law of Reparation is not only in raw materials and economics. It is also in Knowledge, Interdisciplinary Science and Scholarship. The right to Black/African epistemology and ontology is humane. Let us not be unrealistic and unconscience about redevelopment as a people. As Cultural Scientists, we must have economic restitution to fund our scientific endeavors, but we must not only look at one aspect of the evolution of Black/African Culture. Dr. W. L. David wrote an example of a Blacological intergrationalist perspective on economic development.

While conducting a study for the development of the "Cultural Science Of Blacology", the research revealed that there are four types of ways or methods in which Black people use as a means to survive in this period of Maafa. These methods are the (1) integrationalism, (2) nationalism, (3) infiltrationalism, and (4) neutralism. (1.) The integrationalist is a method in which the individual goes into other culture to survive or live. This is a method used to acquire materials, resources, and associations with other cultures. This is also a way in which way stations are established. Some times the integrationalist never returns to his original culture, but will establish an extended culture. The integrationalist is also culturally obligated and a collectivist as well. (2.) The nationalist is a method in which Black people develop their own culture. This method is used to build cultural solidarity. This is also the method of family growth and management. This is also the origin of all Black/African people. The nationalist is a collectivist also. (3.) The infiltrationalist is a method by which the individual is sent into other culture to retrieve the resources and information that the integrationist has acquired or the other cultures have made accessible to foreign cultures. The infiltrationist is a cultural fundamentalist and will only stay long enough to receive or learn what is needed and always return to their culture, but not until the mission has been completed. In doing so, the infiltrationist will make foreign lands more sensitive and conscious of their cultural beliefs. The infiltrator will also bring artifacts from his culture and renew the solidarity of the integrationist. The infiltrator is an individualist working for a collective end. (4.) The neutralist is a method in which Black people are not for or against the causes of Black people or their culture. The neutralist does not

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Reparations: The Conversation of Black/Africansconsider themselves Black and does not want to be Black or African. The neutralist denies the importance of Black/African Culture. The neutralist is neither Black or White and will not pay tribute any culture. The neutralist will exploit any one to exist or survive. The neutralist will only use Black causes if it will be to their advantage. The only aspect of Blackness that the neutralist has is his skin color. The neutralist is an individualist working for selfish gains. These methods are some of the findings of twenty years of Blacological Research in the development of the Blacology. There needs to be further research and study on these four methods and ways of survival for Black/African people.

In the first paragraph of his book Dr. W.L. David tends to agree with my ideal about the authenticity of every people as a aspect of development. This is something as old as time of mankind. Each ethnic people has experienced fall and has been resilient in their redevelopment. This I believe is where Black/Africans stand at this point in their history. It is time that Black/Africans acknowledge their time span and look at their existence from that perspective. It is good to acknowledge all people and cultures. But it is time to take a look at who we are and what we must do about it. We must build a future for Black/African children. That future has to be Culturally endowed.

Dr. W.L. David tends to agree that in order for Black/Africans to develop a sustainable culture, there must be both economic and scholastic restitution. Black/Africa needs in the Diaspora and in the Motherland a system developed from the ingenuity of its own human resources. Dr. David provides an excellent perspective on how development works. This is a great analysis of how and why reparations are inevitable. Dr. David makes an excellent case for reparation in his conversation on economic development. Dr. David also writes about the political aspect of cultural reality. The research of Blacology has revealed that politics is a necessary part of cultural development. The concept of theory is an idiom that is prevalent in all people. The conversation on economic development is one that is constant in its acknowledgement that theory must be a bi-product of your culture. Again Dr. David makes appoint for the promotion of Blacological Theory for Black/African People.

The Black/African Reparations Movement must be interwoven in its own logical thought. It is time that Black Culture be placed on the mantel and utilized by its people. When you take a look at the African Reparations Movement, it is obvious that this is a Blacological document that has been carefully thought out for the benefit of Black Culture and its people. This is an example of what I mean when I am saying Blacological. This is the kind of thinking that must be done to achieve the success in the redevelopment of Black/African Culture. When you talk about development and planning as Black People this is what we need. Black/African People not only need to fight for reparation in the Diaspora but on the continent as well. Black/Africans must also be wise enough to request reparations from the Arabs as well. There is much talk and conversation about the European Slave but very little about the Arab Slave trade. Reparation is not only due from the Europeans but from the Arabs as well. As the year of 2001 grows towards its end, there is slavery in Sudan and Mauritania. Black/African Reparations is not only 420 years old, it has been going for over 1300 years. Dr, Ali Mazrui is right: there must be interim reparations by the Black/Africans to their people for the toil and subjection during the aftermath of colonialism. Black/Africa has contributed much to the development of the world culture. Black/African is the most diverse culture in the universe. Black/African people speak every language under the sun. The labor of Black/Africans has taken them to every corner of the planet. Black/Africans have also contributed much to East as well. This makes the issue of Black Reparations a topic of great proportions. In order for the world to be right with justice,

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Reparations: The Conversation of Black/AfricansBlack/African Reparations must be compensated by all that participated in the inhumanity of slavery, colonialism, and cultural deprivation.

VII. Definitions:1. Blacology - refers to the scientific research and study of the evolution of Black/African

People and their culture form the past and present which includes video, audio, written, and oral documents. The perpetuation and utilization of Black/African ideas, philosophies, theories, beliefs, concepts, notions of the past and present as cultural knowledge. The acclamation, affirmation and proclamation of Black/African Scholarship as an Interdisciplinary Cultural Science.

2. Blacologically Speaking - To speak from a perspective that is operatively Black, that is of, from, by, for and about Black/African people and their culture; developed by Black people.

3. Black Cultural approach - To approach a ideal or program form the perspective of Black culture and experience.

4. Black Cultural Knowledge - The information provided by the heritage and traditions of Black People both oral and written for the perpetuation and utilization for advancement and survival.

5. Blacks - the dark race, the native people of Africa, the people from the land of the Gods, the people of the first civilization, the descendants of African Slave trade, the people of Ancient Egyptian, Ethiopia, Carthage, and the Descendant of Ancient Black Civilization.

6. Blacological - the logic of Black/Africans, from the experience, the struggle, logic that is based on the chronology and evolution of their thinking, logic that is of, from, by, for, and about the survival and advancement of Black people past and present both oral and written.

7. Black/Africans - an evolutional identity in the chronology of Black people, a specific way to identify the descendent or the original people of Africa, the dark skin people.

8. Black/African Culture - Black represents a time without cultural consciousness only color consciousness. African represents the acknowledgement of kinship, locality and cultural connection and consciousness Chronological evoluational acknowledgement of your ethnical orientation, and cultural development. (spiritual substance and ethnicity)

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Reparations: The Conversation of Black/Africans9. Blacological Method - A Method of determining and analyzing data and information,

developed by Black scholars and scientist use by the different extended cultures or as a means of survival or to accomplish a goal.

10. Cultural development - The process of evolving in spiritual solidarity in both individual and collective, toward cultural perfection.

11. Deculturation - the destruction of ones culture by the oppression of slavery, religious imperialism, white supremacy racism, cultural deprivation, and genocide for any reason capitalism, exploitation, and communism etc. This is Man's inhumanity to Man. The dehumanization of one culture by another for the purpose of subjugation for labor.

12. Ebonics - as an African language, and how does it present itself in the African American’s behavior and culture? Axiology refers to the good and the beautiful as well as to the combination that gives us right conduct within the context of African culture. This is a value issue.1 Dr. Robert Williams Black Psychologist coined the term Ebonics in 1973 independent of American Psychology Association. This information is received form WOL Radio 1450AM ON 07-31-97 AT 10:00AM on the Eric St. James Show in Washington DC.

13. Mis Educated - To be taught that whites are better than blacks, black are inferior to white, white are superior to black, if you are white you rights, if you are brown stick around, if you yellow you mellow, if you are Black get back. Blacks are not intelligent, white are intelligent; everything good is white, everything bad, is black; white school are better than black schools. (Dr. Carter G. Woodson)

1"Afrocentricity," Microsoft® Encarta® Africana 2000. © 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights res

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Reparations: The Conversation of Black/Africans

VIII. References:1. The Conversation of Economic Development, Historical Voices, Interpretations, and

Reality", by Dr. Wilfred L. David, ISNBN 0-7656-0116-8 copyright © 1997 by M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 80 Business Park Drive, ArMonk, New York 10504 Wdavid@howard.edu

2. THE AFROCENTRIC EXPERIENCE, WHY REPARATIONS? REPARATIONSCommission to Study Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act Sponsor: Rep Conyers, John, Jr.(introduced 01/06/99)http://www.swagga.com/reparation.htm

3. Linda Bellos, Reparations For Africa http://www.arm.arc.co.uk/reparationsForAfrica.html

4. REPARATIONSLegal Arguments in Support of Reparations http://www.swagga.com/legal.htm

5. WHY REPARATIONS?http://www.swagga.com/reparation.htm

6. Imari Obadele: The Father of the Modern Reparations Movement!http://www.swagga.com/obadele.htm

7. Resolutions on Slavery Reparations Resolution, introduced by Ald. Dorothy Tillman (3rd) (voted 17/05/00) http://www.swagga.com/obadele.htm

8. Commentaries On Reparations A case for an apology and Reparations for Africans and people of the African Diasporahttp://www.swagga.com/obadele.htm

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9. The Debt : What America Owes to Blacks by Randall N. Robinson http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0525945245/theafrocentricex/102-9822135-3036145

10. Race and Reparations : A Black Perspective for the Twenty-First Century by Clarence J. Munfordhttp://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0865435111/theafrocentricex/102-9822135-3036145

11. The Reparations Petition to The President of the United States was created by Concerned citizens and written by Michael Lindberg, Reparations Support Committee. http://www.petitiononline.com/action19/petition.html

12. From Slave Ship to Space Ship: African between Marginalization and GlobalizationBy Ali Mazrui, African Studies Quarterly, Vol. 2, issue 4, 22 April 1999 (Interim Reparation) http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/30/073.html

13. THE SELF DETERMINATION COMMITTEEDr. Robert L. Brock, Presidenthttp://www.directblackaction.com/

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