John Henry:
>Am I black? If you knew me (I am blonde haired and blue eyed fair skinned
>Scotch-Irish-German descent) you would answer definitely not. I have never
>claimed to be. However, under federal law and as clarified via some
>personal correspondence with the chief counsel of the EEOC in the early
>90's, if I claim to be black, I *MUST* legally be accepted as black. So
>presumably, absent a change in the law, I could legitimately claim a share
>of the reparations.
This is not a legal question, but a political question. Reparations is a
challenge to the idea that blacks are owed nothing by US capitalism. It is
first and foremost an indictment of the lingering damage done by both
slavery and Jim Crow. In fact it is altogether likely that reparations
emerged as a response to the racist campaign launched by neoconservative
intellectuals during the Reagan era and popularized by Rush Limbaugh that
would wash its hands of this legacy. It is not only about
African-Americans, it is about American Indians as well. For that matter
the same kind of legalistic flim-flammery would apply to Indians as well.
How can we give land to the Iroquois unless we can prove that they are 100
percent Iroquois? As a rule of thumb, this kind of close racial examination
is meant to steer the discussion away from social ethics. When Jews were in
effect given reparations after WWII, none of this kind of flim-flammery was
brought up. The reason for this is obvious. The Nazis were the losers, so
Germany had to cough up money. But in 2001 the Nazis of today with their
headquarters in Wall Street and Washington stride the world victoriously
like an obscene colossus risen up from hell.
Louis Proyect
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