Our Birthright Of Wealth (An Open Letter To All Black Americans) (Revised)

                       “To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old  problems from a new angle requires creative imagination.”         – Albert Einstein

 Forty Acres And A Mule.  What does that phrase conjure up for you?  Why is it so embedded in our psyche?  Better yet, how long will we allow it to be a monkey on our backs?  No doubt, this is a phrase that brings to mind for the world only one group of people. US!  The builders of American wealth.  But as direct descendants of wealth‑builders, where’s our wealth?

Let’s get something straight right off the top. Forty acres and a mule does not represent what someone owes us. Forty acres and a mule represents what others didn’t allow us to do for ourselves after we did it for them. Just another example of how Cain slew Abel or, in the case of our ancestors, “the able.” You see, they not only came to the New World as slaves, but also as scientists, mathematicians, architects, astronomers, chemists, inventors, musicians, warriors, griots, engineers, biologists and every manner of people possessing the light of civilization and knowledge of every science known to man. Our people were “able.”  Their abilities were manifested despite a captivity characterized by brutal savagery and deliberate deprivation of basic rights.  Through the ages we see black men and women like Benjamin Banneker, who made the first striking clock in America; Granville T. Woods, who invented the air brake and the railway telegraph device; Richard B. Spikes, who invented the automatic transmission and automatic car washer; Sarah Boone, who invented the ironing board; Garrett A. Morgan, who invented the stop light and the gas mask; Sarah E. Goode, who invented the folding cabinet bed; Elijah “The Real” McCoy, who invented automatic lubrication systems; Henry Blair, who invented the seed and cotton planter; W.B. Purvis, who invented the fountain pen and Madame C.J. Walker, who invented the hair‑straightening comb and other inventions in cosmetics.  This list can go on and on right up to the present day. So, where’s our wealth? Answer: we haven’t created it yet. Put another way, we haven’t reclaimed our birthright of wealth. Yet.

For almost a century and a half “forty acres and a mule” has served to remind us of a broken promise; a broken promise that continues to resonate and permeate through countless subsequent broken promises. Forty Million And A Tool proposes to get us out of the broken promises business once and for all. If you can view “forty acres and a mule” and “forty million and a tool” as a reversible jacket, you are poised to understand the exact nature of the change we need to make. You also get a glimpse of how simple it is to do. You understand that the forty acres and a mule mentality helped lay the groundwork for a civil rights and reparations movement characterized by 155 years of waitin’, beggin’, moral shaming and laborious litigation that to date has produced no true and lasting African American wealth, just a smattering of black capitalism and a few hundred “negro firsts.” You then understand that a forty million and a tool mind‑set calls us to a wealth‑building movement characterized by turning the jacket of wealth we already wear inside‑out and getting back to the agenda of true and complete freedom.  Finally, you understand that after 9/11 our struggle must strike a loud and unifying chord within the overall American struggle. We are Americans. This we have put forth the maximum effort proving, but in the process sacrificing full pursuit of our birthright. Forty Million And A Tool provides a vehicle whereby we can maintain the one and finally obtain the other.

The events of September 11, 2001 will probably enter the history books as the most tragic, horrific and brutally savage act of terrorism occurring on American soil. While this attack certainly qualifies as an event to never forget, many Americans will differ in as to it being the “most” tragic, horrific or brutally savage. For sure, America is forever changed. The measures that were put in place to secure the freedoms of America will affect the entire citizenry in innumerable ways. Not only will America remember, America will vigorously and eternally seek to protect herself to insure that such an event never occur again. America should act on the world stage to pursue justice, not necessarily revenge or blood-lust.  The leadership of George W. Bush raised many disturbing questions.  Nonetheless, he provided for us all a model of action for the triumph of the good over those bent on indiscriminate murder. Can African Americans apply this model to our current and historic struggle for justice? I say we can and we MUST!

Forty Million And A Tool beckons African Americans to forever regard slavery as an event we must never forget. People and nations all over the world have these types of events in their history. The absurdity of the Taliban telling America to forget 9/11 is the same absurdity one utters should they suggest to the Jewish people to forget the Holocaust; the same absurdity should one tell the Japanese to forget Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the same for South Africans with regard to Apartheid. Likewise, we must regard it as absurd when others suggest we forget slavery. More importantly, Forty Million And A Tool insists that African Americans act in the very same way others have and like America is doing now in remembering acts committed against us and in pursuing effective strategies to protect our future. Because of the “event” these become never‑ending imperatives and our mantra becomes “forever vigilant.”

Considering the odds against us, historically speaking, we have fought and stood vigilant to the best of our ability. However, our resources and our power to produce enduring results have not been nearly enough. Many even argue that African Americans have either forgotten what their birthright is, don’t care what their birthright is or have simply given up, leaving in the wake of futility and failure, tiny little fiefdoms. With “saving the babies” and ” saving our youth” as the annual battle cry we have watched generation after generation of African American men fill prisons all across America and at younger and younger ages. We have witnessed how the scourge of drug abuse and violent crime decimate African American families from coast to coast. Still, we have done much with little. None can deny it.

Forty Million And A Tool challenges the reparations movement to recognize that we are now able to reclaim our birthright and elevate ourselves to our rightful position in America. This we can do by establishing an African American Slave Descendants Reparations Fund (AASDRF) ourselves and practice “Self‑reparations.” The forty million are the approximately 40 million African Americans in the United States; the tool is simply a home computer connected to the internet or any other smart device.  Take that a step further – connect those computers and devices to the AASDRF, and then we each send $1 per week, or $5 per month.  You do the math!  What it translates to is “No More Waitin’ And No More Beggin’ For Reparations.”

Elevating ourselves to our rightful position will require no drastic change of belief system, political ideology or personal lifestyle. African Americans will still be Americans of all walks of life: democrats, republicans, Protestants, Catholics, Muslims, Jews, atheists, socialists, communists, urbanites, suburbanites, pro‑life, pro‑choice, laborers, professionals, actors, entertainers, gay, straight ‑ whatever!  What Forty Million and A Tool is asking us to do is take a look back to when we all went by the same label: slave. That time when we were clearly ONE people; that time when the only religious, political or ideological clashes we had with one another was about how we were gonna get FREE!  Ambiguity of predicament was non‑existent then and should be non‑existent now. Our rightful position, to put it bluntly, is one third of the wealth of America in all its forms. The other two thirds belong to European settlers and Native Americans. Had these three groups participated harmoniously and cooperatively in the building up of this nation, that is exactly what we’d see today. Period!

Forty Million And A Tool is not here to make the case for reparations for slavery or the genocide of indigenous peoples. Those cases have been made. Those pleas, appeals and supplications continue to go on in every manner of beggin’ and litigation imaginable. Even as you read this there are many efforts underway, legislative and otherwise, to convince the American government and others that they owe reparations to black people.  What Forty Million And A Tool is pointing out is that our very birthright in America is wealth and that we are not the people who should be ridiculed for laziness and accused of having welfare mentalities.  We went from work to welfare!   And had we been properly compensated for our work, not to mention enormous sums of royalty and copyright wealth also stolen from us, we wouldn’t even be talking about going from welfare to work where descendants of slaves are concerned.  With our one third of the wealth equality of opportunity or equality of anything would simply be the order of the day.  So, just as our ancestors faced a monumental uphill climb we must give those long overdue reparations to ourselves.  There’s nothing to stop us from doing it, even as traditional reparations litigation goes forth.  We can do with our income as we so lawfully choose and it’s not a crime to own a computer or support a cause.

African Americans give of their wealth and resources to virtually every cause or human concern known, except themselves.  What possible opposition could anyone have should we decide to stop beggin and asking others to right historical wrongs that still adversely affect us, but instead direct our wealth and resources to correct those ills ourselves?   Better yet, what African American would object to a real plan to amass wealth to address all of our long‑standing problems, particularly those that wealth could remedy?  It would seem to me that if we simply were to find out that such a plan or reparations fund truly existed we would want to know how to participate in it and benefit from it.  The problem (as evidenced by various slave tax credit scams) is that we’ve either gotten duped or our legitimate leaders were murdered and/or discredited.  From freedom fighters like Nat Turner to Martin Luther King Jr., every effort on behalf of slaves, ex‑slaves and their descendants to share equally in the wealth and opportunity that America holds out to all, has been muted, nixed, snuffed‑out, watered‑down or otherwise derailed by no less than lies, trickery, intimidation, murder, torture, blackmail, broken promises and even the very laws that govern this nation.

Why, then, would we even remotely suspect that a government and society that would use such barbaric tactics to keep a people poor, ragged, illiterate and under its thumb, would turn around and hand over any substantial part of its wealth, let alone one third of it?  To simply give what was earned with sweat, blood, tears and lives?  To even give (or re-give) what was officially promised?  What on earth could have us believe that then, today or at any time in the future?  Not one American president has fought for it and the one in office now won’t.

As for the society, all you’ll hear from the majority of citizens are things like “you weren’t a slave,” “nothing was done to you,” “I didn’t enslave you,” “but you have equal opportunity now,” “my ancestors were immigrants,” “don’t hold me responsible for what my forefathers did,” and a host of other responses that do nothing but fuel more hatred, more hostility and more division of Americans.  All signs highlight the obvious: reparations for slavery must start with us in the form of Self-Reparations.  It is only from this standpoint that the American government and other governments around the world will come to us with their amends. The important thing for us to acknowledge is that whether they ante up or not, we must!  Even if they take what we do as being absolved from their deeds, so be it.  They will have to live with it, but more importantly, they will have to deal with us from our newfound position of wealth and power.