Reparations for crimes against our humanity. Crimes of enslavement, theft of labor, murder, genocide, maiming, apartheid, sexual assault, torture, medical experimentation and apartheid, poison, genetic interference and alteration, child stealing and murder, starvation, legislative and judicial violence, and many other acts of the grossest forms of inhumanity, have left deep scars on our communities. Scars we call the lack of this or the lack of that - or the disproportionate representation in this or that, and so on. Only a comprehensive reparations package- that is multi-generational- will reverse the injuries we suffer from as a result of the past and on-going crimes of this nation and its mostly white inhabitants. (See N’COBRA 5 Injury Areas and 5 Down-Payments, also NAARC’s 10-Point Reparations Program).

Black Community Control of the Police is key to overturning racism in this country. It cannot be done without it. Not prejudice but racism. Modern racism began in this country as a necessity to defeat the African revolutions that was taking place all over the Americas in the 1600"s. (See The Counter Revolution of 1776 by Dr. Gerald Horne). Africans and African Descendants were pitting the various greedy European tribes against one another in our quest to end the Maafa. And they were winning, especially in the islands. The Planters (read criminals) who were defeated there ran to the "mainland", mostly the Carolinas and Virginia and shared their fate with the Planters (criminals) in these colonies. It was then that a pan-white plan was hatched, based on a pan-white identity, to ensure the continuation of the economic exploitation of colonialism and enslavement. And, that it would be restricted to Africans. At the time Europeans were also enslaved (although the revisionist history you read say they were indentured servants) and the Native Americans.

To create the pan-whiteness to allow the system to continue, the colonist and planters created a series of laws that applied only to Africans- we know those laws as Black codes. Treaties were entered into with Native tribes to garner their support. There were another set of laws applied to whites who did not adhere to or enforce the laws that applied to Africans.

White tribes that were enslaved were elevated to overseers. Then they eventually became the paddy rollers, slave patrollers and slave catchers. And later the police. It is the reason why policeman today are called patrolmen. The Irish was that white group that had been enslaved for over 100 years before the system of pan-whiteness (racism) was created. They were the ones elevated to those enforcement positions above. (Go back and view Roots, Django, and 12 Years A Slave, they got it right in those moves, all the overseers, paddy rollers and slave catchers were Irish!).

It was these enforcers (mainly Irish) that ensured that the Pan White identity grew and flourished. They had a great gain to be had in this inclusive identity - it freed them from slavery. They were brutal and all of their actions were "justified." Even homicide. (Again, that is why all police executions today are automatically called justifiable homicide- before any investigation and after any trial.)

As the Pan white identity flourished, the Planters and Colonist strengthened their system of inhumanity which prolonged the suffering of our Ancestors. The African revolution could not have been defeated without this legislative and enforcement mechanism of pan-whiteness, white privilege, sanctioned white abuse, violence, exploitation, theft and murder.

(We also have to add that the Ivory Tower played an equal role in developing the rationale and pseudo-science that fostered the pan-white identity. See Ebony and Ivy by Craig Steven Wilder)

The same exist today. Legislative and Judicial violence, via and in support and maintenance of a pan-white system of privilege and enrichment, abuse and exploitation - backed by a brutal enforcement structure, still very much managed by Irish descendants. Added to the racialized ideological thrust of the University today, is the image destroying and falsehood projecting mechanisms of the Media.

Thus, every-time a police kills a black woman (Korryn Gaines, Rakia Boyd, Sandra Bland, Dominique Battle, Ashaunti Butler and Laniya Miller and others) or a Black Man (too numerous to name here) the pan-white identity is strengthened. That is, all whites get a racism adrenaline shot!Whites see it as "it’s because they are Black" that they are getting killed. Because Black in the pan-white mind that has been produced by hundreds of years of racialized patterns of thought, emotions and behavior, is synonymous with criminal, non-human, unworthy of respect or consideration, etc.

To end the system of pan-white privilege and enrichment, abuse and exploitation, we must halt the ability of the legislative and judicial violence to be enforced. That enforcement is by the police. Black community control of the police gives Black the ability to sanction and punish the acts of police - the protectors, defenders, and maintainers of white privilege and racial enrichment. The more they are held accountable, the system of racism/white supremacy receives a punishing blow. This is the only way to a post-racial America, and by extension, a post racial world.

Anything less of Black community control of the police (i.e., reform) allows for and ensures the continuation of racism and police violence against African descendants- plain and simple.

Reparations for past and ongoing crimes against our humanity that will address the huge inequalities and harms to our people-hood and Black community control of the police must be the two issues we all stand and act on together with unmovable solidarity!

Kamm Howard,

Black Is Back Coalition – Reparations Working Group Chair