Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, “An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” He said it as more of a war cry to call activists and those who care to a sense of urgency regarding injustices. The idea is that if it is allowed in one place, it can be in all places. So then, let us rise up against injustice when we see it because it’s only a matter of time before injustice affects you!
Injustices have been fluent in America since 1865. That date should sound familiar because it was the year President Abraham Lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation, which freed the slaves in the south. Shortly after this, Lincoln tried to establish a bank for former slaves, but its white board of directors took the money and lost it on bad investments. There was no accountability.
With the end of slavery in the south, accountability was emancipated completely. Treating a black person wrong was always acceptable as punishment for ending slavery. The time immediately after slavery was very telling because lynching immediately became popular once slavery ended.
Bastard children, often called mulatto back then, were the result when white men raped very young black girls and impregnated them. These kids were often made orphans because the former slaves owner did not want the child and they would not allow for the victim to have the baby. This injustice became widespread.
Everyone talks about the destruction of Black Wall Street in Tulsa, OK but that, of course, was not the only time that happened. Time Magazine, in 2021, published an article on the subject and listed other “Black Wall Street” scenarios that many were unaware of because there was never any accountability.
The article states: “Now, 100 years after the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, awareness of this American tragedy has grown thanks to the work of activists and descendants of victims, local political support, and depictions in the HBO series Watchman and Lovecraft Country. But Tulsa’s was not the only Black Wall Street. The history of other such districts nationwide is still not widely known beyond their home cities, though they were many: Bronzeville in Chicago; Hayti in Durham, N.C.; Sweet Auburn in Atlanta; West Ninth Street in Little Rock, Ark.; and Farish Street in Jackson, Miss.”
Police brutality toward minorities has been around as long as policing has existed. There are too many cases to name of unarmed Black people being murdered by police because they claimed they feared for their lives.
The bottom line is that because we violate the famous MLK Jr. quote, we are paying for the widespread lack of accountability because if the injustice didn’t happen to me, why do I care.
I believe that this lack of accountability negatively affects the reparations’ conversation because many black and whites are ignorant of history. People treat many of the injustices like isolated incidents. Then, the fact that it is widespread means that if we award damages form one incident, we are libel for all the others. This means that justice can never truly be served because America’s history is full of injustices, and to reward them all would be an end to America as we know it.
Happy Black history month!
ClydeStyle 