REPARATION

REPARATIONS

Is It Really Such A Farse?

Since the end of slavery several failed attempts have been made to place former slaves into society on an equal footing with the established culture already in place.

First there was the Liberia project in which the American Colonization Society purchased a block of land in Africa and offered free passage to former slaves back to the Mother Land. This was a very fertile plot of soil that some companies invested in to develope- including the Firestone company. Very few of the former slaves for various reasons took the offer. Some of the former slaves were held captive and dissallowed to leave. Some of the former slaves refused to trust the American Governmanet because the last time they were put on ships by white men they were brutalized, chained and enslaved. Others believed that they had worked and helped to develope this nation and they deserved to share in its prosperity here on American soil.
Then there were the Jim Crow- separate but "Equal" laws that guranteed the profanity of an equal manner of segragation. What this failed to do was to give the former slaves a voice in the system or power of government to guarantee the "Equal," part of the separatism. Segration tragicly turned out to be anything but equal. These laws inevitably caused the former slaves to become second class citizens- and in many instances, slavery continued. Chidren were murdered and unconvicted crimes against the former bondman population skyrocketed. This was not only a failure; it was a demented form of trickery attempting to keep slavery alive.

Then after the civil rights movement there was an act of Congress known as "Affirmative Action." This was designed to give an ethnic diversity of people a competative edge in the job market. This worked for a few people. There were also non- profit organizations such as the United Negro College Fund, and the NAACP, among others that were designed to give disadvantaged Americans an even footing in the legal system and the justice system. According to statistics, with the few exceptions- this too has failed.