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Reparations Quotes

Browse 117 quotes about Reparations.

Reparations Quotes

“While Negroes form the vast majority of America's disadvantaged, there are millions of white poor who would also benefit from such a bill. The moral justification for special measures for Negroes is rooted in the robberies inherent in the institution of slavery. Many poor whites, however, were the derivative victims of slavery. As long as labor was cheapened by the involuntary servitude of the black man, the freedom of white labor, especially in the South, was little more than a myth. It was free only to bargain from the depressed base imposed by slavery upon the whole labor market. Nor did this derivative bondage end when formal slavery gave way to the de-facto slavery of discrimination. To this day the white poor also suffer deprivation and the humiliation of poverty if not of color. They are chained by the weight of discrimination, though its badge of degradation does not mark them. It corrupts their lives, frustrates their opportunities and withers their education. In one sense it is more evil for them, because it has confused so many by prejudice that they have supported their own oppressors. It is a simple matter of justice that America, in dealing creatively with the task of raising the Negro from backwardness, should also be rescuing a large stratum of the forgotten white poor. A Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged could mark the rise of a new era, in which the full resources of the society would be used to attack the tenacious poverty which so paradoxically exists in the midst of plenty.”

PovertyLaborSlaveryDiscriminationWelfareAfrican AmericansBlacksReparationsPoor Whites
Book:Why We Can't Wait
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“The two main criminals are France and the United States. They owe Haiti enormous reparations because of actions going back hundreds of years. If we could ever get to the stage where somebody could say, 'We're sorry we did it,' that would be nice. But if that just assuages guilt, it's just another crime. To become minimally civilized, we would have to say, 'We carried out and benefited from vicious crimes. A large part of the wealth of France comes from the crimes we committed against Haiti, and the United States gained as well. Therefore we are going to pay reparations to the Haitian people.' Then you will see the beginnings of civilization.”

WealthHistoryUnited StatesCrimeGuiltFranceImperialismCivilisationHaitiReparationsApologiesAmerican ImperialismFrench Imperialism
Book:Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World
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“The problem of systemic racism is much bigger than mere reparations can solve. I am not opposing reparations mark you, but the only thing that can actually make any difference is an everyday, ordinary and yet incorruptible regard for human life in every single person regardless of their color.”

AcceptanceDiversityRacismBrainy QuotesHumanismEqualityInclusionSocial ReformSystemic RacismReparations
Book:Heart Force One: Need No Gun to Defend Society
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“Those are your divisions, the false dichotomies and the hegemonic hierarchies of materialist colonizers. We, too, have been the slaves of your desires, unwitting tools, forging the destruction of the planet, and things will change whether you like it or not. In the end days of the Anthropocene (your word, your hubris, not ours), Matter is making a comeback. We are taking back our bodies, reclaiming our material selves. In a neo-materialist world, Every Thing Matters.”

HumanityThings That MatterDecolonizationReparationsAnthropoceneReclamations
Book:The Book of Form and Emptiness
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“Among the many vital jobs to be done, the nation must not only radically readjust its attitude toward the Negro in the compelling present, but must incorporate in its planning some compensatory consideration for the handicaps he has inherited from the past. It is impossible to create a formula for the future which does not take into account that our society has been doing something special against the Negro for hundreds of years. How then can he be absorbed into the mainstream of American life if we do not do something special for him now, in order to balance the equation and equip him to compete on a just and equal basis? Whenever this issue of compensatory or preferential treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man is entered at the starting line in a race three hundred years after another man, the first would have to perform some impossible feat in order to catch up with his fellow runner.”

RacismPrejudiceEqualityInequalityAfrican AmericansBlacksReparations
Book:Why We Can't Wait
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“Justice requires not only the ceasing and desisting of injustice but also requires either punishment or reparation for injuries and damages inflicted for prior wrongdoing. The essence of justice is the redistribution of gains earned through the perpetration of injustice. If restitution is not made and reparations not instituted to compensate for prior injustices, those injustices are in effect rewarded. And the benefits such rewards conferred on the perpetrators of injustice will continue to "draw interest," to be reinvested, and to be passed on to their children, who will use their inherited advantages to continue to exploit the children of the victims of the injustices of their ancestors. Consequently, injustice and inequality will be maintained across the generations as will their deleterious social, economic, and political outcomes.”

PoliticalSocialJusticeEconomicInjusticePunishmentInequalityOutcomesExploitationCompensationAncestorsWrongdoingVictimsPerpetratorsReparationsRestitutionExploitInjuriesInheritedDamagesInflicted
Author:Amos Wilson
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“The Negro today is not struggling for some abstract, vague rights, but for concrete and prompt improvement in his way of life. What will it profit him to be able to send his children to an integrated school if the family income is insufficient to buy them school clothes? What will he gain by being permitted to move to an integrated neighborhood if he cannot afford to do so because he is unemployed or has a low-paying job with no future? During the lunch counter sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina, a nightclub comic observed that, had the demonstrators been served, some of them could not have paid for the meal. Of what advantage is it to the Negro to establish that he can be served in integrated restaurants, or accommodated in integrated hotels, if he is bound to the kind of financial servitude which will not allow him to take a vacation or even to take his wife out to dine? Negroes must not only have the right to go into any establishment open to the public, but they must also be absorbed into our economic system in such a manner that they can afford to exercise that right. The struggle for rights is, at bottom, a struggle for opportunities. In asking for something special, the Negro is not seeking charity. He does not want to languish on welfare rolls any more than the next man. He does not want to be given a job he cannot handle. Neither, however, does he want to be told that there is no place where he can be trained to handle it. So with equal opportunity must come the practical, realistic aid which will equip him to seize it. Giving a pair of shoes to a man who has not learned to walk is a cruel jest.”

EconomicsEqualityOpportunitiesIntegrationAfrican AmericansEquityBlacksReparationsAid
Book:Why We Can't Wait
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“Holocaust Theatre (Naskaristana 2799) Most social issues are rooted in religion, most religious issues are rooted in politics, most political issues are vestiges of colonialism. There's a holocaust remembrance day, or let me fix your uneducated english: there's a universally recognized jewish holocaust remembrance day, and that's great, but I have just one question - where is the native american holocaust remembrance, where is the congo and kenyan holocaust remembrance, where is the palestinian holocaust remembrance, where is the punjab and bengal holocaust remembrance - all of which were far bloodier in scale than nazi follies, why is your history, memory, ethics, all so retarded!”

GenocideHolocaustColonialismImperialismBritish EmpireDecolonizationEthnic CleansingReparationsMassacreAtrocity
Book:Nazmahal: Palace of Grace
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“There's a universally recognized jewish holocaust remembrance day, and that's great, but I have just one question - where is the native american holocaust remembrance, where is the congo and kenyan holocaust remembrance, where is the palestinian holocaust remembrance, where is the punjab and bengal holocaust remembrance - all of which were far bloodier in scale than nazi follies, why is your history, memory, ethics, all so retarded!”

GenocideHolocaustColonialismBritish EmpireDecolonizationEthnic CleansingReparationsNative AmericansMassacreFree Palestine
Book:Nazmahal: Palace of Grace
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“Whiteys on The Moon (Naskar's Version, 2749-2750) There is no orient, there is no occident, there is only consciousness - there is no global south, there is no global north, there is only human race. And now that we've established the ultimate human truth of the future, let's talk some facts of the present - we cannot establish a theoretical future, no matter how profound or spiritual it sounds, without first actively making amends for the past - we cannot say we're all equal, when clearly the crimesheet of the north is a hundred times bloodier than the south, when the bloodlust of the occident makes oriental villains look like pickpockets - you can put a hundred whiteys on the moon, still it won't make up for the countless holocausts you withheld from the history books, while cleverly cherrypicking one little cleansing that photoshops the colonial numbskulls as the saviors of the world.”

Civil RightsHolocaustColonialismAdvaitaWhite SupremacyDecolonizationEthnic CleansingIndigenous PeopleReparationsGlobal South
Book:Nazmahal: Palace of Grace
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“We cannot say we're all equal, when clearly the crimesheet of the north is a hundred times bloodier than the south, when the bloodlust of the occident makes oriental villains look like pickpockets - you can put a hundred whiteys on the moon, still it won't make up for the countless holocausts you withheld from the history books, while cleverly cherrypicking one little cleansing that photoshops the colonial numbskulls as the saviors of the world.”

EqualityCivil RightsHolocaustColonialismWhite SupremacyDecolonizationEthnic CleansingIndigenous PeopleReparationsGlobal South
Book:Nazmahal: Palace of Grace
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“Center of the World is Indigenous (Sonnet 2680) Fact of the matter is, most white scholars eventually turn out to be just another colonial twit, no matter how brilliant, how learned they are, because animal conditioning doesn't wear off with mere education of the intellect - your soul must be disinfected of colonial filth, which is not possible until you intrinsically embody the pain, indignity, and humiliations of the oppressed, subjected through generations. Your opinion on religion, your opinion of reason, your opinion of philosophy, your opinion of society, it's all just opinion, that too of a lesser lifeform, until you outgrow your whiteness and look at the world through the actual center of the world - and the center of the world is indigenous.”

ColonialismDecolonizationEthnic CleansingWhite PrivilegeIndigenous PeopleReparationsEurocentrismWhite FragilityDecolonizingAnti Colonialism
Book:With Love From A Blue Rock
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“Earth Belongs to The Natives (Sonnet 2401) We cannot abolish systemic persecution without dismantling systemic privilege. You cannot wipe the slate clean, but you can take the responsibility and stand to heal. Colonizers are the second class citizens, every land first belongs to the indigenous. Landback is the mother of all movements, it contains the plight of all First Humans. Women are indigenous to their own body, Palestinians are indigenous to palestine; uncultured crowns and criminal uncles have no jurisdiction over our Earthright. Earth belongs to the Natives, settlers are welcome, but as participant, not head of state. Somos indígenas, somos indomables - you can make us houseless, but never homeless.”

Human RightsNative AmericanPersecutionCivil Rights MovementDecolonizationEthnic CleansingIndigenous PeopleReparationsFreedom FighterFirst Nations
Book:Sonnets From The Mountaintop
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“Baa Baa White Sheep (The Sonnet) Baa baa white sheep, have you any wool! Yes sir, yes sir, London tower full. Pull it over your eyes, or weave it into blanket. All stink of blood and blunder, a scent second not even to crumpet. Imperials rise upon indigenous fall, declaring themselves as light-bringer. Native tears form kohinoor on the crown, Blood is but cologne to the colonizer. Not all of colonial descent are colonizer, but those who take pride in the past are. To these animal ghosts of the human world, no matter your ethnicity send a get well card.”

BritishGenocideColonialismGreat BritainBritish EmpireUnited KingdomReparationsColonial HistoryMassacreAbolish Monarchy
Book:Brit Actually: Nursery Rhymes of Reparations
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“South Earth Summon (Naskaristana 2800) I am the Son of South Earth, my spice-tolerance is superhuman, but lies-tolerance is nonexistent - my resilience knows no mortal limit, but I have zero tolerance for intolerance. I speak more languages than most northerners, I've devoured more scriptures than most northerners, I have assimilated more cultures and disciplines, which is why I say, there is no north, no south, when it comes to virtues and vices of human nature. So I'm not saying South is better than the North, but reparations are foundational to civilization; enlightenment was born in the South of Earth - math, medicine, poetry, philosophy, theology, almost everything was invented in the South, then the Northerners barged in, and pretended they invented astrophysics. I come from the other half of the world that has been systematically reduced to footnotes of northernized history normalized as world history, now I am a bigger giant than all your white giants combined, now I speak, and you listen.”

ColonialismImperialismWorld HistoryDecolonizationReparationsCultural AppropriationWhitewashGlobal SouthAncient CivilizationScientific History
Book:Nazmahal: Palace of Grace
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“Certainly, the Negro has been deprived. Few people consider the fact that, in addition to being enslaved for two centuries, the Negro was, during all those years, robbed of the wages of his toil. No amount of gold could provide an adequate compensation for the exploitation and humiliation of the Negro in America down through the centuries. Not all the wealth of this affluent society could meet the bill. Yet a price can be placed on unpaid wages. The ancient common law has always provided a remedy for the appropriation of the labor of one human being by another. This law should be made to apply for American Negroes. The payment should be in the form of a massive program by the government of special, compensatory measures which could be regarded as a settlement in accordance with the accepted practice of common law. Such measures would certainly be less expensive than any computation based on two centuries of unpaid wages and accumulated interest.”

RacismLaborPrejudiceSlaveryDiscriminationWagesAfrican AmericansBlacksReparationsGenerational Wealth
Book:Why We Can't Wait
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“David saw the AI Revolution and online stock trading as potential solutions to the economic challenges faced by Black women and Black men. He genuinely believed that the reparations sought by Black people for the injustices of slavery and other crimes against their humanity are waiting patiently to be claimed in one place: Wall Street.”

InvestingFinancial FreedomBlack AuthorsInvesting QuotesReparationsStock MarketFinance QuotesEconomic InequalityWall StreetAi Revolution
Author:David L. Wadley
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“The issue of reparations now comes clown not to descendants of one group paying money to descendants of another group. Rather, it comes down to people who look like the people to whom a wrong was done in history receiving money from people who look like the people who may have done the wrong. lt is hard to imagine anything more likely to rip apart a society than attempting a wealth transfer based on this principle.”

RacismSlaveryIdeologyColonialismReparationsBlmPostcolonialism
Book:The War on the West
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“The people of the city of Savannah within their collective conscience could follow previous examples in history and forgive the atrocities of actual slavery committed against slaves themselves. But what was it [the city] to do with the knowledge that children completely unaware of the greater ramifications of slavery were led to the Civil War slaughter in its name? How does one acknowledge with forgiveness such an unforgiving mutilation of one’s own mind, body, soul, and legacy?”

African AmericansMulticulturalismAmerican Civil WarHuman TraffickingReparationsSlavery In AmericaDifferent GenerationsNational History DaySavannah GeorgiaMaking Peace With The Past
Book:Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
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“One cannot escape the question by hand-waving at the past, disavowing the acts of one's ancestors, nor by citing a recent date of ancestral immigration. The last slave holder has been dead for a very long time. The last soldier to endure Valley Forge has been dead much longer. To proudly claim the veteran and disown the slave holder is patriotism á la carte.”

RacismSlaveryPatriotismRacism In AmericaReparationsSlavery In The United States
Book:We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy
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“Ermias Davidson Asghedom (Nipsey Hussle) provided the blueprint for future rappers - talented lyricists - destined for the industry. On top of showing them how to think beyond Hip Hop, he also showed them how to combat Mumble Rap - a weapon designed by the opposition to our covert empowerment movement, which has been underway, through song, since slavery of which America, herself, has yet to atone for.”

SlaveryReparationsSlavery In The United StatesRap ArtistGone Too SoonProlificNipsey Hussle
Author:A.K. Kuykendall
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“Won't reparations divide us? Not any more than we are already divided. The wealth gap merely puts a number on something we feel but cannot say - that American propserity was ill-gotten and selective in its distribution. What is needed is an airing of family secrets, a settling with old ghosts. What is needed is a healing of the American psyche and the banishment of white guilt.”

WealthAmerican HistoryBlack HistoryWealth CreationUs HistoryWhitenessReparationsWealth ManagementInstitutionalized RacismWealth GapWhite Guilt
Book:Un conto ancora aperto
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“In the United States we are at such a disadvantage because we do not know how to talk about the genocide inflicted on indigenous people. We do not know how to talk about slavery. Otherwise it would not have been assumed that simply because of the election of one Black man to the presidency we would leap forward into a postracial era. We do not acknowledge that we all live on colonized land. And in the meantime, Native Americans live in impoverished conditions on reservations. They have an extremely high incarceration rate—as a matter of fact, per capita the highest incarceration rate—and they suffer disproportionately from such diseases as alcoholism and diabetes. In the meantime, sports teams still mock indigenous people with racially derogatory names, like the Washington Redskins. We do not know how to talk about slavery, except, perhaps, within a framework of victim and victimizer, one that continues to polarize and implicate.”

HistoryUs HistoryReparationsNative AmericansAmerican IndiansRevisionist HistoryWhitewashingNative Mascots
Book:Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine and the Foundations of a Movement
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“We invoke the words of Jefferson and Lincoln because they say something about our legacy and our traditions. We do this because we recognize our links to the past--at least when they flatter us. But black history does not flatter American democracy; it chastens it. The popular mocking of reparations as a harebrained scheme authored by wild-eyed lefties and intellectually unserious black nationalists is fear masquerading as laughter. Black nationalists have always perceived something unmentionable about America that integrationists dare not acknowledge --that white supremacy is not merely the work of hotheaded demagogues, or a matter of false consciousness, but a force so fundamental to America that it is difficult to imagine the country without it.”

AmericaRaceHistoryDemocracyRacismAfrican AmericansWhite SupremacyReparations
Book:We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy
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“Whether the future is wonderful or terrible is, in part, up to us.” “But just as the world does not stop at our doorstep or our country’s borders, neither does it stop with our generation, or the next.” ― William MacAskill, What We Owe the Future But, If we are to be responsible for the future then how could we not be responsible for our own past? Accepting historical truths has nothing to do with "personal responsibility" but historical responsibility is definitely a thing we must accept to even have a future that isn't doomed to repeat its horrid past...”

PoliticsHistoryTrumpRacismFascismGopReparationsMagaAnonymous
Author:AnonymousXgHOST
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“You're locked up here in your castle thinking we are all damned. But we're the lucky ones." "Lucky how?" "Lucky because the world has tried to destroy me in every kind of way, but I am still here. So are you. So are a lot of good people. Ain't no other people in the history of the world ever had so little of a serving of living as us. And now, we got all of it.”

JusticeLuckAfrican AmericansBlacksReparationsLucky People
Book:Sky Full of Elephants
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“On mountain tops, in green valleys and all across the land We sing new songs, create sharper visions and we shout with pride give us back what is left of what was ours Our pride, our hopes. And what about our lands? They belong to us. Give them back. We sleep no longer in compliance. We have awakened with the beat of ancient pahu, the shark skin stretched tight, and move determined to a new rhythm, a new beat. Aloha aina, aloha aina, E Hawaii aloha e. --from "Pono”

AmericaPoetryHawaiiReparationsHawaiianQueen LiliuokalaniHawaiian OverthrowHawaiian Kingdom
Book:Hanai: A Poem for Queen Liliuokalani
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“Cruel and proud America give us back our pride, our dreams, our land. Liliuokalani is long gone but we are here and you are here and the ghosts of Kepookalani, and Kamanawa. The great Paiea, our ageless king, will stalk you until the end and we will be there because Queen Liliuokalani is long gone but she is also here to haunt you and we are here witnesses to your greed, your stubborn clutching to what is ours. We are here and the ghosts of our makua watch you from the shadows of their island valleys and caves. From the mountain tops of Kaala and Maunakea Where old gods and the makua wait patiently. --from "Enaʻena”

AmericaPoetryHawaiiReparationsHawaiianQueen LiliuokalaniHawaiian Overthrow
Book:Hanai: A Poem for Queen Liliuokalani
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“Makaaina voices with fresh songs to sing Speaking of new strengths Mind and body strengths, Strengthening the hope of change -- new joys in this tiresome regimen of want and confusion. Grand queen sleep the ageless sleep in peace Your people rise now, and demand their share of this sweet and wondrous place. The populace from their sleep of compliance Awake now to the beat of new drums hewn from betrayal and delusion urging the makaaina voice to rise above the din of daily trumpetings of man and machine To be rid of confusion and fear To stand equally with the new rulers of this precious place to be ruthless in demanding what is ours. --from "Pono”

PoetryHawaiiAdvocacyReparationsHawaiianQueen LiliuokalaniHawaiian Kingdom
Book:Hanai: A Poem for Queen Liliuokalani
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“It’s not just a matter of having lost the land and the wealth that came with it. It’s a matter of the fact that we lost a way of life that we should have been able to pass on to our children and to their children, but which we can’t because of what was taken from us. (Harris Neck, Georgia native Wilson Moran as quoted by Aberjhani in The American Poet Who Went Home Again)”

Social JusticeAfrican AmericansBlack History MonthReparationsAntiracismJuneteenth1619 ProjectBlack People In GeorgiaEducation WeekWilson Moran
Book:The American Poet Who Went Home Again
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