Revised and Extended Remarks of Ari Sesu Merretazon to the United Nations Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent Coordinated in collaboration with the United States Human Rights Network
Date: July 7, 2016
To: Ms. Mireille Fanon-Mendes-France, Chairperson, UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent
From: Minister Ari S. Merretazon, Former National Co-Chair, and Former Northeast Region Representative, Member NCOBRA-Philadelphia Chapter.
Subject: Revised and Extended Remarks for the Record of the January 19-20 UN Working Group Visit to Baltimore Maryland, USA
Greetings, I am Minister Ari Merretazon, one of the selected participants, in fact, the last, to make remarks to the UN Working Group of Experts On People of African Descent.
Thank you for allowing me to revise and extend my remarks for the record of the UN Working Group Public Hearing January 19-20, 2016, in Baltimore, Maryland. May your leadership continue to bring good into the world and let none be lost. The participants thank you for your mandated visit to the City of Baltimore, the “Hard City” by the sea, (as described by songstress, vocalist, pianist Nina Simone), to identify and examine in detail the problem and situation of people of African descent in the United States. My remarks included a proposal that the UN Working Group visit with U.S. Congressman John Conyers to discuss the passage of H.R. 40, a bill to establish the Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act: “To acknowledge the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery in the United States and the 13 American colonies between 1619 and 1865 and to establish a commission to examine the institution of slavery, subsequently de jure and de facto racial and economic discrimination against African- Americans, and the impact of these forces on living African-Americans, to make recommendations to the Congress on appropriate remedies, and for other purposes.”
Additionally, thank you for supporting and including my initial remark that the UN Working Group urge the US to pay reparations to Descendants of Africans Enslaved in the United States(DAEUS). All of the problems, situations, and recommendations identified by the UN Working Group represent key areas that should be negotiated in the framework of a reciprocal zero-sum reparations accord, as a matter of public policy. At a minimum, the following injury areas, experienced for centuries by DAEUS, as identified by N’COBRA, should be the starting point for a negotiated settlement. My revised and extended remarks include supporting injury area abstracts and recommended reparatory justice outcomes and impacts the UN Working should support and urge the US to accept and negotiate.
Peoplehood/Nationhood Reparatory Justice Outcomes & Impacts
The state of being part of DAEUS (Descendants of Africans Enslaved in the United States), is first and foremost a sense of belonging to the African Diaspora in the United States. We understand this sense of belonging as much more than a simplistic, emotional connection to the DAEUS Diaspora. Rather, it reflects a deep identification with a collective consciousness that is a product of the long, rich, historical beginnings and enslavement of DAEUS. The consciousness is composed of a shared status and a shared standing as a people to demand reparations as other peoples have. DAEUS are indigenous to the United States of America. The existence of DAEUS in the United States resulted from a unique confluence of historical events that brought Europeans, Native Americans, and Africans together, creating the so-called “New World” of the Americas based on the European works of the law. This has been used to oppress people of African descent: the invention of racial slavery, the recreation of slave-like conditions through legal Apartheid (also known as Jim Crow) and the recreation of Jim Crow through the new American Apartheid. Each of these phases has been characterized by slavery or Neo-slavery, legally enforced discrimination and legally sanctioned violence as a control mechanism. (Reference: Vernellia Randall, Professor of Law Emerita, University of Dayton School of Law)
Reparatory Justice Outcomes & Impacts
The UN Working Group should support and urge the U.S. to acknowledge the agency of DAEUS to develop an independent negotiating group of choice to negotiate a “reciprocal zero-sum” reparations accord to be signed into law and become public policy. The reparations accord to be negotiated between European descendants and African descendants must include, at a minimum, the following five injury areas experienced for centuries by DAEUS, in addition to the murder, kidnapping, rape, terror, and general monstrous destruction human life, culture, and human possibilities:
a)The UN Working Group should recognize the situation, status, and standing of DAEUS to be not only different from whites but also other minority groups including immigrant blacks.
b)The UN Working Group should support and advocate for the United States to amend the census and data collection category to have a category for DAEUS (Descendants of Africans Enslaved in the United States) similar to the Hispanic category.
c)The UN Working Group should support DAEUS with a demand that all federal and state agencies conduct a local racial impact study on all policies and laws with particular 3 attention to the impact on DAEUS within the context of H.R. 40, a bill to establish the Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African-Americans.
d)The UN Working Group should support the demand of DAEUS for a human rights law for the 21st Century that conforms to the obligation of the the U.S. put forth by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), and that outlaws all forms of racial discrimination including reckless discrimination and negligent discrimination.
e) The UN Working Group should follow, as used here, a common convention to acknowledge the Global standing and status of African descendants as a means to acknowledge the common identity of humans enslaved throughout the African Diaspora. For example; Descendants of Africans Enslaved in the United States, Descendants of Africans Enslaved in the Carribean, Descendants of Africans Enslaved in Brazil, and so on.
f) The UN Working Group should support the demand for land in the US for DAEUS.
g) The UN Working Group should support the demand that the United States pay reparations to Descendants of Africans Enslaved in the United States (DAEUS) per a negotiated reparations accord/agreement, not “aid” or grants, and representatives of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA), and other DAEUS advocates for reparations in the United States must be at the negotiation table.
Education Reparatory Justice Outcomes & Impacts
African descendants in the United States have experienced great psychological trauma because of the miseducation we have received in this country. In traditional African societies, children received early education from parents, extended family members, and the community as a whole. Manhood and womanhood training was mandatory for young men and women. The kidnapping and separation of African people from our homeland ended the traditional education we received in the motherland. Stripped of our traditional education, Africans in America found ourselves thrown into a cultural and educational abyss. We lost our cultural glue and were deprived of an African cultural consciousness or sense of self. The American slaveholders feared the consequences of an educated African population. Understanding that the whites’ ability to maintain control over the African mind was what guaranteed the perpetuation of the system of enslavement, the slaveholders routinely denied Africans access to reading, writing, and formal education. As a result, a miseducation system was put in the place of an education system. At the core of this system was the belief in the inhumanity of the African and the superiority of the white race, or white supremacy. The goal of the miseducation system was to capture the African mind. It taught the African self-loathing, self-ridicule, and lack of self-worth, causing great psychological trauma. To this day, this system has had devastating effects on our youth and our communities in general. It has led to an educational nadir in the African American community resulting in feelings of low self-esteem and disinterest in academic pursuits. African descendants in America attending public schools in many urban areas today are systematically victimized by inadequate, inappropriate, ill-equipped schools that have become a part of America’s school-to-prison pipeline. Healing from the effects of miseducation will require that we reclaim our African minds. The liberation of the African mind will be the most important challenge we face as we implement: “Education for Wholeness.” This education for a whole people system will require intense work as we seek to heal from the trauma we have suffered and purge our minds of the negative indoctrination received from the American education system. Reparations are needed to accomplish this enormous task of reeducation. (Reference: Jaki Mungai, Instructor, Adjunct Faculty, Community College of Philadelphia)
Reparatory Justice Outcomes & Impacts
a) The UN Working Group should support the demands for a comprehensive education system in the U.S. from Pre-K-12, which include and infuse the timeline of civilization for DAEUS by culturally competent professors and teachers.
b)The UN Working Group should support the demand for the creation of neighborhood African-centered Community Education Centers, staffed by culturally competent instructors.
c)The UN Working Group should support Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
d) The UN Working Group should support the demand for reparations with 50% of the negotiated settlement being for educational endeavors.
e) The UN Working Group should support the demand for tuition-free access for DAEUS to all public post-secondary institutions, including trade schools and apprenticeships.
f) The UN Working Group should support the demand for African activists and scholars, to exclusively govern, administrate, operate, research, and be solely responsible for the HR40 Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act.
Criminal Punishment/Mass Incarceration
The historical record of our enslavement shows that the root of this diabolical genocide and socialcide (Leo J. Battenhausen) are the social practice outcomes of “Chattel Slavery” in the United States, and the non-implementation of Special Field Order 15(40 Acres And A Mule). All of these actions were constructed in the wake of the very first mass incarceration prison—The Ship of Enslavement, aka,“The Slave Ship.” This so-called “Golden Age” of Racism White Supremacy terror was the period from 1700-1808. Doing this period more “African Captives” and “Descendants of Enslaved Africans” were transported than any other time; more than two-thirds of the total. This tragedy unjustly enriched the entire colonial system of mass enslavement and morphed into mass incarceration by public policy during the period from 1968-present. All human rights derive from the inherent dignity and divinity of the human being. International human rights law requires that the essential aim of all penal systems must be to allow, encourage, and facilitate rehabilitation. However since the decade of the ’80s, the US prison population has quadrupled, an increase largely driven by heavier penalties for non-violent offenses for DAEUS. At the same time, as prison building costs escalate, many states have cut funding for rehabilitation, education and other programs and have begun to construct public-private partnerships with private corporations operating prisons for profit. The United States accounts for only 5% of the world’s population but holds almost 22% of the world’s prison population. More than 2 million people are incarcerated in U.S. prisons as well as local and county jails. In the United States, 1 out of every 3 DAEUS will go to prison or jail if there is no intervention. Recently, in a report submitted to the U.N. Human Rights Committee, by the Sentencing Project, a prison reform group, it is stated that disparities and vestiges of the System of Chattel Slavery pervade “every stage of the United States criminal justice system, from arrest to trial to sentencing.” The report also states that DAEUS are “more likely than white Americans to be arrested.” The report continues, “Once arrested, they are more likely to be convicted; and once convicted, they are more likely to face stiff sentences.” The report’s findings lead its authors to conclude that the U.S. is violating the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which states that all citizens must be treated equally under the law. The U.S. ratified the treaty in 1992. The U.N. Human Rights Committee, which monitors states’ compliance with their obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, has expressed ongoing concern about racial disparities at different stages in the U.S. criminal justice system, including sentencing disparities and the overrepresentation of individuals belonging to racial and ethnic minorities in prisons and jails. These facts and issues confirm the failure of the United States to respect and protect the dignity and divinity of DAEUS and fulfill its obligations in regard to our rights to be free from discrimination, to constitutional liberty and security of the person, to be equal before the law and to have equal protection of the law. The kidnapping, imprisonment, and transporting of a people from the continent of Africa by another people from the continent of Europe to the continents of North and South America constitutes an act of war and an international issue of the greatest magnitude. The war continues in public policy and corporate privatization. It is a political war. Reparations is a demand calling for the war to end. [Reference: Ari S. Merretazon, Former National Co-Chair, and Northeast Representative, N’COBRA]
Reparatory Justice Outcomes & Impacts
a.) The UN should demand a complete review and study of the US public policy governing its prison system and the impact of imprisonment on DAEUS.
b) The UN Working Group should urge units of federal, state and city governments to de-privatize US prisons and jails and return control and funding back to the respective units of federal, state and city government.
c) The UN Working Group should urge the immediate dismantling of the prison-caste system that continues the enslavement of DAEUS in the US via public policy reflecting the roots of the old forms of mass incarceration-the Convict Leasing System, discrimination in employment, housing, education, public benefits, denial of the right to vote, exclusion from jury duty, the pervasive stop and frisk policy, and police brutality of DAEUS.
d) The Un Working Group should urge counseling for the victims of U.S. drug policies; address the source of drugs coming into the community and disproportionate sentencing for drug crimes; decriminalize drugs to minimize prison time; investigate keeping drugs out of the communities; counseling for families; drug rehabilitation once people leave prison; gun control; Police policies to reduce “justifiable homicide;” de-privatize prisons and return funding and control of prisons to states.
Economics/Poverty/Wealth
Legalized slavery occurred in the United States from 1619-1865 and was followed by another century of legalized racial discrimination. According to History Factory, Wachovia bank became a major participant in this racist oppression in 1781 with the founding of the Bank of North America. “This overwhelming oppression and terrorism of one group of humans by another allowed some to create wealth, while the oppressed group was forbidden and then harshly constrained from accumulating wealth” .
The continuing effects of slavery in the United States, according to Randall Robinson in his book, The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks, constitutes a “human rights crime without parallel in the modern world. It produced victims, ad infinitum; long after the active stage of the crime has ended. From 1619 to 1865 was “far and away the most heinous crime visited upon any group of people in the world over the last 500 years.” America improperly benefited from the immoral and inhumane institution of slavery in the World. America has been unjustly enriched at the expense of Africans Enslaved in the United States (DAEUS) and their fore-parents. Congress and its corporations have failed to account for the profits and benefits America derived there from and Congress and its Corporations have concealed the nature and scope of their participation in the institution of slavery.
America, as a result of its wrongful acts and omissions, has been unjustly enriched On the cusp of the Civil War, the 10 major cotton states were producing 66% of the world’s cotton and raw cotton accounted for more than half of all U.S, exports. The numbers are almost impossible to grasp. The season that ended on August 31,1860 in the U.S. produced close to 5 million bales of cotton or roughly 2.3 billion pounds of cotton. Enslaved Africans were the savings account of America. In lieu of corn or trustworthy paper money, people were money in the slave holding states. Most economists will tell you, with variations in the wording that three conditions must be met for a commodity to be considered money:
• a means for conducting transaction (medium of exchange)
• an enslaved African might be handed over in lieu of a debt. from a land purchase or lost to a card shark as a thousand dollar bet in high stakes game
• retention of its worth over time (store of value) [Enslaved people were the most trusted form in which a slave owner might save his money. They not only retained their value over time by maintaining their value through reproduction, but increased by reproducing frequently, which is why slave owners insisted on owning children.]
• A way to keep accounts (a unit of account) $%^ [Slave owners kept account logs of enslaved Africans along with their mules, cows, chickens and various other items.]
Attorney Willie Gary states: “Think about this, in 1865 the federal government of this country freed 4 million Blacks. Without a dime, with no property, nearly all illiterate, they were let lose upon the land to wander, That’s what begins the aftermath of slavery.” Fast forward to the modern era Randall Robinson points out that until 1950 the federal government included in mortgage loans restrictive covenants preventing blacks and only blacks, no other group from buying houses in white neighborhoods. So blacks could not make their equity work for them. They couldn’t move up. Attorney Gary also states “banks kept denying loans to blacks, often by redlining, by which the financial institutions literally drew lines on a map around a neighborhood and not give loans to creditworthy people living there. That happened until almost last week.”
Today 27.1% of DAEUS live in poverty compared to 9.9% of whites; 73.8% of white Americans own homes compare to only 49.9% of DAEUS; the median white family has a net worth of $116,000.00, the median black family in America only has a net worth of $1,700.00. The legacy of slavery and discrimination won’t loosen its grip until reparations are paid. It’s the only solution!! [Reference: Osaze Osayeba, aka, Charles Mckensie, N’COBRA Northeast Region]
Reparatory Justice Outcomes & Impacts
a) The UN Working Group should support and urge the US to facilitate the establishment of Black banks where DAEUS cities live as the majority population.
b) The UN Working Group should support and urge the US to enforce existing laws of equal opportunity to deconstruct institutional racism.
c) The UN Working Group should support and urge allotment of funds paid over four generations in the $1septillion (24 zeros) to build wealth.
Health
From slavery to the present, African Americans continue to be assaulted emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually. From the second that our babies are born they are more at risk for dying within their first year due to Black infant mortality. The genocidal racism of mass incarceration of African American men, women, and children including political prisoners, the educational devastation, nutricide and food deserts, the medical and pharmaceutical apartheid, brutal killings and treatments, environmental poisoning, media distortion, and historical political fraud are examples of the fact that African-Americans are most likely to be predisposed to more unhealthy lifestyles and less equipped emotionally, physically, psychologically, and spiritually to address and combat the daily bombardment of institutional racism stressors.
In the Good Food Revolution by Will Green, author of Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser explains that there is an epidemic of diet related illnesses such as diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, strokes, and obesity in Black communities. He shared a recent study about Southern Californian’s predicted life expectancies by specific zip codes. Wealthy population living in Beverly Hills are more likely to live ten years longer than the poor residing in South Central Los Angeles. In further examining the concept of a person’s longevity according to his zip code, African Americans encounter consistent challenges throughout their lifetimes: limited access to affordable quality housing, wage sustainable employment for their families, quality education, nutritious food, clean safe neighborhoods. From these statistics, it can be concluded that African Americans are likely to be predisposed to more unhealthy lifestyles, and less equipped emotionally, physically, psychologically, and spiritually to address and combat the daily bombardment of institutional racism stressors. [Reference: Fatimah Adekola, Co-Chair, N’COBRA Philadelphia Chapter]
Reparatory Justice Outcomes & Impacts
a) The UN Working Group should support and urge the US to publicly apologize (written and verbally), with no disclaimers of liability, and collaborate with the designated negotiation group of Reparationists about financial compensation for the descendants of enslaved African Americans.
b) The UN Working Group should support and urge the U.S. to support and finance African- centered mental/behavioral health centers to address the emotional issues of African Americans.
c) The UN Working should support urge the US to support and facilitate education for African Descendants to become therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists, and credentialed behavioral health professionals and workers.
d) The UN Working Group should support and urge the U.S. to facilitate free universal physical and mental healthcare centers. The healthcare centers must be accessible everywhere.
e) Scholarships and free educational training for medical doctors, psychologists, therapists, social workers, and all other fields of expertise needed to create healthy self- sufficient communities.
