Asheville North Carolina’s Phony Talk of Reparations

By Virginia Bobian –

Reparations are due for the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow, perpetrated on African American people who are descendants of slaves who were brought to America for free labor.

African American slaves built the White House, the Capitol building, Wall Street’s walls, and the homes of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and other presidents. These are just a few things done by slaves that made America the rich country it is today.

A year ago, on May 20, 2024, I attended a community-wide event about Reparations for African Americans at St. James Episcopal Church in Black Mountain. I attended the follow-up forums on June 24 and July 29 that year, and it was painful to sit and listen to some of the austere and obstinate comments. I tried not to jump to a precipitate judgment. However, I had an epiphany that these sessions would not end well for me.

First, Let Me Tell You Who I Am

I am African American, a direct descendant of slaves (ADOS), born in 1948 in Beaufort, South Carolina. I am Gullah Geechee. Forty percent of all the slaves brought to America came to the Charleston-Beaufort area where I am from. I lived through the Jim Crow era. For me it was yesterday. Why I don’t live there now is because there are still too many painful memories.

I cannot mitigate the racism and hate of that era: traveling miles out of the way to avoid Sundown towns; the sterilization of many Black women by white doctors; the lynching of thousands of Black people, including women and children. Then, there were the castrations and “Buck Breakings” of Black men in front of their families, and the corrosive Tuskegee experiment in Alabama, run by the US Public Health Service, which infected over six hundred Black men with syphilis and refused to treat them, leaving many of them to die in agony. If this were done to dogs, many people would have been outraged.

Nothing happened during slavery that did not happen during Jim Crow. Some said Jim Crow was worse than slavery. This, no doubt, is the history America doesn’t want taught. Sad to say, some African Americans don’t know the history of slavery and Jim Crow. That is why they don’t know why reparations are needed. Many African Americans are surprised when they see so many of those in power using despotic racism today.

But we are not all monolithic. My survival in America means never to be surprised! Racism is in the foundation of America. I don’t know what Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, and Kamala Harris are talking about when they say America was not, or was never, a racist country. Francis Scott Key, who wrote the National Anthem, was a known racist. In the third verse of the National Anthem, he said, “no refuge could save the hireling and the slave from the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave.” It also talks about war to a people who love wars and spend trillions on needless unnecessary wars.

“No one won the last war, and no one will win the next.”  Eleanor Roosevelt
“Wisdom is better than the weapons of war.”  ~ Ecclesiastes 9:18

Who Got Reparations

After slavery was abolished in 1865, the slave owners—not the slaves—got reparations. The slaveholders were reimbursed for the loss of “their” slaves.

Native Americans have gotten and are still getting reparations. The Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act of 1980 is an example: the federal government provided $81.5 million dollars in restitution to the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot Indian tribes. That money came from taxes paid by you and me and millions of other African Americans who have never received a dime in reparations.

Japanese Americans received reparations—a check of $20,000 per person—for their incarceration during World War II thanks to the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.

Jewish people received 87 billion dollars in reparations for the Holocaust. Today, Israel gets billions of dollars every year in reparations from America.

Illegal immigrants who break into this country; some are, and have, gotten billions of dollars given to them in reparations. Monthly Visa cards with thousands of dollars on them, along with Food Stamps. These immigrants came to this country illegally, and are put up in expensive luxury hotels while many homeless Americans and veterans are living and sleeping on the streets in America. What country does that?

It has been over four hundred years, and America still refuses to do right by the people they enslaved and treated worse than any animals, while calling America a “Christian Nation” and preaching Human Rights to the world. Hold on my brothers, hold on my sisters, Judgment is coming to America from a God that said, “A thousand years with you is one day with me.” Oh, no “God Bless America?” Can God bless evil? Brace yourself; judgment has already started.

Reparations for Direct Descendants of Slaves? No, America has no money for that. However, we do have money for endless wars to control the world. America is in everybody’s world business. I can’t be so asinine to think America will now give up the sinister power of racism when they have embraced it for over four hundred years.

“I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.”  ~ Thomas Jefferson

After reading the Impact Focus Area Recommendations for Reparations in Asheville, North Carolina, I was furious because none of the listed recommendations were valid reparations according to what was given to the slave owners, Native Americans, Jewish people, Japanese Americans, and what now is being given to Illegal Immigrants!

What is recommended for African Americans, Direct Descendants of Slaves, are human rights that every American should have. These recommendations are not reparations. What a slap in my face, and in the faces of my ancestors, and a waste of time.

Here are the listed recommendations in Asheville for reparations:

• Housing
• Health and Wellness
• Criminal Justice
• Economic Development
• Education

“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious, is to be in a rage almost all the time.”  ~ James Baldwin

I went to Africa in 1991 and stood at the “Door of No Return” at Goree Island, where twenty million slaves came through. There I wept because the screams of those who were shackled there, taken from their homes and families, can still be heard.

Two years ago, I traveled to Montgomery, Alabama, to the Legacy Museum and the Lynching Memorial. That experience was much worse than I could imagine. They prolifically and unapologetically told the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow. I learned some things about slavery and Jim Crow that I did not know. I came across a woman who was lynched for not saying “Yes Sir” to a white man. I came across three people lynched right here in Buncombe County that I did not know about.

Last year I went to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC. This was also powerful and painful to experience.

Every American needs to take these journeys and learn the true history of America the Beautiful—and the Ugly!

“I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.”  ~ James Baldwin

This article is not even scratching the surface of what was done to us as a people, and is still being done on many levels. You cannot talk about Reparations without knowing and acknowledging the history of African Americans in America. America is not yet ready to acknowledge what they have done to us as a people, nonetheless correct and pay for it. KARMA!

“In the end we will not remember the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”  ~ Martin L. King

NOTE: The views and opinions expressed here, as well as assertions of facts, are those of the author. They do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of The Urban News.