Reparations Quotes

“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.”
― Noam Chomsky, Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World

“It is true that all of us are the beneficiaries of crimes committed by our ancestors, and it is true that nothing can be done about that now because the victims are dead and the survivors are innocent. These are good reasons for keeping our mouths shut about the past: but tell me, what are our reasons for silence about atrocities still to come?”
― Damon Knight, One Side Laughing: Stories Unlike Other Stories

“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.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy

“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)”
― Aberjhani, The American Poet Who Went Home Again

“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.”
― Ruth Ozeki, The Book of Form and Emptiness

“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.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can't Wait

“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.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can't Wait

“We’re the only species that institutionalizes reconciliation and that grapples with –truth-, -apology-, -forgiveness-, -reparations-, -amnesty-, and –forgetting-.”
― Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

“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...”
― AnonymousXgHOST

“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.”
― Cebo Campbell, Sky Full of Elephants

“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”
― John Dominis Holt, Hanai: A Poem for Queen Liliuokalani

“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.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“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.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“Reparations can make up for stolen wages, but not stolen dignity and stolen lives.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Heart Force One: Need No Gun to Defend Society

“After all the heartaches inflicted by white people, a 100 generations worth apology won't be sufficient.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Visvavatan: 100 Demilitarization Sonnets

“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.”
― Douglas Murray, The War on the West

“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.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Brit Actually: Nursery Rhymes of Reparations

“Radical inhumanity warrants radical reparations.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Brit Actually: Nursery Rhymes of Reparations

“Buckingham palace is not a noble home, it's the national zoo of England, where they coddle massacre 'n stagnation, with no civil initiative for atonement.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Brit Actually: Nursery Rhymes of Reparations

“Achievement comes later, atonement comes first.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Brit Actually: Nursery Rhymes of Reparations

“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.”
― David L. Wadley

“The selective outrage follows longstanding patterns of neglect and normalizes anti-Blackness as the weather, as
Christina Sharpe notes, whereas non-Black suffering is treated as a disaster.”
― Ruha Benjamin, Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code

“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”
― John Dominis Holt, Hanai: A Poem for Queen Liliuokalani

“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”
― John Dominis Holt, Hanai: A Poem for Queen Liliuokalani

“For me, the humanity of our world is decided by the fate of Africa.
-- Horst Köhler, President of Germany, 2004 - 2010”
― Horst Köhler

“Churchill was a big fat cannibal,
Leopold was an ugly deadly virus,
Columbus was a most wanted terrorist.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“If you steal from the thieves,
can they call the cops!
If you heist from the blackmarket,
is it really a crime!

If you rob the British Museum,
isn't it a humanitarian initiative!
If you blast Mount Rushmore to ashes,
isn't it really public service!”
― Abhijit Naskar, With Love From A Blue Rock

“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.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Nazmahal: Palace of Grace

“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!”
― Abhijit Naskar, Nazmahal: Palace of Grace

“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!”
― Abhijit Naskar, Nazmahal: Palace of Grace