Rumors turned into reality. Anti-Slavery Activist Harriet Tubman will be the new face of the $20 bill sometime in the year 2020. So far a burst of positive exclamations have circulated on my timeline in support and celebration of Tubman's new acknowledgement. I haven't yet spoken on my stance as I have been pretty torn by the subject matter. But in thinking about it, I am not impressed and I will tell you why.
America continuously tells us to forget about slavery. "It happened, we know it was bad, but now it's over so you need to move on from it." It's like they don't have the understanding to comprehend the extent of damage and the repercussions slavery has had and still is having on black people today. We as a people have been ripped from our land, forced to be enslaved for hundreds of years in unknown territory, our identity was stripped and we are left not knowing exactly where we came from. Families and tribes forever lost. And that is just the surface! I did not mention the torture, embarrassment, humiliation, and the irreparable damage that has been done. And there's more! But I would be left writing a novel.
In being "freed", we have started from ground 0 with the past following us in every step forward without any assistance from the people that are the cause and so "sorry" it happened. Instead of putting a face of one of our own on money that a majority of us aren't able to claim in large enough quantities, how about we receive reparations for the atomic damage done.
What are Reparations you ask?
Reparations for slavery is the idea that some form of compensatory payment should be made to the descendants of Africans who had been enslaved by the Atlantic Slave Trade.
Think it's a far fetched idea? Well reparations were definitely made to slave OWNERS.
According to the National Archives and Records Administration, The District of Columbia Emancipation Act paved the way to compensate slave owners for their “loyalty to the Union” and for the loss of income incurred by freeing slaves.
On April 16, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill ending slavery in the District of Columbia. Passage of this law came 8 1/2 months before President Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation. The act brought to a conclusion decades of agitation aimed at ending what antislavery advocates called “the national shame” of slavery in the nation’s capital. It provided for immediate emancipation, compensation to former owners who were loyal to the Union of up to $300 for each freed slave, voluntary colonization of former slaves to locations outside the United States, and payments of up to $100 for each person choosing emigration.
Over the next 9 months, the Board of Commissioners appointed to administer the act approved
930 petitions, completely or in part, from former owners for the freedom of 2,989 former slaves.
Today $300.00 per slave would be equivalent to $8,369.80 per slave. Do that math.
I believe this is just another historical band aid to blind us from the real issue. I am not taking any shine away from Ms. Tubman. She has paved the way for many others after her to fight the good fight towards the equality that we shouldn't have had to fight for in the first place. But honestly, do you really think she would be grateful for this accolade?
Not impressed
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