Reparations Happy Hour

Here is one article on a local Reparations Happy Hour:

https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2018/05/reparations_happy_hour_portland.html

Black, brown, and indigenous people could show up and be handed $10 for drinks, the money coming from donations by white people who did not attend. About forty people attended, so that was $400 total, which - depending on the location - is not extravagant for drinks. No one was forced to donate or attend. People had a good time.

That shouldn't make people particularly angry, despite the long list of white people calling the police on Black people enjoying themselves, but there were some very angry responses.

I have some thoughts about why that would cause anger, but for now I just want to go over why it could be reasonable to give much more than $10. I had pictured this as turning into a screed of righteous anger; and it might be more of a weary lament. I should still get this on the record.

It is not just slavery.

Slavery would be enough. The beatings and family separations and loss of culture and the hard labor to build wealth that you do not get to share creates plenty of reason for reparations, with that last reason possibly being the most concrete.

However, it is not just slavery.

It is also that when land owners were finding it difficult to let go of their indentured servants and they were looking for a way to hold onto that labor without spending more money, and when Bacon's Rebellion reinforced the danger of letting poor people of all races unite, that whiteness became a weapon to use to strengthen hierarchies of power. (See Theodore W. Allen.) It gave racism deep roots.

It is that Bacon's Rebellion happened in Virginia, and racist shoring up of greed became formalized there, "the birthplace of presidents", and so became a huge part of the nation's birthright.

It is that for all the talk of state's rights, it was not just the desire to keep slavery in the Southern states but to be able to make the rules for the Northern states, as with the Dred Scott decision. They would do anything to hold onto that slavery.

It is that even after Emancipation freed slaves were not allowed to leave plantations, and that Freedman's bureaus would often take the sides of the former owners, and that even supportive bureaus workers couldn't prevent outright murder, which happened.

It is that after creating wealth former slaves were not considered to have any part in that wealth, starting new lives with zero assets.

It is not being able to take advantage of the Homestead Act, if not officially, largely still true in practice. (https://aeon.co/ideas/land-and-the-roots-of-african-american-poverty)

It is that immediately after Emancipation debt peonage started, not only depriving many Black people of their freedom, but making it more economical to have slave labor than it had ever been. (See Douglas A. Blackmon.) This did not help white people regard their Black neighbors as fully deserving of life and liberty.

It is that even though during Reconstruction education and opportunities were expanded for poor white people too, that poor white people still feel threatened by progress against racism.

It is that Reconstruction was abandoned so quickly and cheaply with the Compromise of 1877.

It is that lynching was used to punish Black economic success, but was painted as a necessity because of the brutality of Black men, continuing the tradition of their dehumanization. (See Ida B. Wells.)

It is the constant tradition of white men accusing Black men of raping white women, but white men raping Black women. (See At the Dark End of the Street by Danielle L. McGuire.)

It is Plessy vs Ferguson upholding segregation while paying mere lip service to equality.

It is Woodrow Wilson re-segregating government offices because even a little progress is too much, and because he was a huge racist.


It is that it wasn't enough to lynch some Black business owners individually or in small groups, but that sometimes whole business districts and towns needed to be destroyed. (See Rosewood and Black Wall Street.)

It is that the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot that destroyed Black Wall Street and the 1923 Rosewood Massacre seem to have been at least partly inspired by the return of Black veterans who had served in World War I and felt that they had earned equal treatment.

It is also that redlining and other corrupt real estate practices and very corrupt lending practices and even racist design practices kept Black people limited in where they lived. This allowed for some wonderful communities, but it also severely hampered growth of home value, a very reliable investment for white people. (There is interesting information on New York and Robert Moses, but that is not the only big city with issues.)

It is also that this concentration of people of color has made it easy for some areas to be subject to worse industrial pollution. There is some information on that in Harriet A. Washington's Medical Apartheid but also Flint, Michigan.

Also, if we are going to refer to Medical Apartheid it is the Tuskegee syphilis study, and J. Marion Sims experimenting on slave women, and many other examples.

It is parts of the New Deal being set up specifically to exclude Black people.

It is Black people serving in World War II and then not being able to use the VA loans, or to get into some of the programs that they were technically entitled too, but somehow still not allowed to.

It is white men getting off and avoiding punishment for rapes and murders of Black people.

It is Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, Jimmy Lee Jackson, Martin Luther King Jr. but also Alberta Williams King. It is Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley, but also Johnny Robinson and Virgil Ware. It is other Black bodies being pulled out of the water when they were looking for James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman. It is James Meredith imprisoned because he dared to apply to Ole Miss, and not getting out until he was dying of cancer.

It is so many people. The Half Has Never Been Told, by Edward E. Baptist - that title comes from a quote about slavery, but it is true about so much more than slavery.

It is about white artists getting rich off of copying Black artists - even when they give credit - because the white performers are always more palatable. 

It is about braids being unprofessional on Black women but being daring and fun on white women.

It is about film not taking Black skin into account for decades.

It is about getting the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act passed and then work immediately beginning on undoing them.

It is about integration sending whites to set up private schools rather than giving up their discrimination.

It is about the Southern Strategy where the racism becomes less blatant but is still there. It is about the war on drugs.

It is about white people assuming that affirmative action means that people who weren't good enough on their own get in, when the issue was that being good wasn't enough unless you were white.

It is about Affirmative Action primarily benefiting white women. It is about a Black man making on average $15 an hour to a  white man's $21, and a Black woman $13 to a white woman's $17. It is about it being as easy for white high school dropout to get hired as a Black college student.

It is about white people taking advantage of pot legalization to start profitable new businesses while the jails are full of people of color in there for nothing worse than possession.

It is about our police system being based on Southern slave patrols and still being used to enforce the social order. It is about police budgets being supported by over-policing low income communities that disproportionately affects people of color, because they can get away with it.

It is about Ferguson.

It is about the over-policing leading to full jails of people who haven't even been convicted languishing because of the cash bail system and full court dockets.

It is about Kalief Browder.

It is about video showing us cops escalating incidents, using unnecessary force, planting weapons and murdering, and still not being convicted of murder. It is about Walter Scott and Eric Garner.

It is about unnecessary and patently false 911 calls and the police shooting before there is a chance to respond, and still there are no charges, just dead bodies. So it is about John Crawford and Tamir Rice, but not just about them.

But with Tamir and Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin, it is about Black teenagers and children being seen as scary men, but Ryan Lochte and Brock Turner (and Kavanaugh) get youth as an excuse.

It is about the police searching Botham Jean's apartment but not Amber Guyger's.

It is all the fatal shootings, but it is also all of the calls that don't result in a shooting; only humiliation. There are all the reminders that Black people are not allowed to barbecue, or sell water or ride in a car with their white grandmother, or own a legally registered gun, or play golf or ride a wine train or use the bathroom at Starbucks or use coupons or use their community pool. That even though sundown towns aren't supposed to exist, they still do. That even though we are not yet officially a police state, you may always be required to justify your presence and may be asked to leave.

It is about Sandra Bland.

It is that even when Jacqueline Woodson win an award, her "friend" Daniel Handler still has to make a watermelon joke, 17 years after Fuzzy Zoeller directed his remarks at Tiger Woods. It's not that there is anything terrible about watermelon or fried chicken or okra, but that they always need to be brought up, always reminding you that you are other, and that will always take precedence over your accomplishments.


It is that a quiet and respectful protest gets you fired from the NFL, and that an ad campaign makes people care about sweatshops who never cared before. It is about people thinking that kneeling during the anthem to protest police brutality is offensive to the flag, but waving Confederate flags is just about heritage, as are ugly statues that were raised quickly at times when there was a threat of rising equality.

It is about progressives saying "Listen to Black women" and then getting mad about things they say. It is about Sanders calling people who didn't vote for him "low-information".

It is that even in progressive Portland, this site exists and never runs out of material:
https://browninpdx.tumblr.com/ 

It is about another event from the Reparations Happy Hour people being planned because a Black woman was put out of the shop by an employee.

So yes, in Portland, forty people of color got $10 to spend on drinks. If that is what makes you angry, the problem is yours.