There are over 42 million African Americans in the United States and 2019, marks the 400th year of the African presence in North America beginning at the Jamestown Colony (US Congress HR 1242 2018). Our journey has been traumatic and longsuffering from the shores of our homeland Africa & the transit Caribbean to the slave ports, auction blocks and slave markets of the North American Colonies and later, United States. We have experienced overwhelming violence, rape, torture, and dehumanizing enslavement as chattel by law, and even more personal, society. For 400 years there has been the African presence in North America under a system of oppression in service of building this European community to withstand and ultimately, defeat the Native original ownership of this land. Today, 98% of Africans in the United States are descendants of individuals brought here during slavery(African Americans Britannica 2019). To the descendants, this fact brings the issue of settlement, restitution, and acknowledgement of sins experienced since our arrival. The rampant inequality, lack of resources, and systemic racial discrimination directed towards African Americans calls for a solution, which cuts through the rhetoric, racial past & hatred, and political deadlock on the issue of Africans living in America.
The Native Americans, during their turbulent European invasion experience negotiated with the United States Government in 1824 (BIA John Calhoun 1824), over loss of land, enslaved persons, broken treaties, and traumatic losses suffered while losing control of the continent, now home to a New Nation. The creation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs was through the US Department of War and later, the Department of the Interior, where their concerns, and disputes were addressed and remedied by budgeted restitution by appointed US officials. Since then, Natives Nations have sustained self determination and peaceful autonomy.
It is in this same manner, where African Americans will constructively address their issues without racial bias and political gridlock of the dominating White American Culture. Years of inaction, lack of or inadequate service, and injustice by the United States Government in addressing serious concerns in the African American community has perpetuated the suffering and emerging stereotypes which pervade the African American community. Yet, African Americans continue to contribute to the American culture, economic GDP, and defense of this Nation. A Bureau of African American Affairs, under the Secretary of Interior can assess social, economic, political, health, and intellectual problems in the African American community. A Bureau of African American Affairs, can identify, plan solutions, and implement real budgeted action to issues facing African Americans across the Nation. And it will be monumental, as the first acknowledgment of the American Past as it concerns the 400 year presence and contribution of African Americans to the United States.
The United States has publicly apologized and made restitution to Japan, France, the Kingdom of Hawaii, the survivors of the Tuskegee Experimental Trials, and in 2008, to African Americans for slavery and Jim Crow (Smithsonian Five Times the US Officially Apologized Danny Lewis 2016). In 2019, the descendants of the enslaved here in the United States ask for a Fair Square Deal in response to our 400 year ordeal here in America. Pass all of the racial bias & hatred, suppression of African American progress, a Fair Square Deal administered through a Bureau designed explicitly for the African American population can redeem the children of the enslaved from sure failure and genocidal demise.
Other concerns:
Fair Economic Development & Labor: The investment into Black owned businesses in multiple local communities, industry, and commerce will be an immediate answer to historical unemployment, poverty, and issues surrounding basic living conditions facing the African American across the Nation.A proposal of $1-5 Billion in select Black communities, directed at businesses, housing lending, and industry built with Black hands can resurrect whole cities. Don't give them the fish, teach them how to fish!
Fair Universal Healthcare: African Americans are at the top of most leading causes of death in the United States including Cancer, Heart Disease, Diabetes, and more. Healthcare for African Americans and their families can assess, educate, prevent and curb chronic issues of health facing the community including Infant Mortality, Diseases such as HIV/AIDS, mental health, and more. The ability to simply see a doctor should not denied an entire community whose existence is the actual poverty line in the United States.
Fair Banking & Finance: Predatory Banking and Financial practices have not only drained the wealth of the former enslaved but crippled their ability to engage in the modern financial system, governed by credit and assess to capital. These practices must be rescinded and banned for African Americans to break the under caste system, which prevents most from social mobility regardless of opportunity.
Written by Mr. Cowan Amaye-Obu/ Edited by Peter Commons
For the complete article, please email PeterLCommons@gmail.com
