Bear with me. I am not a scholar, and this is complicated, but I will do my best.
In 2016, Edwin Black, published an article titled “In Germany’s extermination program for black Africans, a template for the Holocaust. In this article, Black wrote: “The dots are well known to many scholars — but are rarely connected to form a distinct historical nexus for either the Holocaust or the African American communities. America’s black community has a mighty stake in this topic.”
While Black’s article is painful reading, I have not read a better account and I am putting a link below. Those who have the strength to read it, will discover that the dots of Nazi history are so deeply connected to America they cannot be unraveled. Personally, I cannot read it without feeling a burning shame.
In 2017, the Herero people filed a case for reparations under the Alien Torte Act (that has allowed foreigners to sue perpetrators of human rights violations in U.S. Federal courts since 1789). Opening arguments were heard in 2018. Standing was the first consideration (meaning do the Herero have a right to sue Germany in U.S. courts?). I tried, but I could not find any further information on the case. While I fear the court denied them standing, the Herero filed suit the first time in 2001, so they are standing firm.
I have long thought that a solid basis for reparations – America owes the descendants of the enslaved – is the ideology itself.
Ideologies are systems of abstract thought applied to public matters. The main purpose behind the creation of an ideology is to change society or adhere to ideals where conformity already exists. Again, an ideology is abstract thought – not scientific, not factual, not even religious thought. Ideology is pure abstraction (like a tit on a bull).
To be very clear, what I am talking about here, is the “ideology” that ushered slavery, Jim Crow, genocide and the Holocaust into existence. This ideology is often called “systemic racism” and the people who created it were among the wealthiest, most powerful on earth. I am working on an essay about this, but suffice to say, these people had the resources necessary to market their ideology and that is exactly what they did. And just as they passed their ideology to their heirs, they passed the wealth and power necessary to keep marketing and selling it.
Their wealth has grown, along with the power it affords their heirs. For instance, many of the same people who own this ideology today launched the Conservative Movement in America. That the Conservative Movement they created is morphing into White Christian Nationalism is no surprise – at all.
There are dozens to choose from, but a look at Andrew Carnegie (1835 – 1919) helps illustrate, that this is not ancient history. This is current history. History in the making right now, today. History, that we are making with our silence, or our voices.
Between 1902 and 1944, Andrew Carnegie’s Institution for Science was a global leader in Eugenics and Scientific Racism (and home to the Eugenics Record Office). Not only did Carnegie fund eugenics and scientific racism in the U.S., he poured millions of dollars into the pseudoscience in Germany, including the Nazi Regime.
In 2020, the Carnegie Institution for Science released a statement on its eugenics research. The pivotal moment mentioned at the beginning of the statement, refers to the BLM Protests and Trump presidency. However, this excerpt is instructive, and I quote:
“There is no excuse, then or now, for our institution’s previous willingness to empower researchers who sought to pervert scientific inquiry to justify their own racist and ableist prejudices. Our support of eugenics made us complicit in driving decades of brutal and unconscionable actions by governments in the United States and around the world.”
https://carnegiescience.edu/carnegie-institution-science-statement-eugenics-research
124 years after his death, Carnegie’s philanthropic organization maintains a $4.7-Billion endowment. Today, Research in Africa is one of the Carnegie Corporations’ four key programs and that chills me to the bone. Talk about social engineering, that takes the effing cake.
For anyone interested in action, I suggest you send a letter requesting support and legal assistance for the Herero people’s claim against Germany, to the ACLU and the ADL. I also suggest a letter to the U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, referring to the JUST Act signed into law in 2020, which reaffirmed U.S. commitment to reparations for Holocaust survivors.
You can find the JUST Act here:
Laura, I apologize for such a long comment and will delete it if you like (all you need do is ask). By the time I was done writing it, I decided to publish it as a separate article as well. But you were my inspiration, so I posted it here first.
Link to Edwin Black article:
