What's up, guys? So what's on my mind today? Guilty. Okay, guys, let's get into this.

The United States of America would have you think it does not believe in collective guilt.

But this is 100% incorrect.

When over 100,000 Japanese-Americans were incarcerated in internment camps during World War II because of Executive Order 9066, the survivors received an apology and reparation, from the United States because the United States of America recognized its collective guilt. After a decade-long campaign, the Japanese-American community won congressional approval for a law, The Civil Liberties Act, signed by President Reagan in 1988 and paid each surviving victim $20,000 in compensation to try to right a wrong.

It is not bombastic nor grandiose to say that the ancestors of many Black Americans suffered far more significant losses concerning life, liberty, dignity, and the pursuit of happiness than any of our fellow incarcerated Japanese Americans. If the pain and indecency suffered by our fellow Japanese Americans were considered a ten on a suffering scale, then the ancestors of many Black Americans suffered a million times worse. It is also noteworthy that this nation not only apologized to those Japanese Americans, thus admitting its collective guilt or moral fault, but the United States of America also paid them reparations. The reparations were intended to provide some restitution for Japanese Americans' suffering and injustice during World War II. They were also meant to acknowledge the past's wrongs and demonstrate the nation's commitment to justice and the protection of civil liberties. Millions of Americans were responsible for paying these reparations, promised in 1988, in the form of taxes, despite not being involved in the decision, in 1942, to incarcerate Japanese Americans at all. The collective guilt of this country was responsible for an awful act, thus requiring all Americans to bear the culpability or blame for such an appalling decision, even after several generations had passed.

Why pay the ancestors of enslaved people? That's a fair question. Here is the answer. This country promoted, allowed, and they made it legal, but its most essential flex, this country made it profitable to enslave my ancestors. I am, and millions of others like me are all that remain. I am the amalgamation of this country's rancid, vile decision to make my ancestors profitable. My enslaved ancestors are dead. But I am their voice; I am their face; I am their proof of this country's deed. I am the bill that is marked overdue, and it is time for this country to pay its debt for the capture and enslavement of my ancestors the foundation.

The country's founders purposely set this nation on a path of oppression, subjugation, enslavement, and disenfranchisement, of a group of African People that committee no act of war or invasion. They violated no treaties against this country. Nor did this group of people try to achieve economic or territorial gains from this country or try to change the religion of the country's people.

This country sought to uphold the vile practice of chattel enslavement for no other reason than capitalism. This country's practice of chattel enslavement benefitted the federal, state, and local economies, banks, and other institutions. 

 Those Africans were brought here for enslavement and became the nation's foundation and scaffolding. They grew the wealth of this country, without benefitting from that growth or wealth. They were brought here, against their will, to work the fields for the capitalist system of this government.

The United States of America should be held guilty as a collective because it passed on many opportunities to abolish the practice of enslavement. The 3/5th compromise, the Dred Scott decision and the fugitive slave act all solid

Support the show