This are two separate issues in your statement and your conflation of them seems to have left your inner wypipo showing. And YES, your comment showed a MASSIVE amount of wypipo-ing.
1. REPARATIONS: Regardless of WHAT is done with that lump sum, it is owed. Not to be managed as if it's an allowance or stipend. If it was all flushed down the toilet that would be the right of EVERY ADOS. It's not REPARATIONS for LIVES AND FUTURES TAKEN, A CRIMES COMMITTED if there are strings and provisos. If someone owes me fifty bucks they don't get to negotiate under what situations they're willing to pay it back. That's not their right. An injustice that benefited and benefits this county to the vast exclusion of ADOS was committed and made legal by the U.S. government. Justice says there must be restitution, not the restitution the U.S government or randos on the Internet think is best for us. ADOS do not need a white savior--at least half that moniker is an utter lie. Aggressors, rapists, murders, con-persons, kidnappers, and torturers doesn't get to tell their victims what to do with the remuneration for caused trauma. There's no moral or legal standing--no common sense-standing, even. That's not how any form of justice works. So, don't try to police or suggest that the government police what Black people do with THEIR owed money. That shows your not-so-inner wypipo much more clearly than any photo.
2. SYSTEMIC RACISM: It needs to be solved and using the money taken out the flesh of enslaved people and the long-hoarded wealth owed to their descendants has NOTHING to do with that. America must fix America with its own money. IT MUST pay the reparations it owes, AND ALSO solve systemic racism. End of story. Those are two injustices that ADOS did not create and cannot solve. And we should not be short-chaned on EITHER solution. "America" must cut two checks. The longer it takes to do so, the further from true justice and equity it gets. Each day that passes is proof.
That's TWO checks for two connected but separately defined and definable issues. Money owed and a problem foisted upon. Neither of which enslaved folks nor their ancestors had a hand in.
As for reading more on reparations by Black thinkers ... I invite and urge you to do so. Seriously. Please. Do the work, and don't make others HAVE to do it for you because their conscience won't shut up. You're part of the way there but you still clearly think the way one who has BENEFITED from white supremacy would naturally think. That's not your fault. AND you are the only one who can un-learn that for you. The work is hard and lifelong, and sometimes thankless--no one will EVER say "thank you for understanding I'm a human being, nor should they ever have to--and the only satisfaction is that of doing what's right and KNOWING that the people it effects SEE YOU and appreciate you even when they don't say.
And it actually seems like you could overcome the white supremacy programming from which THIS WHOLE WORLD, including Black folks, suffer from and under ... like you might be genuinely willing. That's a large part of the battle, but not most of it. You WILL have to do the work for yourself and alone, in many ways. You'll have to learn what it is to work with and for the equality and equity of all and committing to that challenge as a life-choice, not just in Internet comments sections. You will have to metabolize that justice is what no-strings reparations is. That "America" isn't loaning Black people money or advancing us money. IT OWES US THAT FOR GENERATION OF LEGALIZED TORTURE AND GENOCIDE, THEN THROUGH GENERATIONS MORE OF SOMEWHAT-LESSENED TORTURE. You don't have to like or agree with the form of no-string reparations--no one ever said justice had to feel good. But to subscribe to the idea of JUSTICE, then offer roadblocks from a place of concern-trolling is worse than not subscribing to justice at all.
The other option might be easier to do--so many other white people seem to find it so and denounce the idea of justice (in this case, reparations come closest to justice, and will come FAR sooner than the end of systemic racism ... not that I believe America will ever take legitimate swings at either issue). If that's honest for you, it's certainly an easier, less time-intensive thing to say than: "I don't mean to insult The Blacks, but ... how would having more money, money that's BEEN owed, even help in this capitalist system of ours? HOW?"
:-|
That's all I got for ya. Check out those books on reparations written by Black intellectuals, if you care to.
