Reparations Are To Silence

Healing the Unspoken: Cultural & Legal Genocide

A restoration of what paper tried to erase, and what blood never forgot.

We see today what we’ve seen before in Indigenous America. When asking Americans if the land was stolen, the common response is, “Didn’t we pay them back?” As if a price tag could ever be placed on the suffering of our ancestors 〰 or on the unimaginable pain of knowing what could have been, the freedom lost.

Slavery is only a ring in the trunk of the tree of Africa.

Slavery as we know it today began with rival tribes capturing and selling one another instead of taking lives. In that light, it was a kind of mercy. The ancestors of the enslaved 〰 including some of mine 〰 are just as likely to descend from Chiefs, Kings, Queens, and Leaders of their homelands. What’s rare isn’t the blood. It’s the proof.

And with that clarity, we see one of slavery’s most unspoken horrors: identity theft. Delegitimization.

“Descendant of slavery” is the identity they want us to adopt. They want us to forget the leaders before us, because a people who forget their lineage more readily accept a lesser position. The more we’re taught to worship money and fear its absence, the more willing we become to live someone else’s will. Even the sacred land was rebranded, making it easier to throw away.

Forced assimilation tried to erase Indigenous legitimacy 〰 and the same pattern is happening today to African descendants worldwide.

They can deny our legitimacy on paper, but not in blood or spirit.

Knowing our lineage frees us from others trying to impose their authority upon us. I’ve witnessed this firsthand with law enforcement. The moment you say something like, “The Legend in American Government and Patron Saint of America, St. Tammany, is my ancestor,” instead of hearing, “I’m the other half of this country’s peaceful foundation: Philadelphia,” they follow the same script: “How many quarters are in a dollar? What day is it today?”

Standard protocol shortcut in the face of unshakable spiritual sovereignty. Though there are rare, gracefully respectful individuals who remind me of my faith in humanity. I don’t say these things to gain an upper hand 〰 I say them so I never have to submit outside of equality.

Now I’m revealing this same gift to you.

Statistically, it’s more likely than not that you also have Chiefs, Kings, Queens, Spirituals, and Leaders in your bloodline. The identity they try to place upon you 〰 “descendant of the enslaved” 〰 is the same tactic authoritarians used to delegitimize my mother, hoping I’d assume the position of a descendant of a prostitute stripper. I never heard a mention of her ancestry.

Demean to lead 〰 that’s the game for those who believe their legitimacy depends on the illegitimacy of others. They tried to erase our legitimacy because they feared our equality.

The only way to nourish one branch is to nourish the whole tree. Equality is the only path, though we grow first through the ground before reaching the sky.

We see the same pattern in the workplace.

Society openly practices inequality and somehow accepts it. They want to choose how we look, how we speak, how we sound 〰 taking our sovereignty at every corner, justified by payment itself.

It’s the same way they want you to accept payment for something no dollar can repair. Trying to put a price tag on it is the same oddity Indigenous people face, as owning land is as strange as owning the sea or the air.

Blood will one day restore what paper erased.

With medical advancements, I predict a day when blood itself can restore what was lost on paper. Spiritually, we can already heal knowing our enslaved ancestors were only a fraction of the generations before them.

Slavery is only a ring in the trunk of the tree of Africa.