Since we are talking about #Thugs, #Criminals, #Rioters and #Looters in #Baltimore, let's talk about #BlackWallStreet and the Tulsa Race Riot

The Story Of The Tulsa Race Riots Will Disgust You Posted by Cenk Uygur on Friday, May 1, 2015

Ebony Magazine's Josie Pickens writes:  Greenwood, Oklahoma, a suburb of Tulsa, was the type of community that African Americans are still, today, attempting to reclaim and rebuild.  It was modern, majestic, sophisticated and apologetically Black. Tragically, it was also the site of one of the bloodiest and most horrendous race riots (and acts of terrorism) that the United States has ever experienced.

Now That I Have Your Attention ***Not Comedy***

# Ferguson: A Racial State of Emergency in America

Sara (L) and Dennis Happel shop for a gun at Metro Shooting Supplies on November 12, 2014 in Bridgeton, Missouri. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

What do you want to bet if this were a photo Bertha (L) and Bubba Washington shopping for a gun in Ferguson, Missouri they wouldn't make it out of the store alive?

The picture above is a direct result of the fear mongering  promoted by government officials as fearful residents await a grand jury's decision on whether to indict #Darren Wilson, the white police officer who fatally shot unarmed black teen, #MikeBrown.

 Between shoot-to-kill police, the KKK,  and trigger-happy vigilantes (see picture above), and a militarized police force,  unarmed people, and sympathetic, peaceful, protesters are sitting ducks! Then, once they're murdered, all the killers have to say is, "I feared for my life!"

 We hold our breaths. We wait for the explosion. Of police weapons – of their tear gas canisters, their stinging rubber bullets, their hundreds of thousands of dollars of new artillery, that will be brought out to intimidate citizens. We wait, reminded that we are unprepared, because one can never prepare to accept violence to our personhood.

Government officials are talking about protecting citizens and businesses from angry black folks, but who is going to protect angry black folks from angry, armed to the teeth white folks with government issued, taxpayer funded, weapons of mass destruction at their disposal?  Ain't black folks citizens too?  Don't black folks  have the right to protest without white folks arming up like they are getting ready to put down a slave revolt?  I'm beginning to think they really do hate us for our freedoms.

"I am fighting so that we have the luxury of simply living".

A Modest Proposal on the Anniversary of the Tulsa Race Riot

British slave ship illustration from 1808 None: Original image housed by Chapin Library of Rare Books, Williams College


Ta-Nehisi Coates  presented an excellent case for reparations   saying, "America will never be whole again until we reckon with our compounding moral debt for 250 years of Slavery, 90 years of Jim Crow, sixty years of separate but equal, and thirty five years of racist housing policies."

On the anniversary of the Tulsa Race Riot I would like to make a modest proposal for those who are loath to call it reparations, let's call it:  #The Descendants of Slaves Educational Emancipation Act.

Under this act all descendants of American slaves would be entitled to scholarships for under graduate and post graduate studies at any institution of higher learning that receives federal funds. All African American student loan debt would be forgiven. Scholarships would provide for tuition, fees, and books. This act and it's provisions would operate similar to GI Bill ,which offers scholarships to dependents of American Disabled Veterans.

While this act doesn't meet the misery, untold affliction, and billions of dollars in lost economic value visited on the descendants of slaves,  it is something this county can do now to demonstrate remorse and serious concern for the condition of African Americans, many of which were/are caused by discriminatory laws  and  public policies in education, housing, and employment.  In other words, America can begin to solve the problem it helped create.  See graphic above.