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LA Activists Drill Down on Who Deserves Reparations for Slavery and Why

Published

5 years ago

July 22, 2020

Aldon Thomas Stiles | California Black Media

Two bills calling for the study of reparations owed to African Americans are making their way through both the California legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives.

As state and federal lawmakers grapple with whether or not the State of California — and the United States as a whole — should take a closer look at what it owes the descendants of enslaved Africans in the United States, a group of Black California activists are getting ahead of the conversation. They are distilling the case for reparations down to why African Americans deserve to get paid for centuries of free labor and the Jim Crow laws and other forms of state-enforced discriminatory practices that followed. They are also specifying which segment of Black Americans should get those payments.

On July 12, the Los Angeles chapter of American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS) hosted a live stream that dug down into the complexities of securing reparations for the descendants of enslaved Black people in the United States.

They broadcasted the 90-minute special both on YouTube and Facebook. Experts on the history of the Black experience in America laid out the case for reparations. After that, ADOS activists followed with and a no-holds-barred conversation on race, racism and reparations. They discussed how some Americans, people of other races and some Blacks, too, often misunderstand the arguments at the foundation of their agenda.

The live stream featured Dr. William A. Darity and A. Kirsten Mullen, co-authors of “From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century.” The husband-and-wife duo started the show by denouncing the notion that slavery in America is ancient history.

“When you’re thinking about slavery from a generational perspective, it’s not that long ago,” Mullen said. “The legacy of slavery is something that we’re still feeling today.”

Darity noted that reparations should not be distributed exclusively to mitigate the effects of generational slavery but to recompense for all of the oppressive economic systems that have targeted Black people in America for centuries.

“The case that we build in ‘From Here to Equality’ is not restricted to so-called slavery reparations in the first place,” Darity said. “Our premise is that there is a series of atrocities that have been inflicted on Black Americans that have affected their economic status. So, we begin with slavery but then we move into the post-slavery era where the first atrocity was the failure to provide the formerly enslaved with any form of restitution.”

Darity mentioned the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, also known as the fall of Black Wall Street, citing it as one example of the ways Black people experienced economic violence in America.

He asserted that the racial wealth disparity in the US can be directly tied to atrocities like that committed by citizens as well as systemic discriminatory practices, and it can be assuaged with reparations.

“While 25% of white households have a net worth in excess of $1 million, it is only 4% for Black households in the United States. So, to close that gap would require an allocation of funds that would at least amount to 10 to 12 trillion dollars and that’s what we think should be one of the central objectives of a Black reparations project.”

As far as policy, Darity briefly talked about speaking to Congress about H.R. 40, also known as the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act, which is a bill that was introduced last year that if implemented would create a commission to determine the merits and logistics of providing reparations for the descendants of Black slaves.

Since its televised introduction in the House Judiciary Committee last year, legislators in the lower house of the U.S. Congress have not revisited H.R. 40. The bill would expire if no action is taken on it before the 116th Congress ends in January.

In California, on June 11, the State Assembly voted 61-12 to approve AB 3121, titled the Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans. The Senate Judiciary Committee is now reviewing the legislation before it holds a hearing and votes on it. If passed, the bill would be referred to the full Senate for an up-or-down vote.

Last week, in Asheville, North Carolina, the city Council apologized for the town’s role in slavery and discrimination and i5 voted to provide reparations for its Black residents in the form of investments in areas where Black residents face inequities.

Antonio Moore, a Los Angeles-based attorney and ADOS co-founder, says the distinction between descendants of slaves and other Black Americans does make a difference when it comes to generational wealth, citing former President Barack Obama and U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) as his examples.

“What do you do in a world where your first Black president inherited $500,000 from his White lineage and your possible, most likely, first Black Vice President basically lived as an elite ‘Indian’ – they out-earn White folks, and then told you that she’s just as Black as you because she went to Howard,” he said.

Moore was referring to $500,000 in stocks President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama reportedly inherited from the former POTUS’ maternal grandparents’ estate. Regarding Harris, he was pointing to Insight Center study, The Color of Wealth, that revealed that “Asian Indian” families (Harris’ mother, who is deceased, was Indian) has the second-highest median net worth ($460,000) of all sub-groups in Los Angeles County. They are outpaced in L.A. County by Japanese households ($592,000) and followed by Chinese ones ($408,000). U.S. Black median net worth in Los Angeles County ranks the lowest at $4,000.

According to a Gallup News poll conducted in 2019, 27% of Black Americans are opposed to the United States making cash payments to individuals for reparations.

“I’m not saying that acknowledging history doesn’t matter. It does. I’m saying that there is a difference between acknowledging history and allowing history to distract us from the problems we face today,” said Coleman Hughes, a columnist at the online magazine Quillette and a 2020 graduate of Columbia University.

Hughes, who testified against HR 40 before the House Judiciary Committee in June 2019, said paying reparations to all descendants of Black people in the United States who were slaves, “is a mistake.”

“Take me as an example. I was born three decades after the end of Jim Crow into a privileged household in the suburbs. I attend an Ivy League school,” he said at the congressional hearing. “Yet I’m descended from slaves who worked on Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello plantation.”

ADOS has faced pointed criticisms from several prominent media personalities and other Black activists. They say the organization engages in disinformation and divisive rhetoric, some saying the movement’s specific focus on descendants of slaves weakens Black communities, pitting Black immigrant groups against Black American descendants of enslaved people in the United States.

“The movement relies heavily on right-wing, anti-Black, anti-immigrant talking points, and a series of policy positions reliant on a person’s ability to produce documentation or what I am calling ‘slave papers’ in order to verify Black native identity,” said Jessica Ann Mitchell Aiwuyor, a writer for the Institute of the Black World 21st Century. “If implemented, the end result of these policies could be a weakened, further marginalized Black population.”

Yvette Carnell, co-founder and host of the ADOS media outlet “Breaking Brown,” addressed some of these criticisms during the show.

Aldon Thomas Stiles | California Black Media

Posts by Aldon Thomas Stiles | California Black Media

Related Topics:ADOS.American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS)Antonio Moore Black Wall Street featured

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A Nation in Freefall While the Powerful Feast: Trump Calls Affordability a ‘Con Job’

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — There are seasons in this country when the struggle of ordinary Americans is not merely a condition but a kind of weather that settles over everything.

Published

1 month ago

December 3, 2025

Stacy M. Brown

By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent

There are seasons in this country when the struggle of ordinary Americans is not merely a condition but a kind of weather that settles over everything. It enters the grocery aisle, the overdue bill, the rent notice, and the long nights spent calculating how to get through the next week. The latest numbers show that this season has not passed. It has deepened.

Private employers cut 32,000 jobs in November, according to ADP. Because the nation has been hemorrhaging jobs since President Trump took office, the administration has halted publishing the traditional monthly report. The ADP report revealed that small businesses suffered the heaviest losses. Establishments with fewer than 50 workers shed 120,000 positions, including 74,000 from companies with 20 to 49 workers. Larger firms added 90,000 jobs, widening the split between those rising and those falling.

Meanwhile, wealth continues to climb for the few who already possess most of it. Federal Reserve data shows the top 1 percent now holds $52 trillion. The top 10 percent added $5 trillion in the second quarter alone. The bottom half gained only 6 percent over the past year, a number so small it fades beside the towering fortunes above it.

“Less educated and poorer people tend to make worse mistakes,” John Campbell said to CBS News, while noting that the complexity of the system leaves many families lost before they even begin. Campbell, a Harvard University economist and coauthor of a book examining the country’s broken personal finance structure, pointed to a system built to confuse and punish those who lack time, training, or access.

“Creditors are just breathing down their necks,” Carol Fox told Bloomberg News, while noting that rising borrowing costs, shrinking consumer spending, and trade battles under the current administration have left owners desperate. Fox serves as a court-appointed Subchapter V trustee in Southern Florida and has watched the crisis unfold case by case.

During a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Trump told those present that affordability “doesn’t mean anything to anybody.” He added that Democrats created a “con job” to mislead the public.

However, more than $30 million in taxpayer funds reportedly have supported his golf travel. Reports show Kristi Noem and FBI Director Kash Patel have also made extensive use of private jets through government and political networks. The administration approved a $40 billion bailout of Argentina. The president’s wealthy donors recently gathered for a dinner celebrating his planned $300 million White House ballroom.

During an appearance on CNBC, Mark Zandi, an economist, warned that the country could face serious economic threats. “We have learned that people make many mistakes,” Campbell added. “And particularly, sadly, less educated and poorer people tend to make worse mistakes.”

Stacy M. Brown

Posts by Stacy M. Brown

#NNPA BlackPress

The Numbers Behind the Myth of the Hundred Million Dollar Contract

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — Odell Beckham Jr. did not spark controversy on purpose. He sat on The Pivot Podcast and tried to explain the math behind a deal that looks limitless from the outside but shrinks fast once the system takes its cut.

Published

1 month ago

December 3, 2025

Stacy M. Brown

By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent

Odell Beckham Jr. did not spark controversy on purpose. He sat on The Pivot Podcast and tried to explain the math behind a deal that looks limitless from the outside but shrinks fast once the system takes its cut. He looked into the camera and tried to offer a truth most fans never hear. “You give somebody a five-year $100 million contract, right? What is it really? It is five years for sixty. You are getting taxed. Do the math. That is twelve million a year that you have to spend, use, save, invest, flaunt,” said Beckham. He added that buying a car, buying his mother a house, and covering the costs of life all chip away at what people assume lasts forever.

The reaction was instant. Many heard entitlement. Many heard a millionaire complaining. What they missed was a glimpse into a professional world built on big numbers up front and a quiet erasing of those numbers behind the scenes.

The tax data in Beckham’s world is not speculation. SmartAsset’s research shows that top NFL players often lose close to half their income to federal taxes, state taxes, and local taxes. The analysis explains that athletes in California face a state rate of 13.3 percent and that players are also taxed in every state where they play road games, a structure widely known as the jock tax. For many players, that means filing up to ten separate returns and facing a combined tax burden that reaches or exceeds 50 percent.

A look across the league paints the same picture. The research lists star players in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland, all giving up between 43 and 47 percent of their football income before they ever touch a dollar. Star quarterback Phillip Rivers, at one point, was projected to lose half of his playing income to taxes alone.

A second financial breakdown from MGO CPA shows that the problem does not only affect the highest earners. A $1 million salary falls to about $529,000 after federal taxes, state and city taxes, an agent fee, and a contract deduction. According to that analysis, professional athletes typically take home around half of their contract value, and that is before rent, meals, training, travel, and support obligations are counted.

The structure of professional sports contracts adds another layer. A study of major deals across MLB, the NBA, and the NFL notes that long-term agreements lose value over time because the dollar today has more power than the dollar paid in the future. Even the largest deals shrink once adjusted for time. The study explains that contract size alone does not guarantee financial success and that structure and timing play a crucial role in a player’s long-term outcomes.

Beckham has also faced headlines claiming he is “on the brink of bankruptcy despite earning over one hundred million” in his career. Those reports repeated his statement that “after taxes, it is only sixty million” and captured the disbelief from fans who could not understand how money at that level could ever tighten.

Other reactions lacked nuance. One article wrote that no one could relate to any struggle on eight million dollars a year. Another described his approach as “the definition of a new-money move” and argued that it signaled poor financial choices and inflated spending.

But the underlying truth reaches far beyond Beckham. Professional athletes enter sudden wealth without preparation. They carry the weight of family support. They navigate teams, agents, advisors, and expectations from every direction. Their earning window is brief. Their career can end in a moment. Their income is fragmented, taxed, and carved up before the public ever sees the real number.

The math is unflinching. Twenty million dollars becomes something closer to $8 million after federal taxes, state taxes, jock taxes, agent fees, training costs, and family responsibilities. Over five years, that is about $40 million of real, spendable income. It is transformative money, but not infinite. Not guaranteed. Not protected.

Beckham offered a question at the heart of this entire debate. “Can you make that last forever?”

Stacy M. Brown

Posts by Stacy M. Brown

#NNPA BlackPress

FBI Report Warns of Fear, Paralysis, And Political Turmoil Under Director Kash Patel

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — Six months into Kash Patel’s tenure as Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a newly compiled internal report from a national alliance of retired and active-duty FBI agents and analysts delivers a stark warning about what the Bureau has become under his leadership.

Published

1 month ago

December 2, 2025

Stacy M. Brown

By Stacy M. Brown

Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent

Six months into Kash Patel’s tenure as Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a newly compiled internal report from a national alliance of retired and active-duty FBI agents and analysts delivers a stark warning about what the Bureau has become under his leadership. The 115-page document, submitted to Congress this month, is built entirely on verified reporting from inside field offices across the country and paints a picture of an agency gripped by fear, divided by ideology, and drifting without direction.

The report’s authors write that they launched their inquiry after receiving troubling accounts from inside the Bureau only four months into Patel’s tenure. They describe their goal as a pulse check on whether the ninth FBI director was reforming the Bureau or destabilizing it. Their conclusion: the preliminary findings were discouraging.

Reports Describe Widespread Internal Distrust and Open Hostility Toward President Trump

Sources across the country told investigators that a large number of FBI employees openly express hostility toward President Donald Trump. One source reported seeing an “increasing number of FBI Special Agents who dislike the President,” adding that these employees were exhibiting what they called “TDS” and had lost “their ability to think critically about an issue and distinguish fact from fiction.” Another source described employees making off-color comments about the administration during office conversations.

The sentiment reportedly extends beyond domestic lines. Law enforcement and intelligence partners in allied countries have privately expressed fear that the Trump administration could damage long-term international cooperation according to a sub-source who reported those concerns directly to investigators.

Pardon Backlash and Fear of Retaliation

The President’s January 20 pardons of individuals convicted for their roles in the January 6 attack ignited what the report calls demoralization inside the Bureau. One FBI employee said they were “demoralized” that individuals “rightfully convicted” were pardoned and feared that some of those individuals or their supporters might target them or their family for carrying out their duties. Another source described widespread anger that lists of personnel who worked on January 6 investigations had been provided to the Justice Department for review, noting that agents “were just following orders” and now worry those lists could leak publicly.

Morale In Decline

Morale among FBI employees appears to be sinking fast. There were a few scattered positive notes, but the weight of the reporting describes morale as low, bad, or terrible. Agents with more than a decade of service told investigators they feel marginalized or ignored. Some are counting the days until they can retire. One even uses a countdown app on their phone.

Culture Of Fear

Layered over that unhappiness is something far more corrosive. A culture of fear. Sources say Patel, though personable, created mistrust from the start because of harsh remarks he made about the FBI before taking office. Agents took those comments personally. They now work in an atmosphere where employees keep their heads down and speak carefully. Managers wait for directions because they are afraid a wrong move could cost them their jobs. One source said agents dread coming to work because nobody knows who will be reassigned or fired next.

Leadership Concerns

The report also paints a picture of leaders unprepared for the jobs they hold. Multiple sources said Patel is in over his head and lacks the breadth of experience required to understand the Bureau’s complex programs. Some said Deputy Director Dan Bongino should never have been appointed because the role requires deep institutional knowledge of FBI operations. A sub-source recounted Bongino telling employees during a field office visit that “the truth is for chumps.” Employees who heard it were stunned and offended.

Social Media and Communication Breakdowns

Communication inside the Bureau has become another source of frustration. Sources said Patel and Bongino spend too much time posting on social media and not enough time communicating with employees in clear and official ways. Several told investigators they learn more about FBI operations from tweets than from internal channels.

ICE Assignments Raise Alarm

Nothing has sparked more frustration inside the FBI than the orders requiring agents to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The reporting shows widespread resentment and fear over these assignments. Agents say they have little training in immigration law and were ordered into operations without proper planning. Some said they were put in tactically unsafe positions. They also warned that being pulled away from counterterrorism and counterintelligence investigations threatens national security. One sub-source asked, “If we’re not working CT and CI, then who is?”

DEI Program Removal

Even the future of diversity programs became a point of division. Some agents praised Patel’s removal of DEI initiatives. Others said the old system left them afraid to speak honestly because they worried about being labeled racist. The reporting shows a deep and unresolved conflict over whether DEI strengthened the organization or weakened it.

Notable Incidents

The document also details several incidents that have become part of FBI lore. Patel ordered all employees to remove pronouns and personal messages from their email signatures yet used the number nine in his own. Agents laughed at what they saw as hypocrisy. In another episode, FBI employees who discussed Patel’s request for an FBI-issued firearm were ordered to take polygraph examinations, which one respected source described as punitive. And in Utah, Patel refused to exit a plane without a medium-sized FBI raid jacket. A team scrambled to find one and finally secured a female agent’s jacket. Patel still refused to step out until patches were added. SWAT members removed patches from their own uniforms to satisfy the demand.

A Bureau at a Crossroad

The Alliance warns that the Bureau stands at a difficult crossroads. They write that the FBI faces some of the most daunting challenges in its history. But even in despair, a few voices say something different. One veteran source said “It is early, but most can see the mission is now the priority. Case work and threats are the focus again. Reform is headed in the right direction.”