I hereby propose a new era in American race relations: the Black New Deal. It is intended to be a novel agreement between African-Americans and the rest of the country.
To begin with, Blacks will agree to abandon any and all attempts at financial reparations for the crimes of the past. Money — and in particular blood money — has rarely if ever changed things for the better. So White Americans can keep the spoils of slavery and Jim Crow.
In response, America agrees to permanently and completely free the Black race. By this I do not mean the half-baked, pseudo-free state of being in which most Black people currently find themselves entrenched. No... I mean real, tangible, and unadulterated freedom. That means no longer punishing Black people for behaviors that the rest of America gets away with, no longer incarcerating Black men and women for victimless crimes, and no longer exploiting Black prisoners by paying them pennies on the dollar for their work.
And that is it. A very simple agreement that most Black people can agree with. And I would like to believe that there are also enough conscientious Non-Black citizens in our great nation that the Black New Deal could have a very real chance of being implemented throughout American society.
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