AfricaNow! August 16, 2023 Randall Robinson on Reparations

Topic and Guest: As mentioned before WPFW’s theme during this Summer Membership is HONORING THE LOVE THAT CHANGED THE WORLD—marking the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, commemorating Black August, and honoring the late human rights and social justice activist, and a leader in the anti-apartheid movement in the U.S. Randall Robinson (as well as so many of our icons this year, including Harry Belafonte, who used his resources and celebrity to support the original 1963 march).   In that context today AfricaNow! features a recording of Randall Robinson discussing his book on reparations at the TransAfrica Forum Building on January 11, 2000.   

In the book The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks TransAfrica founder and the organization’s first president Robinson notes that “Well before the birth of our country, Europe and the eventual United States perpetuated a heinous wrong against the peoples of of Africa—and sustained and benefited from the wrong for centuries.  Europe followed the grab Africa’s people with the rape, through colonial occupation, of Africa’s material resources.  America followed slavery with more than a hundred combined years of legal racial segregation and legal racial discrimination of one variety or another. …It would behoove African Americans to remember that history forgets, first, those who forget themselves.  To do what is necessary to accomplish anything approaching psychic and economic parity…will not only require a fundamental attitude shift in American thinking but massive amount of money as well.  Before the country in general can be made to understand, African Americans themselves must come to understand that this demand is not for charity.  It is simply for what they are owed on a debt that is old but compelling obvious and valid still.” (From The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks pp. 230-231)

From the TransAfrica archives here is a recording of Randall Robinson discussing his book on reparations—The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks—at the TransAfrica Forum Building on January 11, 2000.
 
MUSIC ON THE SHOW: intro--“YOU’VE GOT TO HAVE FREEDOM” BY PHAROAH SANDERS; closing song--“REDEMPTION SONG” BY BOB MARLEY & THE WAILERS.

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Originally broadcast on WPFW 89.3FM, Washington, DC. Tune into AfricaNow! live on WPFW 89.3 FM in the Washington, DC Metropolitan area or visit www.wpfwfm.org on Wednesdays from 1:00 to 2:00PM (U.S. Eastern).

AfricaNow! Aug. 16, 2023 Randall Robinson On Reparations

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AfricaNow! Aug. 16, 2023 Randall Robinson On Reparations

AfricaNow!

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