It’s necessary that everyone understand Western culture does not take its eye off the ball. It never loses focus or allows empathy to distract it from its goal; to optimally exploit Earth’s number one resource, humans. Western society is a device for appropriating the fruits of human toil then distributing those fruits to the controllers of the society. This well-refined system is a product of early Europe and the unrelenting scarcity that underpinned its cultural development. Politics, the art of who does what and who gets what, has always been manipulated in bad faith so the controllers of Western societies do as little as possible while gaining as much of other people’s labor as possible without the exploited people catching on. This was not the case for the rest of the world.
African Slavery Wasn’t even Slavery Compared to America
While slavery has existed in many forms throughout world history, the version practiced in America was unprecedented. Academia has lulled Americans into socializing these unique ills thereby indirectly attributing a practice unique to White men to Africans who never did the same. For instance, forcefully taking Africans’ identity
and culture away was absolute evil. Disconnecting mother from Child after nursing age so as to inhibit a mother’s conveyance of values gained from centuries of experience to the child is the epitome of malicious. There is no record of Africans ever doing this; neither did Arabs, the second most evil slavery practitioners historically. The lack of cultural foundation other than slavery is why Black people today use plantation solutions to solve today’s problems. We seek opportunities to sacrifice other Black people for social favorability and subsequent gain because during slavery the Meritorious Manumission system was, with little exception, the means of slaves bettering their conditions. Africans in Africa had no such system because they were honest; their enemies were honest too. In much of Africa we had a principle called Ubuntu, which prevented this individualistic, selfish and destructive behavior.
Western culture in America had a new opportunity and its propagators had a chance to demonstrate their true ideals. It’s distance from other European powers gave White men an unprecedented autonomy to evolve in the way they saw fit. With access to unprecedentedly vast new resources, Europeans in America could have innovated socially towards a wholly new social model driven by good faith and a true endeavor for peace. Instead, the haste of being poor and from a poor continent meant Europeans in America wouldn’t relax, enjoy the resources and begin forming and spreading a culture based on confidence in Mother Nature’s ability to take care of all humans. Rather, White men in the Americas were like rappers from the ‘hood who finally get a substantial amount of money; they sought to enhance the business activity they were accustomed to. For rappers it may be drugs or weapons. For early Europeans it was war and stealing land as they did incessantly in Europe. With no overarching authority, Europeans in America leveraged its vast, new-found resources for further barbarous gain; Europe’s historical scarcity created an insatiable appetite for more, that persists today. They then applied the novel scientific theory coming from Germany, “race,” designated themselves entitled to the fruits of Black people’s toil, then took their unethical immorality to unprecedented new levels. White America forcefully extracted the fruits of Black toil for centuries.
Today, America generally attributes slavery to slavery itself. They consider the White men who participated and benefitted from it a product of their time. While the amount of Americans who ever owned slaves at any given time never amounted to more than two percent, few, even academics, will emphasize that all of America benefitted from slavery. Black, forced toil underpinned America’s worldwide domination of the cotton, tobacco and sugar industries amongst others. Companies using slave labor paid taxes and the non-slave-holding rest of America happily accepted those fruits of uncompensated Black toil. Those non-slavery states then used those proceeds to build roads, buildings, pipelines, dams, create new cities, lay railroads and build shipping docks. It also funded the military, which built the ships that kept England, France and Spain from sabotaging the American experiment. Without slave labor, the manpower contributed to each and every endeavor just mentioned would have been negligible and those leading such projects would have had to negotiate labor costs with the laborers; only a negligible portion of that already-negligible amount of labor would have actually labored on these projects. More succinctly, the rapid growth America experienced using 
slave labor would have never happened. Populations normally laboring to maintain the home front were able to populate disputed territories instead of laboring at home, because the slaves did their labor. The tax money used to pay off France and Spain for Western expansion came from Black people’s back-bone labor. Without slave labor Americans would have been just one of many competing European powers on the North American continent fighting in an unending back-and-forth war for territory and influence. They were never able to solve this dysfunction in Europe so what makes anyone think they would have solved it in America? This is like people with financial trouble thinking more money would solve their problems. Aside from tax contributions, free, forced Black labor enabled private industries to dominate world markets. Forced Black toil gave birth to many fortunes and countless banks and financial institutions that held uncompensated Black labor fruits in its vaults. These forced contributions by Black people enabled them to get State and Federal charters to do business and form their legacies. Despite the labor being free, many plantation owners irresponsibly leveraged Black people as collateral, eventually losing their slaves to the bank, making those banks practitioners of slavery. There’s a well-written book by Sharon Ann Murphy describing how financial institutions accommodated slavery called “Banking on Slavery.” It’s a great read that also documents how many banks formed around slavery collapsed because they over-leveraged the value of free Black labor. Talk about an insatiable amount for more; they had labor-fruits from work they didn’t do and it still wasn’t enough! In Western society complete domination of industries is the goal and Black labor enabled America to score an unprecedented decisive victory. This makes Black people not only America’s original investors, but its primary contributor and majority stock holder.
We Black People have yet to Determine How Much is Owed
Many media companies discuss reparations but they do it within the “White vacuum,” that is, in all White settings. Others use thoroughly vetted, predictable and alacritic Black people to give the illusion that a number can be determined without our collective consent. Media companies blindside Black people in the streets who are unprepared to answer the ringing question; “how much does America actually owe Black people?” So I’ll answer that question here with this: Black people have not had enough peace to even begin to figure out what America owes us. So stop being disingenuous and manipulative, looking for the answer that serves you best, White America! There is no answer yet because that answer can only come from Black people. Until America stops stirring us into divisions and we can finally heal from slavery then have this exclusive discussion, we don’t have the ability to calculate the value of enabling a faction of Europe to achieve a goal it never achieved using its own labor, ingenuity and soul, world domination.
The Perfect Analogy
However, to begin the thought process of calculating what America owes us, I’ll offer an analogy. In 1997, Diddy, also know as Sean “Puffy” Combs, released his hit song “I’ll Be Missing You.” This dedication to slain rapper, Biggie Smalls, skyrocketed to the top of the charts and spent 11 weeks in the Billboard Top 100. Being a worldwide release, Diddy’s creation is one of the best-selling singles of all time. The Money this song has generated is unfathomable and even after the record label takes its majority cut and producers get compensated for their contribution, Diddy should be making tremendous amounts of money from it. But there’s a catch! Diddy used a
This photograph shows Diddy with great lighting and fashion. The photographer seized the moment well.
melody on this song without permission. The Melody from “I’ll Be Missing You” comes from British rock group, “The Police’s” 1983 hit song, “Every Breath You Take.” Uh oh! It has been said that Diddy has to pay Sting, the writer of Every Breath You Take, $5000 per day for this business blunder but it is more likely around $2000, as Sting said himself. When multiplied by seven days, $14,000 per week, or $728,000 per year, is a substantial amount of money. This astronomical post-facto compensation decision by America’s legal system demonstrates what major contributors forced into unauthorized partnerships with unsettled terms are worth. In a time where the average American can’t afford a $400 emergency (newly revised from $500), we can say with confidence that $14,000 per week would elevate any American to the upper echelon of American society. And this is just for one song.
But Let’s Take this Analogy a Step Further.
Imagine that Diddy, not only used Sting’s song without permission, but brutally forced him under the threat of death to record the original in 1983. And even worse, he raped him, killed many of his relatives, raped his siblings, forcing them to bear his children. Imagine in the years since “Every Breath You Take’s” 1983 release, that Diddy, using forcefully obtained proceeds from Sting’s 1983 hit song, had been 
amassing a fortune, buying homes and businesses and other assets, becoming immensely wealthy in the years leading up to opening his own record label, Bad Boy Records. Imagine if Diddy’s success originated from him enslaving Sting, his family and his friends. In such a hypothetical, do you think Courts would simply award Sting $2000 per day? No! Everything Diddy ever achieved while standing on Sting’s back would belong to Sting. Diddy would likely be put in jail for the rest of his life. If somehow the Courts allowed him to keep his freedom, anything Diddy ever did of value after the decision would be given to Sting. If Diddy opened a lemonade stand you can best bet the Sheriff would be there daily to collect what he had made and hand it over to Sting.
In the same spirit, American Blacks are the Sting of a song called “American Success.” It is European men’s hit song composed using Black labor appropriated through rape, murder, kidnap and brutality. No agreement to any terms has ever taken place. The contract for this post-facto labor has still to be negotiated. The assessment must include compensation for the rapes, murder, turture and brutality as well. We Black people are savvy capitalists whose agreement is necessary for this contract’s validity and any resolution to this debt. Otherwise, we must continue as we have, with all White people living indebted and in fear of how that debt will be disposed of. While many Whites may deny this White guilt, the delusion they demonstrate says otherwise. White police imagine guns where they are not and civilians imagine non-existent aggression, clutching their purses and crossing streets to avoid summary, piece-rate retribution. All roads of the White mentality lead to actions that inhibit our ability to exact retribution, whether it be a legal system that sacs us down with felonies and the inability to own guns, or, a public that allows police to execute men for having guns, when no such gun was present. If Black people ever decided to exact retribution against White people, Black men would carry out the operation. Coincidentally, police continuously kill undeserving Black men. The subsequent actions by government and by civilians, like killings and false arrests, drive White America further into debt and increase White guilt exponentially. The only way to ever free White America is to resolve this debt with Black people and we first require peace so we can heal then collectively determine what would satisfy us. Until then White America is stuck in a moral limbo, functioning in a value system based on material possessions and passing off superficial happiness as true human contentment.
How Much do I Think America Owes Black People
I have an idea of what reparations should cost White America. Being the majority investor entitled to hundreds and hundreds of years of compounding interest at a rate only we can determine, I can say with certainty that;
If White America packed themselves onto boats and planes, went to Europe and left the whole of the United States to Black people, including all improvements like buildings, roads, farms, businesses and infrastructure, Black people would still have to calculate the remaining balance.
The whole of the United States wouldn’t even cover the cost of our original investment, which ended with slavery. Countless damage has taken place after slavery. It has been and is still being thoroughly documented that following slavery, the American government deliberately denied us equal opportunity. When we did thrive, even under those oppressed circumstances, it further inhibited and destroyed our efforts. Our government also provoked and permitted White Americans to inhibit and destroy our accomplishments on its behalf. Whether it be by cutting water to Allensworth, CA. to destroy the all-Black town’s thriving agriculture, building a freeway through Sugar Hill in Los Angeles, CA, using eminent domain to rob Willa Bruce of her beachfront property in Manhattan Beach, CA, Burning down John Ballard’s home on 160 acres of the land he settled, which became the affluent city of Thousand Oaks, CA; his daughter was likely intimidated out of her 160 acre adjacent lot as well. These are just a modicum of the many documented and undocumented cases of White America using White power to take away from Black people, in California alone! California is historically considered a “friendly” state to Black people so imagine what the other states have done to prevent us from Western growth. Black Wallstreet in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Rosewood, Florida, Seneca Village, which is where Central Park in New York sits today are a few examples. If White America went back to Europe and left is the whole of the United States, much of the land would be the return of what the government wrongfully took. Simply paying us for slavery wouldn’t settle the outstanding debt owed. There is over 150 years of further theft to be assessed.
Chump Change
Estimates of Reparations’ value range from $1.4 trillion dollars to $17.1 trillion (1999 estimates). This is “chump change” compared to our investment. The way they debased the American landscape’s potential means if they gave us the whole thing it wouldn’t nearly add up to what our input would have made it. It would be a fixer-upper country with much work needed to make it the shining beacon of humanity it pretends to be. Additionally, we are aware of the monetary games our government plays with its fiat money. We understand the power of the printing press and realize the insincerity of Western society means if America were to ever pay us some type of reparations it would be with debased bank notes.
I therefore, with certainty can guarantee that Black
people will only accept land and/or gold as payment.
Until we Black people get the peace needed to recover from slavery, reparations will always be a cloud over the soul of White Americans. It will forever hinder the true development of each and every person, for their subconscious will always ask, “could I have accomplished this if America were fair? Or did my Whiteness give me the edge?” Cheating may help one win, but that win’s fulfillment pales in comparison to 4th place won under fair circumstances. Knowing you occupy your rightful position as opposed to a contrived higher one is the difference between contentment and mental chaos. Getting things right will first involve stopping the wrong. Once White America takes this courageous step, the process of freeing them from their mental prison can begin.