I'm Erica Alexander and I'm Whitney Down. Welcome to Reparations, The Big Payback, a production of Color Far Media, I Heart Radio and The Black Effect Podcast Network. We're not interesting in a racial hamising. We don't want your neighborhood. We want ours to be just as good. See, we don't want to store in your neighbor but we don't want you coming in our neighborhood and open up store and exploiting us and then go home and throw Obama if we moved next door out in the suburbs. We don't want your schools, but we want our schools to be the highest and the best spottle for our black projecting. See what people don't understand we are saying, and we're not asking you. See the diet is cast as I said, We're not asking, We're saying, this is the where it's gonna be. Now you get this street. You can kill all the black folks you want to, baby, but you will not kill the freedom of black folks. It's coming. We're gonna get it. We're fought in every one of your damn lives the wars, baby, and you give us nothing. Now the war is gonna be here because we're gonna be free. Are you kill all you want to? What? We kill? Two? So Erica? How are you doing this week? Whitney? Honestly, I don't know. The most recent killing of an unarmed black man, Andrew Brown Jr. The one in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, has to be feeling pretty pessimistic. It never seems to end, does a Yeah, this one was like an execution. The sheriff's deputies rolled up to serve a warrant, or so they say, But from the little video the city has released, you can see that four seconds later Brown was dead from a gunshot to the back of the head. And once again they still won't release the police body camp footage. It's traumatizing, as I think it's meant to be what you think. There's an agenda to all these killings. Yes, I do, and we get to that in a minute. But it's not just traumatizing. It's sad. It's just immensely, immensely sad. Black America is a nation within a name, a nation in a perpetual state of grief, A huge family that can't go more than a day or two without a funeral. Every day we get the shots of the crying family, the attorneys calling for justice, the marchers marching, Al Sharpton preaching over the casket. They should just save themselves the trouble and expense in the killings, right, yeah, that part. Just make stock footage of it all and run it over and over. You know, I see your point. It seems like the original sin of slavery and Jim Crow never went away. They just morphed into this weird apartheid regime enforced by murder, daily murder. Now, if that's not an agenda to keep black people in line, it'll do to an agenda gets here. I don't know what to say, Erica. I'm sorry. It seems so small in the face of it all. Still, I'm sorry. Thanks. This revolution is filled with so many ironies. Really, first you tell us that it is men need to keep your word, all right, If you are a man, you keep your word. And now all of the black people in this country are demanding, and even the black people in the whole world are demanding, is that you keep your word. You told us we were free, Well, then show us that we're free. You told us that there is justice, equality for all in this country. Will, then, kids, stick to your word and let us see the justice inequality for all, or else, admit to us that you're not a man, you're a word. You're afraid of us. You're afraid to give us equal stand. You're afraid that if you give us equal ground, that we will match you and we will override you. And if that's what you're afraid of us, then then tell us that just what you're afraid of. But don't keep hiding it from us and holding this up to us. And every time we ask you for something, you give us a little bit of something, and it's all token is and we don't want tokenism. And they're most black men in this world that don't want charity. And yet still every time we ask you for something, you give us a little piece. You're little piece. You're playing games with us. Why not children? Well, well, big man, I've seen my father have to put it. We're all kinds of stuff. He was a big man. He raised the family. He went downstown and he had to go around to the bank door with his wife. We're not asking for anything. We're not asking for any favorite. All we want is what's ours. Here we are talking about reparations, And what if the truth, the ugly truth, is that America will never pay reparations to black people for slavery, for Jim Crow, for what Lincoln called the wealth piled by the bondsman, two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil, for any of it. Do you really think that's the case, Areca, After everything we've discussed here, hasn't any of this given you a sense of hope? Well? Yes, of course. I mean with all the good work being done by Congressman Sheila Jackson Lee and all the women Robin Ruth Simmons, Yeah, I mean there's a possibility that kind work may take it up. But look at all the refusal by some in Congress even to talk about reparations, even to study reparations. What if there's something in the American psyche that just refuses, refuses to let this get dragged across the finish line, you know, And what do you think that would be? Paging Dr Freud? Paging Dr Freud? No, seriously, Erica, I get the large segments of American population and some kind of denial. We've heard it time and time again. I did known slaves. It's not up to me, this doesn't have anything to do with me. Haven't we done enough? I mean, look at Obama, look at Kamala Harris, look at the NBA, they're all millionaires exactly. Look at little nas X, he's a country music millionaire. So and then, of course there's American exceptionalism, right, the idea that we're so special, so different, so good, we're such a beaconto the world, that our country's wealth and prosperity couldn't possibly have been built on the crime of slavery. That's right. We believe we're special and different because of capital d democracy in seventeen seventy six and the Noble Experiment and all that. What a downer to hear that, that's all bullshit. And so we deny What do you mean we Chemo Sabi, Yes, we deny. Or White America official America denies. For us, it's the national myth of American exceptionalism. It's almost the national drug. Other countries have their own unique reasons for denying or not. You look at Germany and Japan and war guilt and reparations for World War Two. Yeah, I mean, look at Germany for all horrific crimes as a nation, and they were horrific on an unprecedented scale. Germany is recognized for having faced up to what they did. They can't deny it, and they don't deny it. They've admitted their guilt and starting the war. They also paid reparations for starting World War One. They've admitted their guilt in the Holocaust, They've owned it, and they've written history books that way, and most important me for our discussion, they've paid billions and billions in reparations to individual victims, to other neighbor nations and to use as a class and of course, German reparations helped build the state of Israel as a unique nation. They've taken on the job of making men's in a real way, yes, but it can be more complicated than that on the ground for real victims of Germany's aggression. Here's the testimony of one man who was a child at the time of the German conquest of Poland during World War Two, Mr Waldemar. Many Poles, including Mr. Waldemar's parents, were taken as forced laborers from Poland to Germany. His story illustrates the difficulty of actually getting reparations in a country whose policy it is to pay reparations. Mr Waldemar seventy seven years old and hasn't gotten anything yet, but to his way of thinking, it would never be enough. Tell it'spres lata Ignorovanni indogionist Zampen. The subject of the reparations for the polls has been always avoided since the times of the Federal Republic of Germany, and it has never been ultimately finalized. To this day. Each subsequent German government has ignored the settlement issue of guilty German aggressors who took advantage of human beings to build a magnitude of the Third Reich. The system and the Nazi ideology does not justify martyrology. It confirms it. An ultimate financial settlement in the form of reparations is the only way to remedy the wrongs of the perpetrators. My personal situation was that as a pole I was born on September two four in nither Schlema, Germany. I was a child to my parents, Stanislav and Alfreda, who were taken from Poland to Germany as a forced labor staff to work in a paper factory. When I became an adult, I went to Polish German Reconciliation Foundation to get compensation, but I was denied because I was told that I was in Germany for a voluntary basis and not forced to be there. The time to talk about human harm and appreciation never expires. I, as my parents child, never got any financial compensation. I found out later that the heads of the Polish German Reconciliation Foundation granted each other in total three hundred sixty two thousands lotti, which equals to over ninety five thousand dollars, and the CEO back then got hundred thousands lotti which equals to over twenty six thousand dollars for the harm of the sufferers. This was a big issue in the Polish media. A couple of years ago, I visited my birthplace in Germany. This small house in which I was born is still there. Times are different and people are different. The Germans live in good prosperity, glory to the heroes of the war, but they were said not to be owed anything. Nowadays, the Germans are great economic strength. Why my father, as a forced laborer, had natural skills to service machines, cars, technical vehicles and tractors, but he could not service it without proper certifications. Then the German factory sent him to professional training against Vico. That means that even in war times, in relation to a forced labor, the law was organized very well. My grandparents, who were there too, used to say the times were difficult. We strived just to survive. According to my memory, the people felt cheated by the pre war German government. Also after the war there was a tendency to quickly forget about such painful events. Reparations were ridiculously low. All the nations and all the people in the world deserve civilized and worthy treatment. Reparations are the matter that should be precisely scrutinized. America was raised on the Native American's graves. What happened to the black people in slavery times was a disgraceful act. They say, this is the country of freedom, but the natives are in reserves. When the black people fought for America, they showed their dedication to the country. They fought for their American freedom. If they have relatives living to this day, they should be rewarded for that. We also should strongly separate America from Columbus times and after the formation of the American country the USA should only be accountable exclusively for what happened to the slaves once the nation was formed. We obviously can't question a terrible loss of the black lives before that, But it would be really difficult to verify who would be eligible to get the money. So then how to calculate it? Certainly from one thousand, seven hundred seventy six, but how many generations back? For The danger lies in the commission's decision. What if someone is not granted, will there be another rebellion? How to educate people about the reparations so that there were not people who would have felt left out. I believe that the reparations should be granted to the oldest eligible descendants in the family, or the children if they have already died. In contemporary Poland, I became a member of an organization called Office for Veterans and Repressed People. They have been existing only for the past two years. I was issued an idea which states I was due to my parents obvious situation there someone who was in the work camp to become a member. The major condition was to be born either in Germany or in the Soviet Union before the end of World War Two, Having this organization as a back up, I can reapply to the Polish German Reconciliation Foundation to get a reasonable reparation. They said, I can do it. That is my right, and I'm going to take advantage of it. Still though, however, clumsily or stingially at times, Germany has acknowledged worldwide as clearly having been in the reparations business. Right. Yes. Well. Japan, by contrast, is like who us, No way, we don't want to talk about that. You can't make us, No, no, no no, no no, you can't make us China, Korea, Southeast Asia, the rape of Nanjing for slave labor, comfort women. You don't know what you're talking about. Talk about denial. It takes daily maintenance. And they're so stuck on this Erica and they won't be moved, you know, they cling to their own special kind of specialness. You know, Japan is too unique, two above it all too much of a rare and beautiful chrysanthemum, any of these ugly things. And as the World War two generation is all but gone, and as each year goes by, they've kind of hardened into this position. You hear in America that was such a long time ago. It's such a deflection. We have a nice new emperor. Have you seen our bullet trains? They're very fast and for them, we're talking what only eighty years Well, meanwhile, in America, slavery ended one hundred and sixty years ago. And you know, Erica, most Americans, black or white, can't remember what they had for lunch yesterday, and a lot of times they don't want to remember. Yeah, what's that? But how much harder than slavery and Jim Crow. Along with the myth of American exceptionalism comes this idea of America as a young country, a forward looking country, young country on the move, heading for the new frontier. We don't do looking back. Yeah, we pay Ken Burns to look back to the rest of us don't have to. That's right, exactly right, But oh my god, ken Burns talk about verbations. We go on all day about him, but hey, we ain't got that kind of time. Let's talk about the motto of the city of Atlanta. Atlanta the city too busy to hate, perfect for the new South. Talk about a successful rebranding. But then here it comes to black people always dragging everything down and white America official America's like, why do you people have to make everything about race? You people? What you mean? You people? Which is funny coming from the people who invented race as a construct in order to feel better about kidnapping my black ass from Africa and bringing me here to do all that free work than keeping me from having rights or freedom or justice and murdering random members of my family to keep me in line. Yeah, I'm making it all about race. I hate when you do that. Then again, I'm also too busy to hate. How nice for you. I've got an even worse scenario for you, though, worse than Black America not getting reparations. What would be worse than not getting reparations? Whitney? You ever owe somebody money? Me, I'm a documentary filmmaker. I never don't owe somebody money. You ever owe somebody money? And you get this feeling when you owe somebody money and you see them coming around, you start to hate them, right, like funk that guy right, and you feel like they're looking at you. They're looking at you like you posted on Facebook that you had a nice meal. But how are you gonna do that? When you owe me money? How do you get for one Red Lobster Special when you won't between nine fifty. I feel like they're clocking everything you do and you hate them, you would hate them. Get off my Facebook, man, what asshole? That's can't be tasting funny anyway. And this goes on and they're looking at you with that look like you know the look, come on, you know the look there it is m mm hmmm, and there's this bad blood. And then one day the apocalypse, they asked you for the money. They ask you for the money. It's like, oh, use this song only coming here? Why are you coming over here? They're go look the money and they get all up in your grill and they ask you for a goddamn money. They're like, um, I say, I hate to bother you and I was just wondering and you're like, put abusing me and back up, Jesus. I mean, god damn, I'm triggering as a bunk right now. Don't you see what did I have? Fift? Do you say, let me get back to you, asshole? Well that's America. They owe us money. Everyone knows it. Their friends around the world know it. So what happens they start to hate us. I mean they already hate this, but now a new and different kind of grudges building, Like I bet those black folks are out there clocking my Facebook page, Like I just spent a trillion dollars on going back to space, but I can't pay reparations. So you're saying the very act of asking for reparations, Yes, the series right now, ask the getting close like we're doing now, we'll have the very perverse effect of making things worse for black Americans. Stop triggering me, man, Stop triggering me. Yeah, we don't get the money, and we're more screwed than we were before, and black people are getting angrier. We won't agreement about which we can live or you cute if you won't listen to me when I'm making a feel for the Negros, because you have no concerned for the negros, listen to me when I'm making a feel for murder. You claim you law America. Are we love America? But you are traveling us back and you are making a Sampson out of us, and we are gonna put down the pillow. Should you try to pretend that I'm crazy because I brought the America to be saved, and then you think we have no right to ask for something. Is it too much to ask you to grant us human dignity? Should we be put down and shot to death for this request? If so, you can aim your guns. What the hell do you think we care about dying if you're gonna deny the right to live? Wow, Erica, that's pretty bleak. So you're saying that, after all we've talked about, that's the examples we've heard, the people, we've talked to, the different initiatives. Even after contributing to the discourse ourselves with this discussion, however much we moved needle forward. What you're saying is you're still pessimistic. Well, I look, I I don't know if that's the word. I'd use pessimistic. What's a worse word than pessimistic, because uh, that's what I feel. But that metaphor I used earlier of dragging something like over the finish line. Yeah, I don't know if there's an energy or the will for it in this country. I just I don't know. I don't know that I've been money on it. Reparations are almost the photo negative of the Obama presidency. What do you mean hard versus easy? Time consuming versus quick painful versus painless. I remember when Obama was running, my late father in law, black man born in Virginia, kept saying, they're never gonna let that black man become president. I remember him crying the night of Obama won. What he maybe hadn't reckoned with was how badly white America wanted to be forgiven for the crime of slavery. How voting for Obama was a simple way in their minds, at least to expiate that sin in one easy step, to get a get out of jail free car, to say, see, I'm not my ancestors. I voted for a black man, get out of jail free. But it's not that simple or that easy, exactly doing the work, the hard work of looking squarely at that sin, taking the time to calculate its terrible cost, acknowledging the hurt and the damage done, and paying money as a real tangible way of atoning for and exploiting that great sin. That's going to be hard, if it's going to be at all. If it's going to be at all, you know, Erica. Maybe the ugly truth is that race racism is the ultimate business model. It's been more than successful for the centuries. Just look at the shining Empire. We we white people, built on its foundation, yep. And if it ain't broke, don't fix it. It's worked for hundreds of years. And that may be the realist, ugliest truthliest truth of all. And you know who understands the ugliest truths and tries to make them plain so we can look them in their ugly face. My main man, that natural born genius killer Mike. The ugly truth is racism has been extremely profitable for America. It gave America an economic jump start when it was a young country trying to compete with empires like the United Kingdom in France. America used free labor, cotton, and the Industrial Revolution to get a jump start to the world stage. Post slavery and with the advent of the Thirteenth Amendment, which disallows slavery except for imprisonment, we saw a huge spike in the black male prison population throughout the South, and chain gangs were used to build everything from rhodes to actual hounds, a practice still followed today, as in Mississippi we see federal and state officials fighting over who gets to use cheap and free convict labor to do upkeep of buildings. Besides that free labor, we are currently building new private prisons to put in small towns to serve as economic injectors in those towns. Those towns, oftentimes and the greater State have made contracts with private prisons to keep them seventy to eighty percent field, thus giving the motivation to target i think, in one particular group of people and to target them for a rest, for not the punishment of a crime, but for the perpetuation of private prisons. We have a problem in this country and that we like to use cheap labor to create wealth. On the other side, and the community that has been used for cheap labor the most are black people. I've leave that as a country, we can be the country we aspire to be, where there's liberty and justice for all, but we can no longer do this if we are married to the classic capitalistic system in which we use and abuse the people that were brought here for free or cheap labor, just like we do migrant workers now, just like we've done Africans in the past, just like they did the Chinese during the making of railroads, just like they've done even the Irish and the Latino population that came into New York through Ellis Islands in the twenties, thirties and nine. This country knows that a different way is possible. The question is are we too lazy and apathetic to try a different way. I was struck one time when I saw a white man being arrested in an airport and he said to the police, you can't do me like this. I'm black. And just like Jane Elliott has said before in her classes when she asked white people, if you know these things are happening, you know they're going wrong, why don't you do anything about it? Because they wan't volunteer to be black. They know if I volunteer to be black, I can put across here. Whether it's speeding tickets or whether it's we know every police shooting has happened in a area where the credit scores below five fifty. It is easy to target black, and not only black with the poor. Racism is an advent of classism. Classism is an advent of the bourgeoisie and the elite, meant to oppress the peasant class. If we don't start to fight racism right now in this country, then we will forever remain an empire that uses the free labor of black people to exploit and capitalize off of. We have an opportunity in this moment to give people what we truly promise as freedom and justice for all that means. We must fight, fight, fight, every step of the way against racism. And it's not enough to be non racist, you must be vehemently anti racist. Next time on reparations, the big payback here I am in gun it is hot to say the least they ever have a great back to Africa movement unless they get better air conditioning. I gotta ask you a question because I hadn't thought of this until the other night. But here we aren't gone, and here we are at the dungeon, slavey dungeon. The people who helped these people getting or Africans, do they have any sort of responsibility or accountability to the diaspora. I think the answer would have to be yes, they have to take some responsibility. But I think that we also have to put it in a certain historical context, because you know, slavery had always existed in the world. There was no time and there wasn't slavery and the Africans themselves practice slavery. Every place in the world there was slavery, and so when slavery was introduced as part of the European African trade, historically there would have been no way for the Africans would always existed knowing there was slavery. To understand, the chattel slavery is a new institution. It did not exist in the world before. Chattel slavery is that slavery where you, the slave, are the same as a cow. You are chattel, you are furniture, you are you, You're not a human being. So the slavery that was invented for the New World to grow cotton and sugar and whatever was a slavery that was a new invention. So you can't really you have to take responsibility to the Africans have to take responsibility, but you have to put in the context of what they knew. So the Africans who said when the Europeans came and said okay, well we can give you this and this and this, and you can give us slaves, and they thought, okay, that's a good deal. How can they be responsible for knowing what was going to happen across the Atlantic and then you also have to look historically at when many of the big chiefs found out or got word that this was something told different that was going on, many of them intervened to stop the trade of slaves. So that's not to say that means that they're completely innocent, but you can't then just whitewash them or blackwash them, or however you want to say, with the same brush as those who did the actual execution of this unique slavery called chattel slavery that had not existed in the world before. This podcast is produced by Eric Alexander then are Non and Ntaw. The executive producers are Charlemagne the God and Dolly s. Bishop. The supervising producer is Nicole Childers, and the lead producer is Devin Mavick Robins. The Associate producer is Kevin Pham, with additional research support provided by Nile Blast. This episode was written by Tony Perrier. Original music by d J D T P. Special thanks to Mr valdamot Ogret Nitzak and his daughter Sylvia Ogretnitzak, who prepared and wrote his story reparations. The Big Payback is a production of color Farm Media. I Heart Radio and the Black Effect Podcast Network in association with Best Case Studios. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

I'm Erica Alexander and I'm Whitney Down. Welcome to Reparations, The Big Payback, a production of Color Far Media, I Heart Radio and The Black Effect Podcast Network. We're not interesting in a racial hamising. We don't want your neighborhood. We want ours to be just as good. See, we don't want to store in your neighbor but we don't want you coming in our neighborhood and open up store and exploiting us and then go home and throw Obama if we moved next door out in the suburbs. We don't want your schools, but we want our schools to be the highest and the best spottle for our black projecting. See what people don't understand we are saying, and we're not asking you. See the diet is cast as I said, We're not asking, We're saying, this is the where it's gonna be. Now you get this street. You can kill all the black folks you want to, baby, but you will not kill the freedom of black folks. It's coming. We're gonna get it. We're fought in every one of your damn lives the wars, baby, and you give us nothing. Now the war is gonna be here because we're gonna be free. Are you kill all you want to? What? We kill? Two? So Erica? How are you doing this week? Whitney? Honestly, I don't know. The most recent killing of an unarmed black man, Andrew Brown Jr. The one in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, has to be feeling pretty pessimistic. It never seems to end, does a Yeah, this one was like an execution. The sheriff's deputies rolled up to serve a warrant, or so they say, But from the little video the city has released, you can see that four seconds later Brown was dead from a gunshot to the back of the head. And once again they still won't release the police body camp footage. It's traumatizing, as I think it's meant to be what you think. There's an agenda to all these killings. Yes, I do, and we get to that in a minute. But it's not just traumatizing. It's sad. It's just immensely, immensely sad. Black America is a nation within a name, a nation in a perpetual state of grief, A huge family that can't go more than a day or two without a funeral. Every day we get the shots of the crying family, the attorneys calling for justice, the marchers marching, Al Sharpton preaching over the casket. They should just save themselves the trouble and expense in the killings, right, yeah, that part. Just make stock footage of it all and run it over and over. You know, I see your point. It seems like the original sin of slavery and Jim Crow never went away. They just morphed into this weird apartheid regime enforced by murder, daily murder. Now, if that's not an agenda to keep black people in line, it'll do to an agenda gets here. I don't know what to say, Erica. I'm sorry. It seems so small in the face of it all. Still, I'm sorry. Thanks. This revolution is filled with so many ironies. Really, first you tell us that it is men need to keep your word, all right, If you are a man, you keep your word. And now all of the black people in this country are demanding, and even the black people in the whole world are demanding, is that you keep your word. You told us we were free, Well, then show us that we're free. You told us that there is justice, equality for all in this country. Will, then, kids, stick to your word and let us see the justice inequality for all, or else, admit to us that you're not a man, you're a word. You're afraid of us. You're afraid to give us equal stand. You're afraid that if you give us equal ground, that we will match you and we will override you. And if that's what you're afraid of us, then then tell us that just what you're afraid of. But don't keep hiding it from us and holding this up to us. And every time we ask you for something, you give us a little bit of something, and it's all token is and we don't want tokenism. And they're most black men in this world that don't want charity. And yet still every time we ask you for something, you give us a little piece. You're little piece. You're playing games with us. Why not children? Well, well, big man, I've seen my father have to put it. We're all kinds of stuff. He was a big man. He raised the family. He went downstown and he had to go around to the bank door with his wife. We're not asking for anything. We're not asking for any favorite. All we want is what's ours. Here we are talking about reparations, And what if the truth, the ugly truth, is that America will never pay reparations to black people for slavery, for Jim Crow, for what Lincoln called the wealth piled by the bondsman, two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil, for any of it. Do you really think that's the case, Areca, After everything we've discussed here, hasn't any of this given you a sense of hope? Well? Yes, of course. I mean with all the good work being done by Congressman Sheila Jackson Lee and all the women Robin Ruth Simmons, Yeah, I mean there's a possibility that kind work may take it up. But look at all the refusal by some in Congress even to talk about reparations, even to study reparations. What if there's something in the American psyche that just refuses, refuses to let this get dragged across the finish line, you know, And what do you think that would be? Paging Dr Freud? Paging Dr Freud? No, seriously, Erica, I get the large segments of American population and some kind of denial. We've heard it time and time again. I did known slaves. It's not up to me, this doesn't have anything to do with me. Haven't we done enough? I mean, look at Obama, look at Kamala Harris, look at the NBA, they're all millionaires exactly. Look at little nas X, he's a country music millionaire. So and then, of course there's American exceptionalism, right, the idea that we're so special, so different, so good, we're such a beaconto the world, that our country's wealth and prosperity couldn't possibly have been built on the crime of slavery. That's right. We believe we're special and different because of capital d democracy in seventeen seventy six and the Noble Experiment and all that. What a downer to hear that, that's all bullshit. And so we deny What do you mean we Chemo Sabi, Yes, we deny. Or White America official America denies. For us, it's the national myth of American exceptionalism. It's almost the national drug. Other countries have their own unique reasons for denying or not. You look at Germany and Japan and war guilt and reparations for World War Two. Yeah, I mean, look at Germany for all horrific crimes as a nation, and they were horrific on an unprecedented scale. Germany is recognized for having faced up to what they did. They can't deny it, and they don't deny it. They've admitted their guilt and starting the war. They also paid reparations for starting World War One. They've admitted their guilt in the Holocaust, They've owned it, and they've written history books that way, and most important me for our discussion, they've paid billions and billions in reparations to individual victims, to other neighbor nations and to use as a class and of course, German reparations helped build the state of Israel as a unique nation. They've taken on the job of making men's in a real way, yes, but it can be more complicated than that on the ground for real victims of Germany's aggression. Here's the testimony of one man who was a child at the time of the German conquest of Poland during World War Two, Mr Waldemar. Many Poles, including Mr. Waldemar's parents, were taken as forced laborers from Poland to Germany. His story illustrates the difficulty of actually getting reparations in a country whose policy it is to pay reparations. Mr Waldemar seventy seven years old and hasn't gotten anything yet, but to his way of thinking, it would never be enough. Tell it'spres lata Ignorovanni indogionist Zampen. The subject of the reparations for the polls has been always avoided since the times of the Federal Republic of Germany, and it has never been ultimately finalized. To this day. Each subsequent German government has ignored the settlement issue of guilty German aggressors who took advantage of human beings to build a magnitude of the Third Reich. The system and the Nazi ideology does not justify martyrology. It confirms it. An ultimate financial settlement in the form of reparations is the only way to remedy the wrongs of the perpetrators. My personal situation was that as a pole I was born on September two four in nither Schlema, Germany. I was a child to my parents, Stanislav and Alfreda, who were taken from Poland to Germany as a forced labor staff to work in a paper factory. When I became an adult, I went to Polish German Reconciliation Foundation to get compensation, but I was denied because I was told that I was in Germany for a voluntary basis and not forced to be there. The time to talk about human harm and appreciation never expires. I, as my parents child, never got any financial compensation. I found out later that the heads of the Polish German Reconciliation Foundation granted each other in total three hundred sixty two thousands lotti, which equals to over ninety five thousand dollars, and the CEO back then got hundred thousands lotti which equals to over twenty six thousand dollars for the harm of the sufferers. This was a big issue in the Polish media. A couple of years ago, I visited my birthplace in Germany. This small house in which I was born is still there. Times are different and people are different. The Germans live in good prosperity, glory to the heroes of the war, but they were said not to be owed anything. Nowadays, the Germans are great economic strength. Why my father, as a forced laborer, had natural skills to service machines, cars, technical vehicles and tractors, but he could not service it without proper certifications. Then the German factory sent him to professional training against Vico. That means that even in war times, in relation to a forced labor, the law was organized very well. My grandparents, who were there too, used to say the times were difficult. We strived just to survive. According to my memory, the people felt cheated by the pre war German government. Also after the war there was a tendency to quickly forget about such painful events. Reparations were ridiculously low. All the nations and all the people in the world deserve civilized and worthy treatment. Reparations are the matter that should be precisely scrutinized. America was raised on the Native American's graves. What happened to the black people in slavery times was a disgraceful act. They say, this is the country of freedom, but the natives are in reserves. When the black people fought for America, they showed their dedication to the country. They fought for their American freedom. If they have relatives living to this day, they should be rewarded for that. We also should strongly separate America from Columbus times and after the formation of the American country the USA should only be accountable exclusively for what happened to the slaves once the nation was formed. We obviously can't question a terrible loss of the black lives before that, But it would be really difficult to verify who would be eligible to get the money. So then how to calculate it? Certainly from one thousand, seven hundred seventy six, but how many generations back? For The danger lies in the commission's decision. What if someone is not granted, will there be another rebellion? How to educate people about the reparations so that there were not people who would have felt left out. I believe that the reparations should be granted to the oldest eligible descendants in the family, or the children if they have already died. In contemporary Poland, I became a member of an organization called Office for Veterans and Repressed People. They have been existing only for the past two years. I was issued an idea which states I was due to my parents obvious situation there someone who was in the work camp to become a member. The major condition was to be born either in Germany or in the Soviet Union before the end of World War Two, Having this organization as a back up, I can reapply to the Polish German Reconciliation Foundation to get a reasonable reparation. They said, I can do it. That is my right, and I'm going to take advantage of it. Still though, however, clumsily or stingially at times, Germany has acknowledged worldwide as clearly having been in the reparations business. Right. Yes. Well. Japan, by contrast, is like who us, No way, we don't want to talk about that. You can't make us, No, no, no no, no no, you can't make us China, Korea, Southeast Asia, the rape of Nanjing for slave labor, comfort women. You don't know what you're talking about. Talk about denial. It takes daily maintenance. And they're so stuck on this Erica and they won't be moved, you know, they cling to their own special kind of specialness. You know, Japan is too unique, two above it all too much of a rare and beautiful chrysanthemum, any of these ugly things. And as the World War two generation is all but gone, and as each year goes by, they've kind of hardened into this position. You hear in America that was such a long time ago. It's such a deflection. We have a nice new emperor. Have you seen our bullet trains? They're very fast and for them, we're talking what only eighty years Well, meanwhile, in America, slavery ended one hundred and sixty years ago. And you know, Erica, most Americans, black or white, can't remember what they had for lunch yesterday, and a lot of times they don't want to remember. Yeah, what's that? But how much harder than slavery and Jim Crow. Along with the myth of American exceptionalism comes this idea of America as a young country, a forward looking country, young country on the move, heading for the new frontier. We don't do looking back. Yeah, we pay Ken Burns to look back to the rest of us don't have to. That's right, exactly right, But oh my god, ken Burns talk about verbations. We go on all day about him, but hey, we ain't got that kind of time. Let's talk about the motto of the city of Atlanta. Atlanta the city too busy to hate, perfect for the new South. Talk about a successful rebranding. But then here it comes to black people always dragging everything down and white America official America's like, why do you people have to make everything about race? You people? What you mean? You people? Which is funny coming from the people who invented race as a construct in order to feel better about kidnapping my black ass from Africa and bringing me here to do all that free work than keeping me from having rights or freedom or justice and murdering random members of my family to keep me in line. Yeah, I'm making it all about race. I hate when you do that. Then again, I'm also too busy to hate. How nice for you. I've got an even worse scenario for you, though, worse than Black America not getting reparations. What would be worse than not getting reparations? Whitney? You ever owe somebody money? Me, I'm a documentary filmmaker. I never don't owe somebody money. You ever owe somebody money? And you get this feeling when you owe somebody money and you see them coming around, you start to hate them, right, like funk that guy right, and you feel like they're looking at you. They're looking at you like you posted on Facebook that you had a nice meal. But how are you gonna do that? When you owe me money? How do you get for one Red Lobster Special when you won't between nine fifty. I feel like they're clocking everything you do and you hate them, you would hate them. Get off my Facebook, man, what asshole? That's can't be tasting funny anyway. And this goes on and they're looking at you with that look like you know the look, come on, you know the look there it is m mm hmmm, and there's this bad blood. And then one day the apocalypse, they asked you for the money. They ask you for the money. It's like, oh, use this song only coming here? Why are you coming over here? They're go look the money and they get all up in your grill and they ask you for a goddamn money. They're like, um, I say, I hate to bother you and I was just wondering and you're like, put abusing me and back up, Jesus. I mean, god damn, I'm triggering as a bunk right now. Don't you see what did I have? Fift? Do you say, let me get back to you, asshole? Well that's America. They owe us money. Everyone knows it. Their friends around the world know it. So what happens they start to hate us. I mean they already hate this, but now a new and different kind of grudges building, Like I bet those black folks are out there clocking my Facebook page, Like I just spent a trillion dollars on going back to space, but I can't pay reparations. So you're saying the very act of asking for reparations, Yes, the series right now, ask the getting close like we're doing now, we'll have the very perverse effect of making things worse for black Americans. Stop triggering me, man, Stop triggering me. Yeah, we don't get the money, and we're more screwed than we were before, and black people are getting angrier. We won't agreement about which we can live or you cute if you won't listen to me when I'm making a feel for the Negros, because you have no concerned for the negros, listen to me when I'm making a feel for murder. You claim you law America. Are we love America? But you are traveling us back and you are making a Sampson out of us, and we are gonna put down the pillow. Should you try to pretend that I'm crazy because I brought the America to be saved, and then you think we have no right to ask for something. Is it too much to ask you to grant us human dignity? Should we be put down and shot to death for this request? If so, you can aim your guns. What the hell do you think we care about dying if you're gonna deny the right to live? Wow, Erica, that's pretty bleak. So you're saying that, after all we've talked about, that's the examples we've heard, the people, we've talked to, the different initiatives. Even after contributing to the discourse ourselves with this discussion, however much we moved needle forward. What you're saying is you're still pessimistic. Well, I look, I I don't know if that's the word. I'd use pessimistic. What's a worse word than pessimistic, because uh, that's what I feel. But that metaphor I used earlier of dragging something like over the finish line. Yeah, I don't know if there's an energy or the will for it in this country. I just I don't know. I don't know that I've been money on it. Reparations are almost the photo negative of the Obama presidency. What do you mean hard versus easy? Time consuming versus quick painful versus painless. I remember when Obama was running, my late father in law, black man born in Virginia, kept saying, they're never gonna let that black man become president. I remember him crying the night of Obama won. What he maybe hadn't reckoned with was how badly white America wanted to be forgiven for the crime of slavery. How voting for Obama was a simple way in their minds, at least to expiate that sin in one easy step, to get a get out of jail free car, to say, see, I'm not my ancestors. I voted for a black man, get out of jail free. But it's not that simple or that easy, exactly doing the work, the hard work of looking squarely at that sin, taking the time to calculate its terrible cost, acknowledging the hurt and the damage done, and paying money as a real tangible way of atoning for and exploiting that great sin. That's going to be hard, if it's going to be at all. If it's going to be at all, you know, Erica. Maybe the ugly truth is that race racism is the ultimate business model. It's been more than successful for the centuries. Just look at the shining Empire. We we white people, built on its foundation, yep. And if it ain't broke, don't fix it. It's worked for hundreds of years. And that may be the realist, ugliest truthliest truth of all. And you know who understands the ugliest truths and tries to make them plain so we can look them in their ugly face. My main man, that natural born genius killer Mike. The ugly truth is racism has been extremely profitable for America. It gave America an economic jump start when it was a young country trying to compete with empires like the United Kingdom in France. America used free labor, cotton, and the Industrial Revolution to get a jump start to the world stage. Post slavery and with the advent of the Thirteenth Amendment, which disallows slavery except for imprisonment, we saw a huge spike in the black male prison population throughout the South, and chain gangs were used to build everything from rhodes to actual hounds, a practice still followed today, as in Mississippi we see federal and state officials fighting over who gets to use cheap and free convict labor to do upkeep of buildings. Besides that free labor, we are currently building new private prisons to put in small towns to serve as economic injectors in those towns. Those towns, oftentimes and the greater State have made contracts with private prisons to keep them seventy to eighty percent field, thus giving the motivation to target i think, in one particular group of people and to target them for a rest, for not the punishment of a crime, but for the perpetuation of private prisons. We have a problem in this country and that we like to use cheap labor to create wealth. On the other side, and the community that has been used for cheap labor the most are black people. I've leave that as a country, we can be the country we aspire to be, where there's liberty and justice for all, but we can no longer do this if we are married to the classic capitalistic system in which we use and abuse the people that were brought here for free or cheap labor, just like we do migrant workers now, just like we've done Africans in the past, just like they did the Chinese during the making of railroads, just like they've done even the Irish and the Latino population that came into New York through Ellis Islands in the twenties, thirties and nine. This country knows that a different way is possible. The question is are we too lazy and apathetic to try a different way. I was struck one time when I saw a white man being arrested in an airport and he said to the police, you can't do me like this. I'm black. And just like Jane Elliott has said before in her classes when she asked white people, if you know these things are happening, you know they're going wrong, why don't you do anything about it? Because they wan't volunteer to be black. They know if I volunteer to be black, I can put across here. Whether it's speeding tickets or whether it's we know every police shooting has happened in a area where the credit scores below five fifty. It is easy to target black, and not only black with the poor. Racism is an advent of classism. Classism is an advent of the bourgeoisie and the elite, meant to oppress the peasant class. If we don't start to fight racism right now in this country, then we will forever remain an empire that uses the free labor of black people to exploit and capitalize off of. We have an opportunity in this moment to give people what we truly promise as freedom and justice for all that means. We must fight, fight, fight, every step of the way against racism. And it's not enough to be non racist, you must be vehemently anti racist. Next time on reparations, the big payback here I am in gun it is hot to say the least they ever have a great back to Africa movement unless they get better air conditioning. I gotta ask you a question because I hadn't thought of this until the other night. But here we aren't gone, and here we are at the dungeon, slavey dungeon. The people who helped these people getting or Africans, do they have any sort of responsibility or accountability to the diaspora. I think the answer would have to be yes, they have to take some responsibility. But I think that we also have to put it in a certain historical context, because you know, slavery had always existed in the world. There was no time and there wasn't slavery and the Africans themselves practice slavery. Every place in the world there was slavery, and so when slavery was introduced as part of the European African trade, historically there would have been no way for the Africans would always existed knowing there was slavery. To understand, the chattel slavery is a new institution. It did not exist in the world before. Chattel slavery is that slavery where you, the slave, are the same as a cow. You are chattel, you are furniture, you are you, You're not a human being. So the slavery that was invented for the New World to grow cotton and sugar and whatever was a slavery that was a new invention. So you can't really you have to take responsibility to the Africans have to take responsibility, but you have to put in the context of what they knew. So the Africans who said when the Europeans came and said okay, well we can give you this and this and this, and you can give us slaves, and they thought, okay, that's a good deal. How can they be responsible for knowing what was going to happen across the Atlantic and then you also have to look historically at when many of the big chiefs found out or got word that this was something told different that was going on, many of them intervened to stop the trade of slaves. So that's not to say that means that they're completely innocent, but you can't then just whitewash them or blackwash them, or however you want to say, with the same brush as those who did the actual execution of this unique slavery called chattel slavery that had not existed in the world before. This podcast is produced by Eric Alexander then are Non and Ntaw. The executive producers are Charlemagne the God and Dolly s. Bishop. The supervising producer is Nicole Childers, and the lead producer is Devin Mavick Robins. The Associate producer is Kevin Pham, with additional research support provided by Nile Blast. This episode was written by Tony Perrier. Original music by d J D T P. Special thanks to Mr valdamot Ogret Nitzak and his daughter Sylvia Ogretnitzak, who prepared and wrote his story reparations. The Big Payback is a production of color Farm Media. I Heart Radio and the Black Effect Podcast Network in association with Best Case Studios. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.