We’ve all heard the recycled lies: “Reparations would bankrupt the country.”It’s too complicated.”No one alive today is responsible.”

Lies – repeated so often that they become cultural wallpaper. Yet this same country will casually hand out $250 million contracts to athletes over four years. CEOs deserve eight-figure bonuses after tanking companies. That billion-dollar bailouts are “necessary” for the economy. When it comes to the Black community as a whole (as we’re judged), there’s never enough.

Let’s be clear: this is not an attack on athletes getting their bag. If anything, they’re simply doing what most people wish they could – getting paid in a system that worships profit over justice. The problem lies in how society treats entertainment as sacred while dismissing justice as impossible. The culture cheers for spectacle while ignoring the cries for repair. Let’s not ignore the arrogance of some who confuse fame with contribution and illusion with purpose. Many are used as tokens of perceived progress – while their communities remain gutted.

We live in a society where people willingly spend their rent or mortgage money for a couple hours of distraction – concert tickets, football games, streaming shows – but argue against redistributing wealth to repair generational theft. What does that say about what we’ve been conditioned to value?

When a wealthy person suffers tragedy, society mourns with them. They get headlines, GoFundMes, and legislative sympathy. But when is it a poor Black family? A shrug. A statistic. A moral judgment. And often, police surveillance instead of grief.

Billions flowed to Ukraine. To Israel. To the Pentagon. To corporations. Did the country go bankrupt then? Where was the debate about “fiscal responsibility” when banks were bailed out after stealing from millions of trusting customers, aka American citizens? Or when airlines received billions to fix their broken systems, only to turn around and charge passengers for breathing too loud?

Let’s call it what it is: white handouts. White America – and those racially or culturally adjacent to whiteness – have always been allowed to receive united financial support, be it personal, corporate, or structural. Their losses are met with sympathy and money. Their failures are called “learning curves.” Their thefts? “Too big to fail.”

Meanwhile, Black people are told to “pull themselves up” – from holes dug by the very country that enslaved, disenfranchised, redlined, and criminalized them.

So I ask: Who is the white community without Black culture to emulate, or black bodies to exploit? What remains when the theft ends – of labor, of rhythm, of soul, of dignity?

America loves to pretend it’s fair, but it’s always been rigged. It rewards harm, punishes resilience, and drowns justice in bureaucracy. Politicians blow billion-dollar budgets every term just to push the same failed policies. Voters keep inviting them back like it’s a reunion of corruption.

We aren’t broke. We aren’t out of time. There is enough to repair what was broken – enough land, enough money, enough political will if people truly wanted justice. But America refuses to make the deposit.

Because the truth is, reparations would force the nation to admit what it really is – not a land of opportunity, but a long con where only a few get the chance to heal, rise, or even matter.

And the majority?

They stay loyal to the very system that keeps them down – as long as they believe someone else has it worse.

Challenge to White Supremacy:

So here’s my challenge to white supremacy: If you truly believe in Black inferiority – that we’re incapable of building, managing, or sustaining – then I implore you to release what‘s owed. Cut the checks. Return the land. Transfer the wealth. Let’s witness the aftermath.

Because if you’re right, we’ll just give it all back to you – in overpriced brands, hollow validation, and the same systems you’ve conditioned us to chase. And with centuries of a head start, you should be miles ahead anyway… right?

But if you’re wrong?

If even a fraction of us choose differently – to heal, to build, to rewire the game – then your whole myth collapses.

And maybe that’s what you’re truly afraid of.

If one person is a slave, then all of us are slaves.

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