Oral Statement to the Commission on Human Rights
Item 14 (b) Specific Groups and Individuals: Minorities
The lingering effects of plantation slavery leave my people and me in a deprived state. We are deprived of our 'mother tongue.' Today, the United States of America grants minorities the use of their own language. But mine was forcibly taken away. I am denied and deprived of its use.
Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the United States has ratified, declares, "In those States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons belonging to such minorities shall not be denied the right, in community with other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practice their own religion, or to use their own language.
We, the so-called African-Americans, in the aftermath of plantation slavery, cannot speak our own language, in community with other members of our group. The U.S. Government took it away.
African-Americans originate from many parts of Africa encompassing hundreds of languages. Therefore, it would be impossible to implement the prayer of African-Americans regarding the loss of their ‘mother tongue.’ The inability to implement a remedy makes it impossible to enforce any law. Our prayer, however, is for reparations. In this way America can address this legal and moral wrong: we will choose a language pleasing to us.
This argument is being made by a group that represents only one tenth of one percent of African-Americans in the United States. Nonetheless, the argument is made.
In conclusion, we ask that the United States pay reparations to the so-called African-Americans, as the United States cannot restore our 'mother tongue' if ever it wanted to. Nor should the United States continue, illegally, to choose and force one upon us, which it has done for the last 400 years. We ask that the Commission on Human Rights recommend a reparations sanction against the United States to ECOSOC and the General Assembly.
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