by Jason Young

Created on: June 08, 2007

I'm a 30 year-old black man living in Oregon. This year my grandfather turns 80 and for his birthday he wanted all of his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren to gather at the place of his childhood in rural North Carolina. I am just finishing grad school so packing my wife and two daughters on an airplane was no small or inexpensive feat. North Carolina held many revelations for me as we visited what for lack of a better term are my "ancestral grounds". I saw the house where my Grandfather grew up. I saw the place where my own father was born. I walked through cemetaries filled with my ancestors, some of them slaves or children of slaves. I walked on a plantation where, stories have it, my people toiled and bled and sweat. It was a blessing to walk on all of these sacred sites with my sisters and cousins and my daughters and my wife who, by the way, is white. I felt deep gratitude to my grandfather for bringing us all to this place but also to the people who came before me.

Black nationalists and seperatists talk about returning to the "motherland" or making a "pilgrimage". As I stood in the tobacco fields and listened to my family's history unfold from the mouths of those who are old enough to remember it, I realized that Warren, North Carolina is my motherland. I'm an American, but not because I deserve it. This privilege was purchased for me with the lives and vitality of my ancestors, who were property when they came here. They purchased their freedom with their perseverance, spirit, and will. Why would I need repairations? If anybody owes a debt it is me. I live in the healthiest, wealthiest and most promising country in the history of the world. I understand that America still has a long road to travel until we respect each other equally but that change won't come overnight nor will it come in the form of a check from the government or white people or anybody.

I'm paying my repairations to my slave ancestors by being the best man I can be. That is what they purchased for me and I'm not going to waste it.

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