Analysis Of Reparations By Sekou Sundiata

Initially, when I listened to Sekou Sundiata’s Longstoryshort album, it did not have any significant effect on me, which is probably due to the type of music that I align myself with. I did enjoy the song “Reparations”, which talked about society giving reparations for slavery. It was in this song that I noticed that it aligned itself more with protest poetry sort of how the Black Lives Matter Movement use protest to spark a conversation on issues that plague black people. Sekou Sundiata’s song “Reparations” focus on whites owing reparations and the Black Lives Matter Movement focus on blacks being owed accountability for the wrongs committed by white terrorists. One of the concepts that Sekou Sundiata mentions is the government-initiated concept

of forty acres and a mule. Sundiata says, “them forty acres, not withstanding, that mule, not withstanding”. This speaks to Sundiata’s claim that slaves deserve reparation after earning money for their white slave owners that further benefitted the capitalism that was not built to privilege blacks. This is similar to the Black Lives Matter Movement’s politics when they say that the law enforcement officials are supposed to serve and protect citizens regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, sex, etc. This is what makes Sekou Sundiata’s poetry sort of like protest poetry, similar to how the civil rights movement often used music in their protest to remind blacks about their heritage.
Trudier Harris says, “One of the primary objectives of black writing during slavery was to bring about the end of slavery.

Since slavery existed foremost in the South, writers often directed appeals for freedom to northern whites, whom they hoped would influence their slaveholding counterparts in the South” (Harris 2010). Sekou Sundiata writes from this perspective in all of the songs of Longstoryshort, more specifically in “Reparations” when he says, “Come on and bring on the reparations. For all the unrequited home runs, brothers be burning up the bases, the crowd be going mad, brothers be crossing over home plate, go outside and can’t get a cab.” This part of the song seems to be directed towards the audience and can be used by Black Lives Matter Movement to speak to white audiences to get them involved in the cause since any threat to black life is a threat to human life. “This dehumanization of Black youth leads to the extreme disproportionality we see in the criminal justice system” (Muhammad 2014). With accountability in addition to a complete change of American consciousness about the meaning of “blackness”, this is when protest poetry similar to Sundiata’s Longstoryshort and to the Black Lives Matter movement’s acts of protest will be listened to by all

audiences.