Congress Shows Native Americans Some Love

Let me start by saying that I have no problem with Native Americans. I love Native Americans just as I love all of the beautiful races of this world. I even feel akin to the Native American people because they were wrongfully done by white, European, settlers who assumed their land and gave their ancestors a deal so raw that they wrote a book and movie about it!

And there has been a book or two about the plight of African-Americans, as well. And while I am certainly not going to go into a diatribe over which race had it the roughest, I do think it is fair to say that both races were treated unjustly under any legislative system.

Except for the American system that is.

Just recently, Congress started the processes for moving toward bolstering the health-care screening, illness prevention, and mental health of Native Americans. Now, I will not claim to be an expert on health care in America, especially the health care system of a disenfranchised social grouping like Native Americans.

However, I do know that Native Americans are not the only ones suffering health care problems in their communities. There are whites, blacks, Latinos, and Asians all across America who are having a difficult time in attaining their health care needs and goals.

Yet Congress is expected to eventually approve a bill that will provide $35 billion for Native Americans over the next 10 years.

Once again, let me reiterate that I have no problem with Native Americans, nor do I have a problem with them receiving benefits, especially if those aren't really benefits, but a very late attempt to try to give them the same health care that most of the other Americans get. Some reports say that this bill will help save lives, and that is a great thing.

But what about the lives of people of other races that aren't saved?

While I understand that a bill can only really address one specific issue, I'm not sure that this issue hasn't been too narrowly focused. Senator Byron Dorgon said himself that, "we took their land, put them on reservations, signed treaties, and made promises...this will save lives".

When I hear something like that, I feel like these health benefits are apart of an effort to say sorry and offer up reparations. Especially when anyone who knows their history knows that under historical provisions provided in treaties with Native Americans in the founding days of this country, America agreed to provide health care for Native Americans basically in exchange for forcing them onto reservations.

So, yes, I have to say this... Where are the reparations for black people?

Look, I know that blacks have been awarded many victories in legislature, from scholarships, to aid designed to go to the ghettoes of America [whether it gets there is a whole other question]. However, grants, Medicaid, and food stamps aren't reparations; those are ways of keeping people in the same old hole they climbed out of.

Not that the Native Americans are getting calamari and black people are getting tuna fish. But it just seems like the waiter promised both blacks and Native Americans a sandwich, and brought Native Americans a turkey club and gave black the pickle.

Am I using hyperbole? Of course I am, but truthfully speaking, 40 acres and mule is not a myth. It was a promise by the government to give each and every black person a means of amassing the same value and privileges that had been earned off the backs of the slaves for years.

Native Americans also had money earned off of their misfortunes, and they too were promised reparations. They were given land, then they were given the right to have casinos, and now they are getting the health care. Sure, it's decades, if not centuries late, but it's here.

Yet I don't see any reparations for black people. Regardless of how far we have come and how far we are headed, I don't see the outright gifts that were given to blacks that correlate to amassing individual and familial wealth.

So I'm not hating on the Native Americans. I hope they continue to get more of what they deserve! I'm just saying, can we pull out some calculators and figure out exactly what the appreciation of jackass and a farmstead is over a 143-year period?

Not that I'm for reparations or anything...