If you were curious as to why the mainstream media did not take the Millions for Reparations Rally very seriously, then you are probably unaware of anything that actually happened there.
Miss Drayton, columnist for The Daily Tar Heel, seems to think that its absence in mainstream coverage is due to its lack of vital importance to a ruling class of white males, while I feel it has much more to do with the events' ridiculously puerile leadership.
I do not venture to say that reparations are not worthy of consideration, as possibly they may be, I don't know.
But I do know that every group that decides to rally on the subject does not deserve automatic recognition and legitimization.
Drayton pointed out that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, two who rarely miss an opportunity for a bath in the national limelight, steered far clear of the rally for slavery reparations.
This is understandable, because it would mean sharing the stage with Nation of Islam Leader Louis Farrakhan, who during his speech at the Million Man March in the same place made references to International Jewish Banking Conspiracies and mystical numerology that explains world politics.
But in this case Farrakhan was seen as the moderate of the bunch, according to Alex P. Kellogg of The American Prospect (Aug. 19 article) and a self-identified supporter of slave reparations who attended the rally.
The seven-hour event amounted to a parade of self-promoting fringe radicals who took every opportunity possible to spout racist rhetoric, which at times even targeted African Americans.
"I don't care how many welfare checks you get, they will not pay you for the labor of your ancestors," as quoted by Rev. Herbert Daughtry, a speaker at the reparations rally.
