I think Kaliq Rashad is a beautiful name. I am curious, why you are getting rid of your first and middle names, though.
I've missed reading your blogs. How are things with you?

Interesting theory... Though I agree that that is the ideally just option, I think it looks better on paper than it would in practice though. How would you go about determining who among society was discriminated against? Paper records? Photographs? On top of that, where in Africa would they go to? Strictly west Africa where most of the slave trade occurred? Any country of their choice??? And would those countries be willing to let them assimilate in a way in which the descendants of slaves would find prompt and just?

Furtheremore, there is the problem of who counts as a descendant?? A person who has descended solely from former slaves? What about a person who is half descended? Do you see what I'm getting at? What about anybody who has any connection at all with former slaves? At some, point, I'm probably up for qualification...

On top of that, perhaps you could enlighten me as to why a born US citizen would want to live in Africa as opposed to here? According to the CIA factbook, Nigeria's GDP (Africa's highest) is basically 1.4% of the United States. Why would you want to go to Mozambique or Darfur or Rwanda with what is going on there right now? Are you honestly going to tell me that you would be better off over there than you would here?


I don't take much stock in names. As they say in Pulp Fiction, "We're American. Our names don't mean shit." Besides, who gave you that name? Maybe this is a bad assumption, but I doubt it was slave owners, it was probably your parents? "That which we would call a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet." You could be called wonderful, wise, and mature in any language but that means nothing unless you exemplify those traits (with all fairness I think you would do justice to). It's the content of a person's character that matters, not their name. Hence, I would say it would be far wiser to spend time and money to better your character than "better" or change your name.

A firm philosophy of mine is to not dwell on the past. What's done is done. Slavery (as well as well as the conquest of the Native Americans, oppression of women) was an awful blemish on the history of this nation and it should rightly go recognized as such. But the best and only real compensation I can see to give the descendants of slaves and Native Americans at this point is to lighten taxes on secondary education (which the US is already doing). Even then, I still think it's a very sticky system. I just don't believe there is any clear cut way to discern who among our enormous black and Native American population is a descendant and who isn't.