MY TAKE

From the Editor and Publisher

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

— George Santayana

WHY BAVUAL?

Earl A. Birkett

This debut issue of BAVUAL: The African Heritage Magazine is the culmination of a dream that has consumed me for 50 years, since I was a lad of 11. As a boy, I dreamed of being a magazine publisher like my mentors: John H. Johnson Jr., founder of Ebony and Jet; Henry R. Luce, who created the Time-Life empire; and the fictional publisher Glenn Howard (played by my role model, Gene Barry) in the 1960s TV series The Name of the Game. It took a while, but I finally did it.

So why BAVUAL and not some other type of publication? Simply put, it is filling a void in the magazine world and in the public discourse. To Big Media’s credit, issues and history pertaining to people of African descent are finally being given some of the attention that they need and deserve, such as through their coverage in the landmark “1619 Project” published in The New York Times. However, it is still far from enough.

George Santayana’s warning that we ignore history at our peril has never been truer than it is now. I do not fear the past any more than I fear the truth, because both are intertwined. Much like with a bodily or mental disease, in order to heal properly, you must first be expertly diagnosed to identify your exact problem. Likewise, a great nation and a world that seeks to rid itself of division, hate, inequality and ignorance must put its history under a microscope in order to change it.

I am now on the verge of 62, and after all I’ve been through in life, I am still an optimist about the human race. My study of human history has taught me one thing: We screw up, but we also have the capacity for greatness, if we try for it. Through its pages, I want BAVUAL to point to what we have done, warts and all, so that we can make the remainder of the 21st century and beyond better than what came before it. That’s the magazine’s mission, nothing more, nothing less.

Question is, will you join us? I have faith.

THE DRIFT

A “Marshall Plan” for Black America

Robert L. Johnson, billionaire and founder of Black Entertainment Television (BET), is a man with a plan. A really big plan—and one that I completely endorse. Johnson’s solution to bridge the equality gap—a canyon, really—between white and black Americans (see BAVUAL’s article on Reparations on page 34?) is for the federal government to pay $14 trillion to be divided between each of the 46.9 million black people now alive in America. That’s roughly 298,507.46 per person. By comparison, many blacks have only gotten $3,200 from the COVID-19 stimulus checks.

The Johnson proposal, given in an interview with VICE News, contains this most-revealing quote:

Reparations would require the entire country to … admit that the result of slavery has been 200 years of systemic racism. For that reason, Black folks have been denied $13-15 trillion of wealth and therefore we as a country now must atone by paying Black people of all stripes—the rich ones, the poor ones, and the middle—out of our pocket.

Bingo! It seems this very rich and successful black man, obviously a smart negotiator, has reasoned it out. Why are we settling for crumbs and not the $13-15 trillion of wealth he says (and I believe) we are owed? That would give me, Earl Birkett, and nearly 47 million other African Americans not just a measly three thousand pandemic bucks. That’s enough to buy a house or provide seed money to start a business (like, say, BAVUAL).

Photo credit: Alex Brandon/AP

That multitrillion-dollar figure is Johnson’s and my Marshall Plan for black America, something we as a people have been clamoring for but denied since 1865. It would greatly elevate all African Americans to a more equal status, help bind the racial wounds that have plagued us for centuries, and pump enough money into the economy to make all Americans as rich as Croesus.

Given the current national environment of division, hate, selfishness and greed, my plan is not likely to happen any time soon. But I do have a dream. “ Reparations would require the entire country to … admit that the result of slavery has been 200 years of systemic racism.

For that reason, Black folks have been denied $13-15 trillion of wealth and therefore we as a country now must atone by paying

Black people of all stripes—the rich ones, the poor ones, and the middle—out of our pocket.”