Studio 360

This story was insulting. My parents emigrated from Germany; I only have immediate family in the United States. Had I been approached I'd have explained how offensive, innacurate and ignorant it is to blame all white people for American slavery of 200 years ago. I'd have also asked if Damali Ayo would like to speak to my family in Germany, France and Australia and ask them for reparations too. While we're at it let's also ask the descendants of the Africans who sold their fellow countrymen to the Americans for "reparations" as well. Or are all black people innocent of everything in America?

Your show overall is a parody of itself. Straight-white-knee jerk-peace lovin-liberal-bourgeois-pretenders.

My family made reparations more than 100 years ago. After the Civil War was ended my great-great grandmother's slaves chose to stay on her plantation and work as tenant farmers. Upon her death, each family still tenant farming on her plantation were deeded their home and 50 acres of land allowing them to live by their own means. Many Southern plantation owners did the same but we never hear about this.

The idea of reparations seems to me a symptom of A) Many Black people's willingness to tolerate the current state of racial affairs in the US and B) A lack of interest in working to improve them. Some sort of mass reparations payment from the government to all black people -something functionally impossible to actually arrange and deliver- could only ever amount to a deal whereby Black people would be payed off to give up any complaints of injustice, be they current or historical. I can think of nothing that would derail progress in racial affairs more. Imaging Kennedy proposing this sort of buyout to Dr. King. "Yeah I can see you have some real complaints here, why don't I just have congress write a giant check and we'll call it square?" The only reason many Black people today would consider the equivalent is that they have given up on King's dream. Its a really insidious kind of dissempowerment coming primarily from within the Black community. Perhaps many Black people have simply been seduced by our overall cultural idea that money can really make everything all better. I don't find Ms. Iyo's performance art at all entertaining.

wished to edit my last post slightly, please substitute the last sentence for:

"I disagree with the apparent message of Ms. Ayo's performance piece."

Also two earlier sentences would better be written with the phrase: "many Black people" instead of simply "Black people."

Please humor my wishes to cover for some careless and inarticulate statements.

Thank you

I believe these people should go to Africa to collect their reparations from the black tribes that kidnapped their ancestors and the Arabs (Muslims) that sold then into American slavery.

If they still do not have enough money then hit the Portuguese and Spaniards that transported them here. By this time they should be rolling in money.

In view of the desperate straits of most of modern Africa, Damali Ayo should thank her lucky stars she is here, rather than there, however her ancestors got here. Her performance 'art' is a deliciously ironic variety of the theatre of the absurd.

Even if the race hustlers like Ayo succeed in this cynical fool's errand, the self-pitying and clueless beneficieries would soon squander the proceeds anyway. There's an inelegant term for that.

Ayo's not a performance artist just a hipper, glibber kind of con-artist, like the Reverends Jackson, Sharpton, and Wright.

How can even more racism and discrimination ever rectify that of the past. I look forward to hearing about Ayo's next scam, probably involving a fund for the relocation of displaced polar bears.

Damali Ayo is a badass genius. The world is a funnier, more beautiful, more strikingly honest place because she's in it. Thanks for making people uncomfortable, Damali. And thanks for making us laugh through the discomfort. You rock.

Though I agree with reparations, I don't see how panhandling from white people fills in for the US government paying families for work their ancestors have done. I for one as a US citizen and white person, feel this is a burden the nation should carry, but I should only carry in that respect. My ancestors immigrated to the US long after slavery was abolished, so money out of my pocket would not be a delivery of payment but a handout in sympathy?

Though I agree that this issue needs attention, and the arts are a great way to bring it into dialogue, I think panhandling gives the wrong message; it turns this issue into one of racism (which, is part of this issue, but I think not central to it; in fact, linking it to racism weakens the argument), guilt and pity. Reparations should not come with pity.