First Looting: The Theft of the Body from Ancestral Land
- The first looting of African diaspora heritage was not the theft of an object. It was the theft of a person. That person carried language, religious knowledge, burial practices, agricultural techniques, musical structures, oral histories, and kinship systems. All of that was stolen at the moment of capture. None of it has been repatriated.
Second Looting: The Theft of Dignity, Humanity, Self-Respect, Names, Voices, and Intangible Cultural History
- The second stealing happened when we were brought to the shores where they were stealing us. On those shores, we were stolen again. We had our dignity stolen from us. We had our humanity stolen from us. We had our self-respect stolen from us. We had our names and our voices stolen from us. We had our intangible cultural history stolen from us.
Third Looting: The Theft of Life, Promises, Land, Protections, Voting Rights, and Generational Wealth
- The third looting occurs through no fault of our own, and sometimes every fault of our own, but always with the same result. We had our lives stolen from us by the people who enslaved us. And then, after emancipation, after the Civil Rights movement, we had promises made to us by the American federal government that were then stolen from us.
