New York Times writer Farah Stockman recently wrote an article examining the American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS), pondering whether the organization is a new social movement or a group of online trolls.
“I struggled with that question a lot as I was reporting an article about ADOS, the American Descendants of Slavery, which argues on social media and YouTube that Black Americans need a separate ethnic category, distinct from Africans and people from the Caribbean who immigrated voluntarily,” Stockman wrote in the Times.
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People who support ADOS say that it is fighting for reparations for Native Black Americans, or descendants of slaves. Others say there is proof that ADOS as a hashtag on Twitter is promoted by conservatives and trolls.
Stockman interviewed people nationwide who had established ADOS chapters in Atlanta, Columbus, Los Angeles, and elsewhere. But she noted that some of the chapters are small and meet in local restaurants and libraries.
But then Stockman attended an ADOS conference in Louisville and found more than a thousand people lined up to get inside, wearing ADOS T-shirts. Harvard professor Cornel West, a supporter of ADOS, spoke to the crowd.
“The audience was told that they should trace their origins to American slavery, not Africa. They were told that their ancestors had built the country with slave labor, and that the country owed them a debt. They were told that they should demand reparations, and withhold their votes in 2020 unless the Democratic nominee outlined a specific economic plan for ADOS,” Stockman wrote.
“We are getting shut out of a lot of places due to this ‘diversity and inclusion,’ which replaces us with people who don’t have the same accrued disadvantages that we do,” a Black woman from Atlanta said. “We are competing with someone from Nigeria who has two parents with PhDs, who was schooled in London. We’re not saying that they shouldn’t be there, but you have to make a place for us, too.”
The conference and meeting ADOS followers face-to-face didn’t give Stockman a definitive view of the group, instead, she had more questions.
“I came away with more questions than answers: Can you fight for your own hungry people, without taking food out of somebody else’s mouth? Who should consider themselves Americans? What entitlements should Americans get? Those seemed to be the fundamental questions, not just for ADOS, but the entire country. That’s why we decided to write the article. Only time will tell what impact ADOS will have, and whether it constitutes a ‘sustained campaign,’” she concluded in the Times piece.
