To my fellow European Americans,
A Response to "Who Gets to Be Human?" By Kokayi Nosakhere
To my fellow European Americans,
I recently read Kokayi’s piece, “Who Gets to Be Human?” I want to speak directly to us. Not to defend, deflect, or deny. To listen. To respond. To ask: What do we do now?
Kokayi names something uncomfortable but true: that the resistance to solutions for racial injustice is not about logic. It’s about the fear of losing unearned comfort. He offers five concrete proposals. Here is how we, as European Americans, can contribute to each of them. Not as allies, but as people who claim to believe in humanity itself.
Honoring Treaties with Indigenous Nations
Kokayi’s proposal: The U.S. government must honor all treaties with Indigenous Nations, whether classified as living or historical. A treaty is not a temporary lease. A treaty. is a binding agreement between sovereign entities.
Our response: Stop offering land acknowledgments instead of land back. We can:
Educate ourselves on which treaties cover the land we occupy and which remain unfulfilled.
Support Indigenous-led land-back initiatives with our voices, our votes, and our dollars.
Stop treating “statutes of limitations” as moral arguments. The theft of a continent is not a weather event we can file away.
The excuse is: “That happened centuries ago.”
The truth is: We are still living on stolen land. Our comfort is not more sacred than their sovereignty.
Adopting the UN Declaration of Human Rights
Kokayi’s proposal: Adopt the UDHR as an operational standard for U.S. domestic policy. Guarantee housing, healthcare, nutrition, and an adequate standard of living.
Our response: Stop hiding behind “American Exceptionalism”. We can:
Read the UDHR alongside the Constitution—and ask honestly: Which one better protects human dignity?
Support policies that move us toward these guarantees: universal healthcare, public housing investment, food security programs.
Stop treating international standards as a threat to our sovereignty. Accountability is not weakness—it is the foundation of moral society.
The excuse is: “We have the Constitution.”
The truth is: The Constitution was designed to protect propertynot people.
Ending Child Hunger
Kokayi’s proposal: End child hunger - which requires confronting colonial capitalism and choosing children over corporate profit margins.
Our response: Stop weaponizing the “Protestant work ethic” against poor families. We can:
Support universal free school meals—no means-testing, no paperwork, no shame.
Challenge the myth of meritocracy when we hear it. Poverty is not a character flaw. It is a system failure.
Ask ourselves: Am I willing to pay slightly more in taxes so no child goes to bed hungry? If the answer is no, we need to sit with why.
The excuse is: “It will destroy incentive.”
The truth is: We are choosing profit over children’s lives.
Reparations for Descendants of Chattel Slavery
Kokayi’s proposal: Issue reparationst as personal guilt, but as systemic debt collection for labor stolen across centuries.
Our response: Stop hiding behind individual innocence. We can:
Understand that we benefit from redlining, the GI Bill, preferential hiring, and generational wealth compounding—regardless of when our ancestors arrived.
Support federal and local reparations initiatives—including H.R. 40 and community-based programs.
Stop framing reparations as “punishment.” It is payment on a debt—nothing more, nothing less.
The excuse is: “My family didn’t own slaves.”
The truth is: We are all inheritors of a system built on stolen labor. We don’t have to feel guilty—but we do have to pay.
5. A New Constitutional Convention
Kokayi’s proposal: Host a new Constitutional Convention based on the UDHR—acknowledging that the current Constitution was designed by wealthy, slave-owning white men to protect property over people.
Our response: Stop treating the Constitution as sacred scripture. We can:
Learn the full history—not the mythologized version, but the compromises with slavery that shaped it.
Support a new convention where Indigenous, Black, Brown, and working-class people have equal structural power.
Ask ourselves: What am I afraid of losing? If the answer is “control,” that tells us everything.
The excuse is: “It will tear the country apart.”
The truth is: It is already tearing apart—because it was built on a foundation that excluded most of us from “human.”
What Kokayi Asks of Us
Kokayi ends with a sobering call: “Ending racism inside the United States requires more dialogue. European to European. It demands a level of courage sufficient to override these excuses and enforce the solutions... a small group of dissents needs to form. They must choose to endure the discomfort of being ostracized and potentially the target of violence. I do not envy them; I cheer them on.”
That is the real question. Are we willing to be that small group? Are we willing to lose friends, status, comfort, even safety for the sake of justice?
Kokayi has done his work. He has named the problem, offered the solutions, and even diagnosed our excuses for us. The only thing left is our response.
Not performative allyship. Not guilt. Action. One conversation. One vote. One dollar. One uncomfortable truth spoken aloud.
Because the question “Who gets to be human?” is not about them.
It is about us.
With gratitude to Kokayi for the clarity, the courage, and the invitation.
📷 M Slides
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Excellent!