Posted on 03/06/2014 7:29:35 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
It is time for the calls for reparations to the descendants of those who were enslaved by colonial powers via the trans-Atlantic slave trade to bear fruit. The European countries and the United States need to compensate for the injustices suffered by slaves and their families. African-Americans and African-Caribbean intellectuals have been agitating for reparations for many years, but the question as to how the compensation would be calculated and in what form is yet to be answered.
Since 1999, the African World Reparations and Repatriation Truth Commission called for the West to pay trillions of dollars to Africa. In 2004, a coalition of Rastafari movement groups in Jamaica followed suit with their call to the European countries, especially Britain, to pay 72.5 trillion pounds sterling to resettle 500,000 Jamaican Rastafarians in Africa. Guyana made its call for reparations to the European nations in 2007, while Antigua and Barbuda followed in 2011, claiming that slaves were segregated and violently abused.
In 2012, the Barbados government set up a 12-member Reparations Task Force, to be responsible for sustaining the local, regional and international momentum for reparations. Last year, during the first of a series of lectures in Georgetown, Guyana to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the 1763 Berbice Slave Revolt, a call was made urging the Caribbean Community to emulate the Jews’ action of organising a Jewish Reparations Fund for their persecution during World War II.
Broken promises
After its Civil War, the United States promised to compensate the freed slaves with acres of land which many did not receive, and the lands of many who did receive were taken back from them to be given to the white immigrants who arrived later. If the slaves had received the land as promised, the lives of their offspring would have been better today. Scientists in the medical field have proven that some of the genetic illnesses of Africans and their descendants are related to their poor diet as slaves.
I think that the call for reparations is a just call, and I fully support it. Many who do not know the full history of the African culture and the culture of the Atlantic slave trade are of the opinion that reparations are unjust because Africans enslaved their own people.
African slavery
Slavery was and still remains in existence to some extent in Africa. But the conditions under which slavery is carried out in Africa are more of an arrangement rather than Africans being taken away from their families and put to work far away from their homeland and culture under inhuman conditions. They were forced to work long hours without pay, and they were stripped of their personal and cultural identity.
The conditions of slavery in Africa, on the other hand, occurred when two villages fought against each other, and the victorious village would take the villagers of the losing village into slavery. The enslaved would perform the same work they did before, while others were trained. The working conditions were the same as before they were enslaved, and some slaves took the places of the victorious village soldiers when they died, even becoming leaders of the village that once enslaved them.
When word of massive ill-treatment being meted out to slaves that were sold to the colonial powers got back to Africa, the African countries tried to stop the selling of their people, but Europe and the US, so caught up in their greed for the products that were produced from free labour, continued to enslave Africans by force.
The so-called churches did nothing to stop the brutal enslavement of Africans. Instead, the Methodist Church used to bless the slave ships, while the Catholic Church used to buy and sell slaves in Hispaniola.
During a conference on racism in South Africa — which the US did not attend — the previous pope apologised for the role the Catholic Church played in the slave trade. But both the Methodist and Catholic churches also should have to pay a big fine — as should Lloyd’s of London, for its role in insuring the slave ships.
Also during the South Africa conference, the Netherlands apologised for its role in the trade, rightly noting that the slaves made the colonial countries very wealthy with free labour.
The Quakers
Meanwhile, the Quakers were the first religious people to oppose slavery. They would buy slaves and set them free. My white ancestor, William Penn, was a Quaker, and I am proud of his stance against slavery. Many have agreed that wiping out the debt of the countries that were directly affected by slavery and building infrastructure is a fair way to compensate for the brutality of the Atlantic slave trade.
For those in the Caribbean who are against reparations and feel no connection to Africa, I hope their countries do not receive reparations. I would also like to see the Virgin Islands join Caricom in the pursuit of reparations for the descendants of African slaves from the former colonial powers.
Unexpected humour
A Beaconite who frequently writes about the territory’s financial services industry will readily admit that it’s not usually the most engaging or humour-provoking topic. But Financial Services Commission Managing Director Robert Mathavious did a good job of proving otherwise during a lecture at H. Lavity Stoutt Community College last Thursday. His speech provoked a few laughs from the audience, particularly when he momentarily forgot what FATCA, an abbreviation for an American tax law, stood for. “Let me not tell you what it means; let me tell you what it really means: Finding American tax cheats abroad,” he said. (The abbreviation actually stands for Foreign Accounts Tax Compliance Act.) Additionally, a Beaconite was bemused when Mr. Mathavious described other countries’ attempts to replicate the success of the territory’s 1984 International Business Companies Act. “Others have sought to copy this act — some even its spelling mistakes,” he said. “None has quite succeeded in matching its impact and attraction.”
“Britain, to pay 72.5 trillion pounds sterling to resettle 500,000 Jamaican Rastafarians in Africa”
That figure is NOT serious.
Everybody with a "smidgen" of black blood gets to own a white slave!
I'm right, aren't I?
Everybody with a "smidgen" of black blood gets to own a white slave!
I'm right, aren't I?
I'd like checks from Italy, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and England. When I get those we can talk about possible compensation for others who, like me, were never enslaved.
Since whites pay the vast majority of taxes for all the wonderful welfare programs, that is already happening.
“Reply Made From The United States” - piss off.
Since Arab slave traders were very much involved in the slavery of a large number of Africans, I agree to pay my fair share, as soon as ISLAM pays through the nose!
While realizing the ‘instigating’ countries have virtually nothing.....
If there are going to be Reparations shouldn’t they start with the tribes that tracked down and sold the slaves to the ‘Transporters’?
Considering by the time they got to say New Orleans, they had been sold (or bartered) about 3 or 4 times so by the time they got to the ‘Plantations’ they had been enslaved for a while.
Maybe somewhere in there we can find a few pounds for the Irish that were transported here (in steerage by the way, with conditions about the same as the passage from Africa) to do the bidding for the British ‘Masters’.
Re: Call made for slavery reparations from a broad”.
What is the broad’s name? I’ll send her a free ticket back to Jungleland.
The number of Africans seized and exported as slaves is no where near this made up number. Prof. Adams of Howard Un. read the shipping manifests of the slave ships that he could find in Cuba, Portugal and the US and concluded that it was physically impossible to ship that many people across the Atlantic with the small number of ships involved in the slave trade.
Remember, a slave ship returned EMPTY and each trip took weeks or months, each way, so 50% of these transAtlantic trips contained no human cargo.
These supposed figures have been used by black marxists and racists/reparationists for years, without any proof from the ship manifests mentioned above.
How do you say “SCAM” and self-promotion con-job looking for a well paying job?
They sold their own people. Maybe they can get those people to pay?
In Africa hey sold their own people into slavery.
In this country there were thousands of blacks who owned slaves. Some were slave breeders and sold their own offspring into slavery.
I have no clue what he's talking about here.
There was never a formal promise of land made to the slaves.
Freedmen who acquired land often were pressured to sell it back to white men, or killed it they refused. But those white men were very seldom, if ever, immigrants.
Something about General Sherman and 40 acres & a mule or some such. Fine, we have LOTS of land in Alaska, Idaho and etc. and I’m sure the mule ranchers will be happier than hell to sell us several million.
who the hell cares what this nit-wit thinks or wants????
Making a quick buck off great-grand daddy’s suffering.
From the way he puts it, slavery in Africa sounds almost fun! Why, a slave might one day become chief of the town that enslaved him!/sarcasm
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