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.”
I see in a previous article, this guy think gay marriage should be imposed on the Virgin Islands. So, I guess this guy is colonist who wants to impose rich white people’s morals on the Virgin Islands.
Doofuses, look up Zanzibar just for starters.
http://www.zanzibar.net/history/the_slave_trade
Muslim Slave Trade enslaved Millions of Black Africans
http://www.truthandgrace.com/muslimslavery.htm
Money-grubbing scam.
End of story.
Give the jerks a bag of rice and a loincloth and send ‘em all back to Africa.
£145 million each?! Is my math correct? Must be smoking powerful stuff down there.
700,000 dead Americans paid the ultimate price over slavery. Tens of thousands more gave arms and legs in the same cause.
Reparations have been paid in full in blood and lives.
My figures are for every five slaves freed one white man was slaughtered.
***Everybody with a “smidgen” of black blood gets to own a white slave! ***
DON’T LAUGH! I’ve got several post Civil War cartoons dealing with the FREED MAN’S BUREAU showing the white man slaving away to pay for the indolent black man. I’ve posted these on FR and the mods immediately remove them even though they are from the late 1860s.
Reparations have been paid in blood and treasure many times over.
If we are going tribal I want to bill for today’s murders, assaults, robberies, burglaries, theft, room, board and vandalism.
You guys got paid the first time, fair and square.
You can’t write an addendum to the original contract hundreds of years later....
GFY
Now that I think of it.
You sold us junk goods.
We want a refund.
I’m all for making the Democrats pay reparations for what they did. Republicans, on the other hand, freed the slaves, so we should be exempt. In fact, Republicans should also get reparations from Democrats for the losses they suffered fighting them to free the slaves.
I don’t doubt that the whining from the Caribbean is tied to the fact that tourism is dropping (as everything is due to the economic mess Obama is prolonging). Apparently any time the easy money dries up (including with welfare here), it brings out the same outstretched black palms in whites’ faces.
This is a side effect of Planned Parenthood’s plan to eradicate blacks taking longer than anticipated.
I figured probably a 1/3 of the $1M + of fed income tax I have paid in my life has gone to the entitlement slugs. If that ain’t enough slavery reparation, I don’t know what is.
Is Rome going to pay Great Britain for the enslvement of her people? Is Saudi Arabia going to pay whites and blacks both (slavery existed there, legally, until the 1960s, and probably still does, illegally. ASk numerous Philippine housemaids)?
Some people need to get over themselves and try to make something of their lives, instead of demanding that other people be “sensitive” to their racially charged tantrums.
Just saying.
Let those who were actually enslaved get reparations from those who actually enslaved them....not from present day descendants who are neither slave owners or the enslaved.
That sounds to me like an unmitigated LIE.
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