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African diaspora wants reparations for slavery
SABC News ^ | August 28, 2007 | Thami Dickson

Posted on 08/28/2007 4:20:49 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

European and American countries that enslaved African people and scattered them in the African Diaspora should pay reparations for their slave crimes. This came out at the historic African Union (AU) conference in the Caribbean Island of Barbados, set to tackle the integration of the African Diaspora and the continent.

Leading scholars, ambassadors and government ministers from Africa and beyond are examining economic relations and the responsibility of the slave masters in undoing the slave trade damage they inflicted on Africa and her Diaspora.

With song and the beating of drums, the African people in the Diaspora of the Caribbean Islands, set a stage for the critical discussions on what the European and American slave masters should do for their crimes of transporting millions of Africans across the Atlantic in the infamous Transatlantic slave trade which ended 200 years ago.

Addressing the conference, South Africa's Social Development Minister Zola Skweyiya argued that the Caribbean nations are correct to demand reparations for the slave trade. Skweyiya says the countries who are responsible for slave trade must take responsibility of their actions.

Diaspora Solidarity

The African Union is leading this series of consultative conferences across the world to make a case for the sustainable economic development and integration of Africa and her diaspora. It seeks to promote greater investment and trade flows in the diaspora.

Solidarity and speaking with one voice in multi-lateral platforms is another area of focus. Secretary General of the regional block of Caribbean nations Edwin Carrington says this drive by the AU and the Caribbean will result in a huge reaffirmation of the place of Africans in the world.

Although reparations for the slave trade are a critical part of this drive for greater economic development of the African nations in the diaspora, Carrington says in the final analysis Africans will be judged by what they can do by themselves and for themselves.

The regional processes have been held in New York, London, Brasilia, Johannesburg and now the Caribbean. From the Caribbean they will move to Paris and then Ethiopia. These processes will lead to a ministerial conference in South Africa in November and then culminate to an AU African Diaspora Summit early next year.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 40acresandamule; abrahamlincoln; africa; africanamericans; caribbean; civilwar; extortion; kuntakintai; reaparations; roots; slavery; slavetrade
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Clemenza to the "diaspora": (Fart, in your direction).
81 posted on 08/28/2007 6:11:54 PM PDT by Clemenza (Rudy Giuliani, like Pesto and Seattle, belongs in the scrap heap of '90s Culture)
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To: DuncanWaring

Very true. Thank you.


82 posted on 08/28/2007 6:15:02 PM PDT by kAcknor (Don't flatter yourself.... It is a gun in my pocket.)
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To: Will88
The famous Egyptian pyramids were built before the Hebrew were enslaved in Egypt.

And Ancient Egypt was a Hamitic nation, not Japhethic, and definitely not European.

83 posted on 08/28/2007 6:16:23 PM PDT by Jedi Master Pikachu ( What is your take on Acts 15:20 (abstaining from blood) about eating meat? Could you freepmail?)
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To: PeteB570

“I’m an American taxpayer held in bondage by the IRS and the US Government.

Where is my reparations?”

LOL! We’ve got a winner here!


84 posted on 08/28/2007 6:16:57 PM PDT by Enough_Deceit (Confessions of a middle-aged drama queen. ;-))
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To: Chode

Sir, you’re to be congratulated. That was very well stated. Articulate and yet to the point. You are to be commended for your mastery of the English language and while we’re at it they can kiss my a$$ too.


85 posted on 08/28/2007 6:21:37 PM PDT by Plains Drifter (If guns kill people, wouldn't there be a lot of dead people at gun shows?)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
European and American countries that enslaved African people and scattered them in the African Diaspora should pay reparations for their slave crimes.

Scientists tell us that humankind started in the African Garden of Eden. I am of Scandinavian decent, my ancestors would not have willingly left the life giving Garden of Eden for the frozen North. That leaves only one possibility, my ancestors were forcefully driven from the African Garden of Eden putting their lives in peril.

Putting my ancestors and their whole line of descendants at risk and forcing us into the frozen North lands means that I am owed big money reparations compounded monthly since the beginning of human life on Earth.

Just to show the kind of guy I am, I'm perfectly willing to donate 1% of my reparations toward reparations for the descendants of slaves.

86 posted on 08/28/2007 6:26:36 PM PDT by RJL
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Somebody needs to charge thes jokers for Atlantic passage.

Idiots, if not for the captivity of their ancestors, they wouldn't be alive today. Some other person would be alive and living in Africa somewhere, but it would not be them.

87 posted on 08/28/2007 6:32:26 PM PDT by FreeAtlanta (Search for Folding Project - Join FR Team 36120)
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To: Jedi Master Pikachu
Impeding? Really? Where is the proof?

They were fighting and enslaving each other before the west arrived, and they are still doing it today. Maybe they would be more advanced, maybe they would have killed each other. There is no proof either way. Just speculation. Theory.

88 posted on 08/28/2007 6:35:53 PM PDT by FreeAtlanta (Search for Folding Project - Join FR Team 36120)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
If these people want reparations, they should first sue the descendants of the Muslim slave traders who had being raiding Africa and kidnapping and selling their unfortunate victims for hundreds of years before the beginning of the American slave trade.

Next, they should sue the descendants of the African tribal leaders who conspired with the Muslim criminals in these crimes to sell the victims to the British and other undesirables who brought the abomination of slavery to the Americas.

Don't come after me. The only plantations my ancestors were involved with were the potato plantations in Ireland.

I wonder how many people know that the Koran today still has Suras that deal with how an Islamic slave owner must deal with his slaves? Even the right of the slave to a portion of the owner's inheritance is spelled out in detail.

And since the Koran is alleged to be the word of Allah, it can never be amended or updated by humans. So don't look for a New Testament of the Islamic Faith.

Just remember, Islam is a religion of peace!

89 posted on 08/28/2007 6:50:04 PM PDT by StopGlobalWhining (Only 3 1/2-5% of atmospheric CO2 is the result of human activities. 95-96.5% is from natural sources)
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To: Plains Drifter
Image hosted by Photobucket.com thx... 8^)
90 posted on 08/28/2007 7:05:54 PM PDT by Chode (American Hedonist)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

I agree. US blacks should get reparations from the people who enslaved them, the descendants of the Blacks who sold them to the slave traders.

The Whites (and just a few blacks) in the US already paid their repartions in the purchase price. The Whites who didn’t enslave have also paid their reparations in the casualties of the US War of the Rebellion.


91 posted on 08/28/2007 7:10:08 PM PDT by donmeaker (You may not be interested in War but War is interested in you.)
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To: goldstategop; Eric in the Ozarks
There were many times more Arab and Turk owned white slaves than there ever were black slaves. Unfortunately they were never freed and their desecendents never afforded reparations.

WTH....might as well unload. Slavery still exists but I don't see the descendents of former slaves denouncing the practice in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and South America. Instead they want money.

According to the 1860 U.S. census, fewer than 385,000 individuals (i.e. 1.4% of White Americans in the country, or 4.8% of southern whites) owned one or more slaves. 95% of blacks lived in the South, comprising one third of the population there as opposed to 1% of the population of the North
92 posted on 08/28/2007 7:30:48 PM PDT by BIGLOOK (Keelhauling is a sensible solution to mutiny.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

I guess the $45 Billion dollars Bush gifted the African nations to fight aids doesn’t count huh...

That’s okay, our leaders are such soft touches, they’ll multiply that by 100, appoligize profusely and promise to give more.

Thank god for conservatives like these...


93 posted on 08/28/2007 7:31:33 PM PDT by DoughtyOne ((Victory will never be achieved while defining Conservatism downward, and forsaking its heritage.))
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
"With song and the beating of drums, the African people in the Diaspora of the Caribbean Islands, set a stage for the critical discussions on what the European and American slave masters should do for their crimes of transporting millions of Africans across the Atlantic in the infamous Transatlantic slave trade which ended 200 years ago."

Think they'll be able to drum up some fancy juju that'll get 'em connected with the dead?

94 posted on 08/28/2007 7:37:46 PM PDT by spunkets ("Freedom is about authority", Rudy Giuliani, gun grabber)
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No Reparations without Repatriotation .


95 posted on 08/28/2007 7:49:12 PM PDT by Doe Eyes
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Let me make it clear right up front: I am NOT a racist. I campaigned for and gave money to Alan Keyes. I considered him the most principled, intelligent and articulate man in the race. And if he ever runs again, I would probably support him again.

I also consider Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams two of the finest economists and minds extant today. In case you don’t know them, both are black.

Keyes, Sowell and Williams ALL oppose calls for reparations.

The modern descendants of slaves brought here in chains in admittedly miserable, soul-gutting conditions now calling for reparations need to remember something:

They should not only be glad to be in America, they should be glad to be ANYWHERE !

Had their ancestors NOT been brought OUT of Africa – many by Muslim slave raiders —the blood of those ancestors would have run into the earth over there several centuries ago, victims of the OTHER black tribes that captured them in one of the interminable tribal conflicts STILL ravaging that sad continent and these modern day would-be “plaintiffs” would not even exist.

And I would remind you that slavery is STILL practiced in parts of Africa (mainly by muslims) and Asia today.

95% of the African slaves who were transported across the Atlantic went to South and Central America, mainly to Portuguese, Spanish and French possessions, and that less than 5% of the slaves who crossed the Atlantic went to the United States, it was remarkable that the vast majority of academic research, films, books and articles concerning the slave trade concentrated only on the American involvement, as though slavery was a uniquely American aberration.

And should the great-great-great grandchildren of SLAVE OWNING BLACKS also be subject to PAYING these reparations? If so, how do we find THEM?

And I have traced MY family back to the SLAVS. For those who don’t know, that word means “slave.” Do I qualify for reparations? From whom??

The official US Census of 1830 lists 3,775 free blacks who owned 12,740 black slaves. Furthermore, the story outlines the history of slavery here, and the first slave owner, the Father of American slavery, was Mr Anthony Johnson, of Northampton, Virginia. His slave was John Casor, the first slave for life. Both were black Africans. The story is very readable, and outlines cases of free black women owning their husbands, free black parents selling their children into slavery to white owners, and absentee free black slave owners, who leased their slaves to plantation owners.
-”Selling Poor Steven”, American Heritage Magazine, Feb/Mar 1993 (Vol. 441) p 90

Of course, a full telling of Black History would not be complete without a telling of the origin of slavery in the Virginia colony:
Virginia, Guide to The Old Dominion, WPA Writers’ Program, Oxford University Press, NY, 1940, p. 378

And the holier-than-thou Northern liberals are strangely silent on recent archeological evidence from NEW YORK CITY clearly tracing the financing of the slave trade to NORTHERN BUSINESSMEN!!

Robert Hitt Neill tells of attending a Tennessee Mountain Writer’s Conference years ago with several other authors. Among them was Alex Hailey, celebrated author of “Roots.” Watching a TV news show, a group of them watched a demonstration in a Southern state against the “Rebel” flag incorporated into that state’s flag. The very next report covered a famine in Africa. Graphic images showed dead bodies, starving children with distended tummies and runny noses and dying people covered with flies, too weak to brush them away.

Mr. Hailey intoned in a low, serious voice, “Every time an American black sees a story like that, they should find a Confederate flag and kiss it.” He then pointed to the TV screen and continued, “Because these would be me and my descendants, except for American slavery. I thank God that my family and I are here instead of there.”

Next problem!


96 posted on 08/28/2007 7:56:40 PM PDT by Dick Bachert
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To: Luke Skyfreeper

Both sets of my relatives didn’t come over until after 1920.

This is such a STUPID idea. SO stupid I’m not wasting anymore words on it.


97 posted on 08/28/2007 7:59:07 PM PDT by Secret Agent Man
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To: Dick Bachert
The word "slave" comes from the word Slav, because so many Slavs were enslaved in the Middle Ages, but the word Slav doesn't originally mean "slave." It seems to be related to the Slavic word slava meaning "fame" or "glory" (most groups have positive names for themselves).

As for the enslaved Slavs, if they had descendants, they were assimilated into the populations where they lived (often in the Arab Middle East); the present-day Slavs are descended from the ones who weren't enslaved.

98 posted on 08/28/2007 8:46:17 PM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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To: Will88
Sooner or later. . .

Yes, an enlargment of 'what goes around. . .'; literally. So, when will this be duly and publicy noted; as to just what a rip-off operation this is; and a rediculous one at that.

How about a 'not on my dime' movement. . .

99 posted on 08/28/2007 8:56:45 PM PDT by cricket
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To: Wil H
You just convinced me that we should pay this with that comment.Then enforce the plan you just mentioned!Rock on
100 posted on 08/28/2007 9:11:22 PM PDT by sayter_74
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