Africa revives push for colonial-era reparations

Deutsche Welle ^ | August 6, 2022 | By Isaac Kaledzi

[Spktyr]

They brought ebola to Dallas. They must pay! :P

Also, if these people screaming about reparations love Africa so much, they should be required to go live there.

[Spktyr]

True, slavery is indeed evil. However, part of ‘reparations’ is ‘putting things back the way they are supposed to be’ - so let’s make part of reparations be removal to Africa and a permanent ban on returning to the US.

[CatHerd]

There used to be this odd little website named Weird Republic that contained a collection of essays by Thomas Clough. He’s apparently taken it down to monetize them after publishing them in book form to sell on Amazon (book is also titled Weird Republic).

Anyway, he did all these calculations re Affirmative Action and whatnot, and arrived at the conclusion we had already paid reparations quite handsomely. Too bad it’s not available for free on the web any longer, although I understand wanting to make some $. His essays were usually quite good.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Excellent and concise history lesson. Thanks for expanding so much on the point I brought up.

"Estimates of the total number of black slaves moved from Sub-Saharan Africa to the Muslim world range from 11-17 million."

That is astonishing. I've not heard that number before, but it would not surprise me if it is true.

This is one of my favorite slavery graphics about the origin and destination of slaves. It totally ignores the moslem slave trade, but the point of the graphic is how few slaves landed in the colonies. From NPR: "12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World. 10.7 million survived the dreaded Middle Passage, disembarking in North America, the Caribbean and South America. How many of these 10.7 million Africans were shipped directly to North America? Only about 388,000. That’s right: a tiny percentage."

That is less than FOUR PERCENT of African slaves were sent to North America. You won't learn that in school. I'd bet that if you asked American school kids to give you a number, it would range from 80% to 100%.

[PallMal]

This week Ghana's president, Nana Akufo-Addo, revived the push for slavery and colonial retribution.

What a load of nonsense.

This message is meant for dumbed-down Americans who actually believe that Europeans went to West Africa, took out some big nets, hid behind trees, and casted the net over a bunch of natives, kidnapping them.

[PallMal]

But you don’t see blacks and mixed-race folks in Arab countries, do you?

They exist in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, but probably because of the near proximity of the Horn Of Africa to the Arabian peninsula (as well as slavery).

[CatHerd]

Yes, there are. And there are some Afro-Omani in Oman. Yet, if there were truly all these enslaved concubines, and their children were considered free because their Omani fathers were Muslim, why aren’t Omani people more like Brazilian people (high percentage of mixed race)?

I hardly pretend to be that knowledgeable about that part of the world, but it seems either the high numbers of sub-Saharan concubines having all those children is much overstated, or there may something to the claims of infanticide of these mixed race babies in Arab countries. It does seem the infanticide angle would be better known, if as common and universal as claimed.

It’s possible the male children grew up to become cannon fodder in conflicts. Possibly these mixed-race children suffered from discrimination and such severe poverty and they did not survive well enough to leave many descendents.