The partnership between the 55-member African Union and the Caribbean Community (Caricom) of 20 countries will aim to intensify pressure on former slave-owning nations to engage with the reparations movement.
Delegates also announced the establishment of a global fund based in Africa aiming to accelerate the campaign.
Not sure why African nations think they get to call for reparations when most slaves were sold by Africans to European and Arabic slave traders…
Caribbean nations, sure, fair enough, even if you don’t believe in slavery reparations at all the behavior of the colonial powers afterwards deserve it if nothing else, plus all the damage global warming is posed to do.
in theory a lot or europeans are still living comfortably off of the horrific crimes they committed, and african and caribbean nations are still struggling and at a massive disadvantage compared to where they could have been
in practice i doubt this money would come from those most responsible, and i doubt the money would go to those with the biggest disadvantages
i also dislike reparations in general compared to help for the sake of help, as it draws focus away from whether nations actually need help and how much, and instead operates entirely on a blame game
not that help for the sake of it is going to happen sufficiently either anyway
in theory a lot or europeans are still living comfortably off of the horrific crimes they committed
in practice i doubt this money would come from those most responsible
A few Europeans from a few countries committed horrific crimes over half a century ago. Leopold III of Belgium in the 1950s during the independence of the Congo being the most modern example I’m aware of, and he died forty years ago.
If we are talking about the slave trade bound to the US, that ended a century and a half ago. Not that things turned instantly great for the freed slaves, of course.
So how much should we chastize people who were not even born when these things happened, and how much reparation needs to be paid to people who were not even born when it happened either? Because the way things work in the real world, I fear that in the end it will be middle class folks who will be paying “reparations” that will do nothing but fill the pockets of a few corrupt politicians from the receiving countries.
im aware that it was largely a rich few that were actually responsible for these acts, im arguing that responsibility isnt all that relevant
it shouldnt be about chastising or punishing, it should be about getting folks who continue to have an advantage from horrendous acts to help out folks who continue to have a disadvantage resulting from those horrendous acts in order to level the playing field, because thats the right thing to do
Europe stripped Africa of its resources. And it is still ongoing. While today we aren’t responsible for what our ancestors did, we still live with the wealth that was never ours. And it is time to pay it back. And blaming Africans for their own exploitation is just absurd, sorry.
The problem here is the mixing of slave trade and exploitation of Africa. The slave trade was mostly buying slave from Africa from Africans and bringing them to the Americas to work on plantations. All countries guilty of the trade should pay reparations for that and that means European countries, the African countries, who enslaved their own and other countries like for example Oman, which were huge in the slave trade.
As for the exploitation of Africa, that really happened under colonialism, which for the most part happened after the slave trade ended. That is a very different story and we actually have seen some reparations being paid, however it was clearly not enough and many countries refuse. That money should go to Africa.
However this fund is for the Atlantic slave trade and not colonialism in Africa. There is a difference. In the Atlantic slave trade Africans in Africa are guilty of massive large scale crimes and wanting to see money for collaborating on such ghastly crimes in the past is nothing short of insane to me. The victims are for the most part in America and not in Africa today.
White people didn't just show up and start taking people.
White people showed up, offered trade, and black leaders offered up there tribesmen.
It's the decendents of the black leaders who should be on the hook, not the decendents of white traders, and DEFINITELY not the decendents of white people who weren't involved in the slave trade at all...
Stop posting what?... historically accurate context?
No. You're right. Who cares what happened, all black people are pathetic victims of the powerful and evil white man. White people owe black people money universally by default.
As far as I know the fact that slave trade was already a well established business in western Sub-Saharan Africa, mostly with Muslim nations played a huge role. European colonizers were in desperate need for workforce in their new American territories. Plagues from the old world had absolutely decimated most of the indigenous population plus many Europeans also struggled severely with tropical diseases that they weren’t used to.
Originally, African slaves were mostly used out of economic convenience and not for specific ideological reasons. It’s quite disturbing to consider how this particular anti black racism that is still very prevalent today developed directly as a result of and as an instrument to maintain the institution of slavery. The economic circumstances of the 16th or 17th century still have enormous implications for our moral landscape in the 21st century.
So white men landed on African soil with beads and spice, didn't die, and went home with black slaves.
Then, alerted to a 'new' resource, white man alerted a new Chief to what the other Chief did, then went home with more black people, more beads, and more spice than the first ship went home with.
I'm understanding "white devil" more, but I'm still wondering how the bloodlines that sent their brothers and sisters into slavery abroad deserve reparations.
It smells to me of a man born in Sudan immigrating to America, eventually hearing about how da white man owe dem reparations (which that man was correct about. That man). The Sudanese immigrant going back home for Christmas dinner (please insert the appropriate gathering of the genes annual event), and informing auntie and papa how whites owe blacks money.
Then that just spread... because "dey eat da poo poo".
So fucking racist but I don't know how to word this idea better.
Slavery was horrible. Families disadvantaged by the bullshit start of being enslaved, then dumped on the front lawn and told "Go" do deserve some recompense, in my humble opinion. But a bunch of countries who sold their brothers and sister cheap coming back and saying "we want to negotiate"...
... fuck. Imma do it again. Native Americans.
And Native Americans actually did deserve what they asked for. Literally. They should have gotten to renegotiate land.
Formal apologies are in order, if desired, but reparations for slavery? At least make it for late 19th/early-mid 20th century colonial exploitation. That has a much more direct line both to extant European governments and to Africa's current woes.
I would think that the descendants of African slaves brought to America are mostly living in America, not Africa. I don’t know how much sense it makes to pay reparations to countries in Africa.
It also doesn’t take into consideration that, as far as I know, US-bound slaves were bought in west Africa, meaning that locals were responsible for capturing and selling their neighbors as slaves, and thus profited from slave trade themselves.
Let’s say you’re a member of village A, close to village B who you are competing with for resources. Tensions rise, conflict occurs and your village happens to win. Women, children, and a couple of men from village B are at your mercy. Will you:
cull them and take their remaining resources
take in these people who resent you and spend the little resources you have to feed and shelter them
sell them to your nearest slave trader AND take their remaining resources.
Remember, the outcome of this choice affects the lives of your friends and family you have known for your entire life.
The first major government in world history to outright ban slavery was the British Empire who bought all their slaves’ freedoms. The Royal Navy spent most of its resources in 1800s hunting down slave ships, freeing their “cargo” and executing the slave traders. The debts incurred to pay for all this were so huge they were still being paid off into the 1990s. The biggest promoter and profiter of the slave trade at the time was the royalty of Lagos who were the ones responsible for kidnapping their people and selling them as property. The UK successfully convinced other European powers to join it in ending the millennia-old slave industry.
There a lot of my country’s history I’m not proud of - including taking advantage of slavery - but I’ll be fucking damned if anyone is going to tell me that my country’s biggest role in the slave trade was anything other than ending it.
Formal apologies are in order, if desired, but reparations for slavery?
If you look to the UK, just as an example, not to pick on anyone in particular, there are a lot of individuals and families who still are unbelievably wealthy because their ancestors amassed incredible wealth either from slave trade or from endeavours relying on massive slave labour in the carribians. That money is still here, and it still allows the ancestors of slavers to live like little kings.
One prominent people this applies to is the new foreign secretary, David Cameron.
If you want to learn more, there is an article on the topic, and a public database of estates who have profitted from slavery.
If Africa wanted reparations for colonialism it’d be one thing but the Scramble For Africa was (theoretically) mostly post-slavery, and the vast majority of slaves trafficked to the New World were not kidnapped by white devils, they were sold by their neighbors. There’s plenty of historical accounts of the African coast slave markets if you’re interested.
You remember that movie “The Woman King?” One of the reasons it got such bad reception is that people who knew what the fuck they were talking about saw it as revisionist history glorifying a prolific slaver. The country was wealthy because it was a premier slave market catering to the Triangle Trade. The women-only regiment was a frequent participant in their slave raids.
If anything, the Caribbean nations should be demanding reparations for colonialism from Europe and America, and slavery reparations from Africa, Europe, and the former Ottoman holdings.
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