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.
Okay so that covers the historical slavery.
What about the contemporary slavery that is still going on? Is Africa going to repatriate it’s own victims?
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.
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.
It’s almost as if the issue isn’t enitirely black and white.
Some could say it is a grey matter
I didn’t know that.
Just in case you’re not alone:
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.
Didn’t know much on the UK post slave ban. Gives me some hope we’ll turn a 180 again somehow with our current problems
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.
I also feel like this blunts how it probably actually went down.
I have a feeling it was more like: a ship arrives at village A.
The ship offers salt and beads for trade.
The chief wants to be adorned in beads and tastier food so he sells off the members of his tribe he likes least.
Over time, he runs out of extra people to sell for beads and salt so he sends his people to start enslaving neighboring tribes.
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.
I’m genuinely suprised that many people here straight up deny any European responsibility in the exploitation of Africa… like holy shit :I
Why should we pay if we did nothing wrong? Its both their ancestors who sold them and ours for buying them. Noone else.
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.
🎶This is all about the money, money, money.
And it isn’t even funny, funny, funny.🎶They are seeking reparaaaations from the european naaaaations.🎶
Great, this will be stuck in my head for at least the rest of the day… and I’m not even out of bed yet.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A global movement to seek reparations for slavery has been forged during a summit in Ghana this week, with the African Union partnering with Caribbean countries to form a “united front” to persuade European nations to pay for “historical mass crimes”.
Carla Barnett, Caricom’s secretary general, told the conference: “We are at an important inflection point in the global movement for reparatory justice.” She said it was critical to “speak with one voice to advance the call for reparations”.
Asked earlier this year by the Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy whether he would offer a “full and meaningful apology for our country’s role in slavery and colonialism” and commit to reparatory justice, the UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, replied “no”, adding that while it was important to have an inclusive and tolerant society, “trying to unpick our history is not the right way forward and is not something we will focus our energies on”.
The German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, recently expressed “shame” for the colonial atrocities his country inflicted on Tanzania and in 2021 Germany officially acknowledged committing genocide during its occupation of Namibia and announced financial aid worth more than £940m.
Delegates said they felt buoyed by evidence of growing willingness to accept the need to pay reparations – citing Glasgow University’s promise to pay £20m to atone for its historical links to the transatlantic slave trade, the Church of England’s pledge of £100m to “address past wrongs” after its investment portfolio was found to have historic links to the transportation of enslaved people, and also the new Heirs of Slavery movement, formed by descendants of some of Britain’s wealthiest enslavers, which supports the call for reparatory justice.
Delegates visited Elmina Castle on Friday, a major European slave-trading post in Ghana where enslaved people were held before boarding ships to the Caribbean, Brazil and North America.
The original article contains 864 words, the summary contains 306 words. Saved 65%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
But… the countries sold the slaves to Europe.
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…
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.
I’m not keen to renegotiate slaves sold.
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Why not?
Just to reiterate the context. Freed black slaves did not flock back to their home countries. They mostly stayed where they were freed.
Talking about reparations for actual descendents of slaves is one thing.
Talking about reparations for the descendents of the ones that sold their brothers and sisters into slavery is bonkers. Straight assinine.
Slavery was horrible. Slave owners were horrible. Black leaders started the whole thing (in the context of the black slave trade).
These fuckers aren’t looking for reparations. They are looking for a renegotiation because they don’t think they charged enough.
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The ones who made money enslaving people and selling them into the slave trade OWE reparations. They are not owed reparations.
Decendents of slaves deserve reparations, not decendents of people who enslaved people.
These countries should be paying INTO funds to provide reparations to decendents of slaves.
What part are you struggling with here?
As a white European: please stop posting such garbage.
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.
Ya… that makes sense. /s
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
Pay up, colonizing fucks.
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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As a white European supporting reparations: please stop posting in such a pre-mature garbage language.
