Well, I might have a slightly different interpretation if I can step back
from my personal nightmare and look at the situation more analytically.
First of all, our society does not honor age or the elderly. This is a youth
centric culture. Older people feel complinented when they are told that they
are young at heart, or that they look younger than their years. Any value to
age such as the accumulation of knowledge or good judgment, or tolerance,
are never mentioned. Additionally, old people are a nuisance because they
are, as anyone will tell you, set in their ways, and usually unable to adapt
to new situations or to, "go with the flow", or to use the latest
technology. And there's all the adjustment that younger people are forced to
make when they are with the elderly like, perhaps, speaking in a louder
voice, or more slowly and clearly, walking more slowly, turning up the heat
a notch, turning down the music. And, although it is polite to ask things
like, "How are you doing?", no one really wants old people to answer that
question. Now the practical result of all of this is that our beloved
current President, talked in 2012, during his debate with Candidate Romney,
about making changes to Social Ssecurity. And the changes he had in mind
were to change the way in which the cost of living allowance was figured so
that it would be lower in the future. Aside from the Republicans' plans for
privatizing social security and medicare, there is the Left's fantasy world
about how wonderful our present system of Medicare is. As people talk about
a single payer system, they call it, with great enthusiasm, Medicare For
All. But no one says out loud that our present Medicare system is inadequate
to care for the medical needs of the elderly which is why all of us are
purchasing supplemental Medicare plans which add phenomenal monthly premiums
to what we already pay for Medicare premiums, and no one discusses how
Medicare Part D is already, basically, a privatized plan because it is
administered solely through private insurance companies and some of us are
seeing huge percentages of our incomes going to Part D premiums and copays.
There are, of course, some very lucky people who actually still benefit from
good pension plans and whose medical benefits have not been significantly
altered from what they were promised they would get when they retired. These
are the people who can afford quality assisted living facilities or pay for
private home at help. A lot of us aren't in that situation. Each of us has
his or her own individual story which explains why we're where we are. But
one of the reasons that I'm where I am, is that for 30 or more years, I
worked as an independent contractor, and there were no fringe benefits
attached to that. Another is that I refused to invest my savings in stocks
and bonds of corporations whom, I suspected, were hurting people or the
environment. So I stayed with municipal bonds which seemed financially and
ethically safe. They were. But they didn't increase my total worth and
provide good care in my old age.
And now we come to the system. When the Lighthouse for the Blind and the
Guild for the Jewish Blind decided to join forces about 10 years ago,
combine their boards, and set services to the blind at the margin of their
concern, it was because the big stream of money in New York State was now
most available for Medicaid recipients. Many years previously, Helen Keller
Sservices changed their focus from a rehabilitation center to a center
caring for developmentally disabled blind people because there was a new and
lucrative stream of money for that kind of service. So in the New York
metropolitan area, we now have at least six, huge agencies providing several
kinds of health care plans to medicaid recipients. In order to do this, each
agency purchases services from a variety of health care providers including
huge home health care agencies. Allen, the home health care agencies from
which my aides came, has offices all over the New York metro area, contracts
with many of the big agencies that provide health care programs, has a call
center, and like the rest of the system, is incredibly incompetent. The
system is slow and bureaucratic and many people get money from it. Its
clients, many of whom desperately need its services, have lots of rights on
paper, but are powerless and often, are served inadequately. Perhaps six or
more years ago, someone developed the idea of a pooled trust to be
responsible for the financial needs of developmentally disabled people who
had money, but were unabled to handle it. The trust in New York, CDR,
charges $200 to open an account, $10 for each bill it pays up to 4 a month,
$20 for every additional bill in that month, and $50 for an auditing fee
each year. It keeps whatever money is left in the account when the client
dies. Someone got the idea that this would be great for elderly people, as a
way to keep them in their homes, pay for their current living style, and yet
permit them to become medicaid recipients. There's no look back period like
there is for nursing homes. So then a lot of elder care lawyers got into the
business of doing medicaid applications for the elderly and opening CDR
accounts. One of the big problems with CDR is that it doesn't pay bills on
time. So after I complained on Friday and a representative said, "We never
promise to pay bills on time", which is an absolute lie, I wrote a letter to
my state senator, suggesting that the legislative branch look into the
financial functioning of this organization because they are responsible for
the funds of mentally disabled and elderly people who have entrusted them
with their financial welfare and for whom they are responsible.
I could describe in detail, some of the insane things that I, personally,
have encountered during my 3 month experience with Community Medicaid like
being enrolled with an agency health care plan when I never signed up with
the agency and being charged by them for 2 months of service which I never
received because 1 I didn't sign up and 2 they're not supposed to charge me
If my money is in a pooled trust. My New Years present will be to be
released from this hell. Then I can go back to being where I was before I
started all of this, except poorer.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Monday, December 19, 2016 2:09 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Off List
Miriam,
I see in a later post that you did not intend to hang out your wash in front
of the entire world...well, however numerous we are here on blind democracy.
But the dastardly deed has been done, and you are now exposed as "that
ungrateful old blind lady".
Just because some helpful agency is trying to spend down your money before
you are done with it, and just because the only people who usually wind up
taking the low paying, no benefit jobs as care givers are forced to take,
are not always the brightest or the most honest folk, and just because those
hard to find care givers often "forget"
to show up, all that and more does not entitle you, and others in similar
situations, the right to grumble. No indeed, you should be thankful and
grateful and even a bit contrite for all you do receive.
This is why God was invented. We who feel put upon can bow our heads and be
grateful for that which we do have. Just think of all those folks out there
under the overpasses. Think of the folks still living in temporary housing
after Katrina blew through...how many years ago?
Oh you ingrate! A pox upon your house. I'd tell you to get down on your
knees, but I tried that a while ago and I'm still trying to pull myself back
up.
Seriously, the hard part of what we are looking forward to, is that we know
so many folks, including ourselves, who will not live to see better times.
People just like yourself, who worked hard, lived by the laws, paid their
taxes, looked after their children, and even went off to fight to keep safe
the interests of the giant oil corporations.
Once the Empire has wrung out our last drop of blood, and we have no value
to our corporate rulers, we are tossed on the heap of "Unwanted", left to
our own devices. Told to keep out of sight.
When the day comes that the sleeping working class giant awakens, times will
be better. But not in our short future. Even if we live to 100, no way
will it happen.
Carl Jarvis
On 12/18/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
So my latest news, in case I didn't mention it, is that after havingcorner.
screwed up my finances and spent more than $10,000 to get Community
Medicaid so I could have help at home, I've been spending this month,
well, ever since November 26, trying to become unentangled from the
whole damn mess. I would have used a stronger word than, "damn", but I
wouldn't want to shock your delicate sensibilities. I will most
probably be disenrolled by December 23 or December 31, depending upon
which official letter I choose to believe, or when the aide stops
showing up. It will take at least another month, probably longer, to
get financially disegtangled. The way to get Community Medicaid in NY
is to have no more than $845 income each month. The way around that is
to put your excess income each month, in a pooled trust account. The
one my lawyer recommended was New York Stsate agency, The Center for
Disability Rights. They charge $200 to open an account for you, $10 to
pay each of four bills a month and $20 for every bill in excess of
four each month, and $50 each year for an audit. They also keep
whatever money is left after you die. They say that It takes one to
ten days to process a check. I'm not sure what process means because
it takes a hell of a lot longer than that for them to actully pay a
bill. They've been late 3 times so far. On Friday, when I called to
complain, one of their representatives said to me, "We never promise
to pay bills on time". But if they don't get my December surplus, the
agency that has been providing the aides, does and the money is gone.
And, by the way, CDR hasn't yet, as of Friday night, taken the money
for December for my checking account. The whole system is like this.
So, at some point, I'll be poorer, but free of it, have control of my
money, as my income dwindles and expenses increase, and I'll be back
where I was, physically disabled, blinder by the minute, and hard of
hearing, plus there's the short term memory loss wich is not a good
problem for a blind person to have. The quality of the aides does
leave something to be desired. The one I've had for the past few weeks
is very kind and not very bright. I've refused substitutes whom are
provided on weekends. They're completely impossible. So far, as far as
I can tell, a very large stainless steel mixing bowl is missing. But I
only used it for defrosting chicken legs in water.
Well, I don't escape into who done its, but I do escape into fiction.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Sunday, December 18, 2016 5:07 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: What Should Reparations For Slavery Entail?
Funny you would feel that way, Miriam. Just because we're in a
hopeless bottomless pit. That's why I read adventure novels. Mostly
the good guys, after looking as if they would be tossed into the
burning pit, suddenly overcome the evil ones and win.
We just finished a story where the hero blundered into a trap. The
villain pulls a gun and is about to shoot the three folks huddled in a
Suddenly there is a noise behind the villain. It's the tea kettlerest.
burbling and whistling. The villain whirls around...and you know the
Too bad we can't rely on some clever writer figuring a way out of oursay the least.
world-wide mess.
And to top it all off, after our truck stalling on the highway Friday
night, our generator just shut down about an hour ago. Cathy got it
running, but it is not charging the batteries. She did find the
switch that had shut off, reset it and we are able to run the house
directly from the generator.
But it will be a cold night when I shut off the generator. Hopefully
my call to the electrical folks at Double D will be able to come out
first thing in the morning.
Life is always full of little surprises.
Carl Jarvis
On 12/18/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I think that most people are, in factd, beaten down and confused.
They're just living their lives, making it from one day to the next.
I used to really like reading all of the articles that come to me in
my inbox. I liked to know what was happening and to read various
opinions and interpretations.
I find that my attitude has changed. I find it all very distressing.
I feel like we are being manipulated by forces beyond our control.
People do a lot of theorizing and interpreting and demonstrating.
They glory in the fact that a lot of people come to a demonstration,
or that they're able to delay a catastrophe. But look at Standing Rock.
Pipelines are being built all over America. It's an absolute
nightmare. And when Trump takes office, that pipeline in North Dakota
will most probably be revived. Right wing governments are taking root
in many european countries. Today I read an article in The Atlantic
about how China is becoming more repressive and hostile. James
Fallows knows China well, lived there, and has a lot of friends
there, so I'm sure what he writes is accurate, although I suspect
that one of the reasons for the change in China is that the US has
placed all these ships in the waters surrounding China. But anyway,
my point is that it is all very overwhelming and depressing. I may
surround myself with articles by writers whom I respect, but the
people whom I encounter are a sample of the white, Long Island
population and some of the views that they express, are distressing, to
little whimper.us?
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl ;
Jarvis
Sent: Sunday, December 18, 2016 10:10 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: What Should Reparations For Slavery
Entail?
Well, most of us know how we got into our current mess, and we know
what to do to bring dignity and respect to all People. So what's
stopping
How long are we going to allow ourselves to be ruled by Lust and Greed?
Has
the Ruling Class really conditioned us to think only as far as the
end of our own noses? Do we really enjoy being victimized?
Have we been so beaten down that we wander aimlessly about like Zombies?
Spineless and frightened?
If we do not take charge of our own lives and determine our
collective future, we will all end this Human Experiment with a sad
criminals.
Carl Jarvis
On 12/18/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
What Should Reparations For Slavery Entail?infrastructure, not prisons.
CREATE! CAPITALISM, REPARATIONS, SLAVERY By Ama Biney,
www.pambazuka.org December 17th, 2016
Powered by Translate
Above Photo: Aehnetwork
In the light of the former British Prime Ministers dismissal of
reparations, activists must push the debate further by detailing
what reparations should entail. Fundamental to a reparations
programme must be the fact that we transform the system of
capitalism which slavery gave birth to.
Former British Prime Minister David Camerons insulting dismissal of
trans-Atlantic slavery and his opinion that Africans and people of
African descent should move on from this painful legacy, and
continue to build for the future, would never be audaciously
uttered to Jewish people by this arrogant warmonger who bombed Libya
and sought to bomb Syria, but the British House of Commons voted
against such action. As the African American actor Danny Glover
said, the Jamaican government should tell Britain to keep your
prison, give us schools, give us
[1] In addition, the Jamaican government should ask Cameron to
return all the professional Jamaicans who are teachers, lecturers,
health workers, IT consultants, etc. to Jamaica instead of the
reparations:Moreover, Cameron should then pay the salaries of these Jamaicanslavery and colonialism.
professionals whilst they develop the economy of Jamaica for the
almost 400 years that slavery lasted.
In short, we must confront the reality that one of the reasons why
there is a brain drain in the Caribbean and Africa is the lack of
decent and attractive salaries to retain African professionals.
Britain can foot the bill to address this inequality that sprung
from
It is necessary to advance the debate on whether Britain and the
West in general (i.e. all those slave trading nations such as
France, The Netherlands, Spain, the USA, Portugal, etc.) should pay
enslavement and colonialism.what should reparations entail?bodies and history do not matter.
Acknowledging the atrocity and enormity of this experience is
necessary in an official apology. Commentators have observed how the
Maoris received an apology from the British Queen in 1995.[2] In
2008 the Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologised in
parliament to all Aborigines for laws and policies that inflicted
profound grief, suffering and loss.[3] It appears when it comes to
Africans our lives,
Racism will find various rationalisations (or excuses) to deny that
enslavement of Africans merits an apology and reparations. Yet, we
cannot erase the collective historical memory and experiences of
enslavement that was wrought on people of African descent and
continues with the covert and overt forms of racial discrimination
that they still experience in the 21stcentury. Notions of racial
supremacy and the inferiority of Black people are rooted in the
brutal killings of Black males by white police officers in both the
US and UK. Such notions stem from the legacy of slavery that gave
rise to racist stereotypes harboured by racist societies that have
institutionalised racism. Perhaps it should also be the case that in
a programme of reparatory justice, there should be legal redress for
the lives of the hundreds of Black men killed by racist police
officers, as well as the people of African descent unjustly
incarcerated in Americas prisons.
Whilst it is the case that no amount of financial compensation can
address the psychological and emotional scars of enslavement of
people of African descent, nor the horrors of the Middle Passage,
nor those who remain buried in the Atlantic Ocean as a consequence
of suicide, nor the 132 Africans deliberately thrown overboard in
1786 on the slave ship Zong -in order that the ship owners could
claim the insurance a comprehensive economic package needs to
address the fact that the current economic and technological
underdevelopment of Africa and the Caribbean is symptomatic of the
impact of 400 years of enslavement. This enslavement was followed by
the brief but no less damaging interlude of colonialism and must be
recognised as central to any form of reparations.
There are those who refuse to accept the fact that the economic
wealth of Europe was built on the sweat, blood and toil of African
people to the detriment of Africa. Yet, let us be clear that the
trans-Atlantic slave trade was not a trade. The meaning of trade
supposes equal benefit to both parties. It was not trade but the
looting of Africa in which Europe benefitted at the expense of
Africa as Walter Rodney graphically illustrates in his acclaimed
book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. The consequence for
Africa was and remains that the African economy taken as a whole
was diverted away from its previous line of development and became
distorted.[4] Reparations is therefore a quest to repair the
economic damage of underdevelopment wrought by the process of
valid.Error!the youth.This
economic redress will be symbolic for it may run into trillions of
dollars, for one can never place an economic value on the millions
of Africans whose lives were lost in the slave raids, or as they
died in the long march to the forts on the coast. How many died on
such journeys? Can we account for those enslaved women who secretly
aborted or killed their child to prevent them from experiencing
slavery? And should we not include the medical experimentations
carried out on the bodies of enslaved African women graphically
documented in the books From Midwives to Medicine and Medical
Apartheid? [5] As for the psychological impact of enslavement,
that too is another site of struggle that people of African descent
must address through spiritual and psychological healing as well as
education in which they reconnect to understanding and learning
about their history prior to enslavement. For it is essential for
Africans and the world to know that Africans had a rich and complex
history prior to the holocaust of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Also, it is important for us to remember that on the ending of
slavery in the British colonies, the British government were able to
compensate the slave owners £20 million (£20 billion in todays
money). There was no compensation for the former enslaved African
men and women. In the USA there were pledges to the freed men and
women of forty acres and a mule that never materialised across the
board.[6] Hence, we need to address the question: What should
reparations for slavery entail? It should address the following:
First, an apology to all continental Africans and people of African
descent for the immorality of slavery, for merely stating regret
as the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair did in 2007 is
mere cant.[7] The former Jamaican Prime Minister P. J. Patterson
stated recently in an open letter to David Cameron: Contrary to
your view, the Caribbean people will never emerge completely from
the long, dark shadow of slavery until there is a full confession
of guilt by those who committed this evil atrocity.[8] Second, we
must demand that all Western governments instruct Western museums
and citizens to hand over to African countries illicitly acquired
African artefacts languishing both publicly and privately in their
hidden vaults. They must also provide the training and facilities
for African countries to host, display and conserve these returned
items. This includes thousands of artefacts, among them being the
more famous and well known 400 Ethiopian treasures looted by British
soldiers during the
1868 Magdala expedition. [9] There are also the Benin bronzes looted
in the British invasion of the Nigerian kingdom of Benin in
1896.[10] Kwame Opoku has diligently written on the need for these
and many other African artefacts to be returned to African nations.
Third, as mentioned above, the brain drain of African and African
Caribbean professionals should be halted by offering these
professionals the same salaries to voluntarily return to Africa and
the Caribbean in order to assist in the building of new schools,
universities, hospitals and clinics that would be set up and
financed by a comprehensive reparations economic programme.
Fourth, cancellation of all debt incurred by the Caribbean and
African nations on the grounds that they are odious and were not
incurred by the ordinary citizens of Africa and the Caribbean but
rather their ruling classes. Cancellation would free up these
critical funds to address the real needs of African citizens.
Moreover, it is the case that Africa loses approximately $50 billion
a year through illicit financial flows out of which are draining
foreign exchange reserves, reducing tax collection and deepening
poverty. This colossal amount may well be short of the reality as
accurate figures do not exist for all African countries. However, it
is approximately double the official development assistance (ODA)
that Africa receives.[11] In short, aid is simply a paltry and
ineffective band aid that keeps African economies in a continued
process of economic subordination to neoliberal capitalism under the
illusion that there will be trickle down growth. Blocking the
haemorrhaging of illicit financial flows and tax dodging would
ensure there are funds and resources to build railways to connect
African people and economies; invest in adult education that is
almost non-existent in Africa compared to primary, secondary and
university education; massively expand electrification, greener
energy forms for ordinary citizens and provide employment for
African people, particularly
Overall, a dialogue within progressive activist circles and among5120588487https://twitter.com/popresistancehttps://twitter.com/popres
progressive Europeans, genuinely committed to addressing the
profound inequities of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and
colonialism needs to begin.
Farmers, womens groups, young people, people with disabilities,
LBGTI individuals, academics, professional people in the Caribbean
and Africa must be involved in this trans-Atlantic dialogue on what
reparations should entail, as well as, creating progressive
governments and leadership (compared to the current compliant
neo-colonial incumbents), to push for a reparations programme.
Ultimately, in addressing the issue of reparations, we must also
address transforming the system of capitalism which slavery gave
birth to. A rupture with this unequal and exploitative system is
fundamental in eliminating oppression that remains with us in the
twenty first century in reconfigured forms.
* Dr. Ama Biney is a historian and political scientist living in UK.
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What Should Reparations For Slavery Entail?
Create! Capitalism, Reparations, Slavery By Ama Biney,
www.pambazuka.org December 17th, 2016
Powered by https://translate.google.com/Translate
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Hyperlink reference
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.Error! Hyperlink reference notinfrastructure, not prisons.
valid.
Above Photo: Aehnetwork
In the light of the former British Prime Ministers dismissal of
reparations, activists must push the debate further by detailing
what reparations should entail. Fundamental to a reparations
programme must be the fact that we transform the system of
capitalism which slavery gave birth to.
Former British Prime Minister David Camerons insulting dismissal of
trans-Atlantic slavery and his opinion that Africans and people of
African descent should move on from this painful legacy, and
continue to build for the future, would never be audaciously
uttered to Jewish people by this arrogant warmonger who bombed Libya
and sought to bomb Syria, but the British House of Commons voted
against such action. As the African American actor Danny Glover
said, the Jamaican government should tell Britain to keep your
prison, give us schools, give us
[1] In addition, the Jamaican government should ask Cameron to
return all the professional Jamaicans who are teachers, lecturers,
health workers, IT consultants, etc. to Jamaica instead of the
reparations:Moreover, Cameron should then pay the salaries of these Jamaicanslavery and colonialism.
professionals whilst they develop the economy of Jamaica for the
almost 400 years that slavery lasted.
In short, we must confront the reality that one of the reasons why
there is a brain drain in the Caribbean and Africa is the lack of
decent and attractive salaries to retain African professionals.
Britain can foot the bill to address this inequality that sprung
from
It is necessary to advance the debate on whether Britain and the
West in general (i.e. all those slave trading nations such as
France, The Netherlands, Spain, the USA, Portugal, etc.) should pay
enslavement and colonialism.what should reparations entail?bodies and history do not matter.
Acknowledging the atrocity and enormity of this experience is
necessary in an official apology. Commentators have observed how the
Maoris received an apology from the British Queen in 1995.[2] In
2008 the Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologised in
parliament to all Aborigines for laws and policies that inflicted
profound grief, suffering and loss.[3] It appears when it comes to
Africans our lives,
Racism will find various rationalisations (or excuses) to deny that
enslavement of Africans merits an apology and reparations. Yet, we
cannot erase the collective historical memory and experiences of
enslavement that was wrought on people of African descent and
continues with the covert and overt forms of racial discrimination
that they still experience in the 21stcentury. Notions of racial
supremacy and the inferiority of Black people are rooted in the
brutal killings of Black males by white police officers in both the
US and UK. Such notions stem from the legacy of slavery that gave
rise to racist stereotypes harboured by racist societies that have
institutionalised racism. Perhaps it should also be the case that in
a programme of reparatory justice, there should be legal redress for
the lives of the hundreds of Black men killed by racist police
officers, as well as the people of African descent unjustly
incarcerated in Americas prisons.
Whilst it is the case that no amount of financial compensation can
address the psychological and emotional scars of enslavement of
people of African descent, nor the horrors of the Middle Passage,
nor those who remain buried in the Atlantic Ocean as a consequence
of suicide, nor the 132 Africans deliberately thrown overboard in
1786 on the slave ship Zong -in order that the ship owners could
claim the insurance a comprehensive economic package needs to
address the fact that the current economic and technological
underdevelopment of Africa and the Caribbean is symptomatic of the
impact of 400 years of enslavement. This enslavement was followed by
the brief but no less damaging interlude of colonialism and must be
recognised as central to any form of reparations.
There are those who refuse to accept the fact that the economic
wealth of Europe was built on the sweat, blood and toil of African
people to the detriment of Africa. Yet, let us be clear that the
trans-Atlantic slave trade was not a trade. The meaning of trade
supposes equal benefit to both parties. It was not trade but the
looting of Africa in which Europe benefitted at the expense of
Africa as Walter Rodney graphically illustrates in his acclaimed
book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. The consequence for Africa
was and remains that the African economy taken as a whole was
diverted away from its previous line of development and became
distorted.[4] Reparations is therefore a quest to repair the
economic damage of underdevelopment wrought by the process of
hidden vaults.This
economic redress will be symbolic for it may run into trillions of
dollars, for one can never place an economic value on the millions
of Africans whose lives were lost in the slave raids, or as they
died in the long march to the forts on the coast. How many died on
such journeys? Can we account for those enslaved women who secretly
aborted or killed their child to prevent them from experiencing
slavery? And should we not include the medical experimentations
carried out on the bodies of enslaved African women graphically
documented in the books From Midwives to Medicine and Medical
Apartheid? [5] As for the psychological impact of enslavement, that
too is another site of struggle that people of African descent must
address through spiritual and psychological healing as well as
education in which they reconnect to understanding and learning
about their history prior to enslavement. For it is essential for
Africans and the world to know that Africans had a rich and complex
history prior to the holocaust of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Also, it is important for us to remember that on the ending of
slavery in the British colonies, the British government were able to
compensate the slave owners £20 million (£20 billion in todays
money). There was no compensation for the former enslaved African
men and women. In the USA there were pledges to the freed men and
women of forty acres and a mule that never materialised across the
board.[6] Hence, we need to address the question: What should
reparations for slavery entail? It should address the following:
First, an apology to all continental Africans and people of African
descent for the immorality of slavery, for merely stating regret
as the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair did in 2007 is
mere cant.[7] The former Jamaican Prime Minister P. J. Patterson
stated recently in an open letter to David Cameron: Contrary to
your view, the Caribbean people will never emerge completely from
the long, dark shadow of slavery until there is a full confession
of guilt by those who committed this evil atrocity.[8] Second, we
must demand that all Western governments instruct Western museums
and citizens to hand over to African countries illicitly acquired
African artefacts languishing both publicly and privately in their
the youth.They must also provide the training and facilities for African1868 Magdala expedition.
countries to host, display and conserve these returned items. This
includes thousands of artefacts, among them being the more famous
and well known 400 Ethiopian treasures looted by British soldiers
during the
[9]
There are also the Benin bronzes looted in the British invasion of
the Nigerian kingdom of Benin in 1896.[10] Kwame Opoku has
diligently written on the need for these and many other African
artefacts to be returned to African nations.
Third, as mentioned above, the brain drain of African and African
Caribbean professionals should be halted by offering these
professionals the same salaries to voluntarily return to Africa and
the Caribbean in order to assist in the building of new schools,
universities, hospitals and clinics that would be set up and
financed by a comprehensive reparations economic programme.
Fourth, cancellation of all debt incurred by the Caribbean and
African nations on the grounds that they are odious and were not
incurred by the ordinary citizens of Africa and the Caribbean but
rather their ruling classes. Cancellation would free up these
critical funds to address the real needs of African citizens.
Moreover, it is the case that Africa loses approximately $50 billion
a year through illicit financial flows out of which are draining
foreign exchange reserves, reducing tax collection and deepening
poverty. This colossal amount may well be short of the reality as
accurate figures do not exist for all African countries. However, it
is approximately double the official development assistance (ODA)
that Africa receives.[11] In short, aid is simply a paltry and
ineffective band aid that keeps African economies in a continued
process of economic subordination to neoliberal capitalism under the
illusion that there will be trickle down growth. Blocking the
haemorrhaging of illicit financial flows and tax dodging would
ensure there are funds and resources to build railways to connect
African people and economies; invest in adult education that is
almost non-existent in Africa compared to primary, secondary and
university education; massively expand electrification, greener
energy forms for ordinary citizens and provide employment for
African people, particularly
Overall, a dialogue within progressive activist circles and among
progressive Europeans, genuinely committed to addressing the
profound inequities of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and
colonialism needs to begin.
Farmers, womens groups, young people, people with disabilities,
LBGTI individuals, academics, professional people in the Caribbean
and Africa must be involved in this trans-Atlantic dialogue on what
reparations should entail, as well as, creating progressive
governments and leadership (compared to the current compliant
neo-colonial incumbents), to push for a reparations programme.
Ultimately, in addressing the issue of reparations, we must also
address transforming the system of capitalism which slavery gave
birth to. A rupture with this unequal and exploitative system is
fundamental in eliminating oppression that remains with us in the
twenty first century in reconfigured forms.
* Dr. Ama Biney is a historian and political scientist living in UK.
