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 us?
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 little
whimper.
Carl Jarvis
On 12/18/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
What Should Reparations For Slavery Entail?
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 Minister’s 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 Cameron’s 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 infrastructure, not prisons.”
[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 criminals. Moreover, Cameron
should then pay the salaries of these Jamaican 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 slavery and colonialism.
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 reparations: what
should reparations entail?
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, bodies and history do not matter.
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 America’s 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 enslavement and colonialism.
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 today’s 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
the youth.
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, women’s 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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Above Photo: Aehnetwork
In the light of the former British Prime Minister’s 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 Cameron’s 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 infrastructure, not prisons.”
[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 criminals. Moreover, Cameron
should then pay the salaries of these Jamaican 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 slavery and colonialism.
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 reparations: what
should reparations entail?
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, bodies and history do not matter.
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 America’s 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 enslavement and colonialism.
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 today’s 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
the youth.
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, women’s 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.
