1. Ryan

March 26th, 2007 at 9:48 am

No, I think reparations would be a waste of time. I think a better idea would be to end the slavery that is still going on in places like Sudan.

That the CoE raises this question is an indicator of that organisation’s high sense of morality and not necessarily an indicator of England’s share of the slave trade. Why no calls for reparations from Arab countries who arguably played a greater part in the slave trade than England did. The same is true of the Spanish; why no expressions of remorse from the Catholic Church?

Then, there is the accountability of Africans themselves. As I understand it before England banned slavery there were African countries and tribal areas where slavery did not occur. Those were the areas where the African leaders refused to take part in the trade themselves. In other parts of Africa the slave trade flourished where inter-tribal warfare resulted in captured enemies being traded by the victors to slave traders.

Hey, I could be (and most probably am) wrong about some of the stuff I’ve written above, but there is no denying that the abominable slave trade reached far and wide and that it existed long before Europe’s rise to power and expansion. It is quite possible that some of my ancestors from England were slaves to the Romans.

Just my R0.02.

Cheers,
Ryan

2. Hathor

March 26th, 2007 at 7:41 pm

I want an acknowledgment of slavery’s economic contributions, that it was more than the “free market” that helped modernize America and Europe. It certainly made America the most powerful nation on the planet in less than 250 years.
I want acceptance as a human being, not as some subculture or sub-creature.
I want respect, which I believe would be harder to get than cash. Cash is final, respect would have to continue for the rest of our days.

3. Sokari

March 27th, 2007 at 9:11 am

Ryan@ you completely side step the question posed by Rethablile. Your deflection of his point to that of modern day slavery and slavery that existed in traditional African societies pre the Trans Atlantic slave trade is typical of those who wish to negate the Trans Atlantic Slavery as merely a continuation of something that had been taking place around the world since ad infinitum. Your reference to Arab slavery is another method of deflecting the role played by England (a primary role I might add) in the slave trade ” and speaks of childish reasoning “well we weren’t the only ones” which is not what is being discussed here. These are typical examples of selective reality whereby white people cannot see Black people, because they cannot see themselves in relationship to Black people and are incapable of reflecting upon their own racist realities.

The Trans Atlantic trade in slaves was a systematic commercial enterprise in human cargo of 12 million (some figures are higher as account for deaths see below - double that figure) people over a 400 year period. The profits - which were in today’s terms in £billions – and labour on which the foundations of the capitalism and the imperial project of the British Empire and the United States were built without which neither country would be what they are today. On top of the financial gain from the commercial trade in African people is the racist outcome of that trade. The moral and legal justification for slavery was constructed through racism (internalised dominance) which remains a central part of reality in the Western world and which continues to impact negatively on Black people throughout the Diaspora. Some figures for you to dwell on – in 1771 alone, there were 105 ships that sailed from Liverpool to West Africa transporting 28,000 slaves (this doesn’t include those who died whilst waiting to be shipped in places like Elmina Castle or who died at sea. Yes there were Africans who were complicit in the trade of slaves – in many instances it was either sell slaves or become one yourself and many ended up both. By the late 16C early 17C the slave ships crews were familiar enough with the coastal regions as well as the interior that they were able to capture slaves themselves. Either way the fact of complicity of some African merchants chiefs from coastal regions is not a reason to deny reparations from the British and US government for the Trans Atlantic slave trade without which their power and empires may not exist today.

So yes I want everything like Hathor has said.

4. Rethabile

March 27th, 2007 at 9:54 am

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/03/26/slavery.maryland.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

Just another link, showing someone else apologising for slavery.

I must say that I agree with you Sokari, and wanted in fact to say those same words to Ryan. You beat me to it.

5. Del

March 27th, 2007 at 3:15 pm

Fuck that, there should be reparations, for ALL groups (everyhwere) enslaved, detained, driven away from their homes and homeland, victims of genocide or any other “human-induced” horrificshow.

Funny, when black people (everywhere) initiate a discussion on reparations its met with the forgiving-but-never-forgetting, collective healing moving beyond the past bullshit! And don’t you love the “what about the Africans role in the slave trade” sidebar?!

The Japanese in the US were completely justified as are the Jews in Europe in demanding reparations which not only means cash; slavery is SO profound and such a colossal backdrop to the wealth, present-day world economic systems and the “mentally, economically and spiritally” enslaved postcolonial world that to even contemplate a reparations scenario would change the planet as we know it. European and American cities would be reduced to backwater villages!

And would anyone argue that “some” Jews and Japanese did not participate in their own people’s suffering??

I recently returned from Burkina Faso, a country with such a proud and ancient history, and was reminded of how West Africa’s (Anglo and Franco)struggling existence is the direct result of a perpectual dependency on their former “colonizers” AND the meddling and hegemony of the US. And if Africans had such a huge part in the TA slave trade, interesting, that influence is meaningless present day and benefitted Africans in no way as it did for Europeans and Americans.

And yes, a universal apology is a big part of it but some economic empowerment should not be dismissed.

The US has succeeded in making the reparations debate a joke and convinced a lot of black people (due to our ex-slave mentality, self-hate and ignorance) in this country that it’s a silly idea when thousands of black people are suffering as a result of U.S. slavery and Jim Crow.

I’d like to see how Barack Obama deals with this issue….

Sorry for the profanity, Sokari:)

6. Sokari

March 27th, 2007 at 8:42 pm

Del@ thats OK - I fully concur - I have been known to use similar myself though generally on other peoples blog posts:)

7. Global Voices Online » Blog Archive » Africa: Bloggers Split on Reparations and Apology for Slavery

March 28th, 2007 at 4:48 pm

[…] In “Reparations for slavery?,” Black Looks posts a link to a BBC article about the Church of England considering reparations. The Church of England owned African slaves in the West Indies. […]

8. Ryan

March 28th, 2007 at 7:46 pm

@Sokari

True, mentioning Arabs and present-day slavery is sidestepping the issue a bit. Still valid points though. The point about African complicity is just as valid although a bit devious in that slave drivers to some extent took advantage of the tribalism they found when they arrived on African shores.

My point was that societies like England’s who readily admit their part in slavery (and their part in ending it; great links on your site Hathor) might be unfairly targeted exactly because they do admit to feeling guilt over it. On the other hand there is the Arab world which has (to my knowledge) remained silent on the issue even though they (in my understanding) where part of the slave trade long before England started exploring the new world and were by all accounts much crueller slave-drivers than their western counterparts. They (from what I have read) carried on with slavery well after England abolished it and started enforcing anti-slavery laws where it had jurisdiction. No childish “but they did it first” excuses from me. Just a question as to why the most successful and democratic (now) societies are targeted.

As far as reparations go. Who would pay and who would receive the reparations? Instead of seeking out reparations why don’t agrieved Africans demand that Britain (and the rest of Europe) actually do something about the slaughter in Sudan instead of just waiting to fund the inevitable “Hotel Rwanda” type motion pictures that will come out /after/ the slaughter is finished.

Sure, by all means demand reparations but do so once there is no longer any slaughter and slavery going on in Africa. Priorities…

@Del @Sokari

I’ll bite. I’d really like you to point to research papers which show exactly how much Europe and America benefitted from slavery. My beliefs *will* follow the evidence. I am open to reason and evidence.

Some links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade
http://www.raceandhistory.com/historicalviews/2252001.htm

9. Sokari

March 28th, 2007 at 9:01 pm

Ryan@ Go find the research evidence yourself -

10. Del

March 28th, 2007 at 10:26 pm

No worries, Sokari, I AM biting!! That’s part of the racist angle of this whole debate…we are “too emotional” and what we are saying is not grounded in any factual evidence.

It’s another denial of black people’s humanity-”raw emotion vs. western, empirical reason and evidence”.

And many times there is this need to play the contrarian, borne of privilege and arrogance, what can they do, because, let’s face it, this stuff hits you square between the eyes.

Arundhati Roy talks extensively about this “foxhole” approach and a reliance on scientific evidence, charts and graphs when there’s no where else to go in the face of “people’s history” which is based on those who’ve witnessed and lived the tragedy.

1) So where shall we start, how about the genteel South? The slave labor cotton, rice, tobacco industry BUILT Atlanta, Richmond, the Carolinas and following the eastern coastline, we can name the port cities built on that wealth. This is grade school American history that no scholar needs to write about. But instead of “research papers”, none of which you’ll find on the internet and since “your” evidence is coming from Wikipedia, search “John Hope Franklin” and read his continually updated book from, Slavery to Freedom. And he’s no lightweight, angry black man simply ranting about reparation and oppression.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hope_Franklin
or Howard Zinn’s masterpiece, A People’s History of the United States, part 1 and 2.

To even question if Charleston, South Carolina, Annapolis, Maryland, Providence Rhode Island, Jamestown, Virginia, all notable U.S. slave port cities, didn’t grow extremely wealthy, locally and regionally, is either pure denial or an unwillingness to face the stark, horrible reality of how far the tentacles of this human suffering actually stretched.

2) And New England is even more interesting; you’ve heard of Aetna Insurance Company, where millions of Americans are insured, including me, wrote policies on slaves for slave masters?! Here’s a nice apology from the Chairman from the Aetna website, not offering any reparations but stating how hard Aetna is working to remove barriers to healthcare and you know where black folks stand on those numbers.
http://www.aetna.com/news/2002/slavery_reparations_issue.html
Hartford (Aetna’s headquarters for more than a century) was a major a prosperous US city (it attracted Mark Twain!) based on its relationship with (and close proximity) with Providence where the Brown Brothers worked their magic as THE premiere shipping magnets specifically in the triangle slave trade. Again, to question if American cities did not benefit from this multi-nation business model is silly.

Refer to the scholarly book” The New England slave trade after the Revolution” by Elizabeth Donnan. She provides one hell of a document on how wealthy Providence, Newport and Boston really became as a result of the TA slave trade.

And then there’s the institutional wealth that evolved, the Brown Brothers, founded Brown University and Cornell University’s relationship with Cecil Rhodes, and we don’t have to go into what he was up to in South Africa, do you require facts on his record…………
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Rhodes

Looking for “factual” evidence and “reason” are futile and not to see the “unjust enrichment”, as its been coined now, linked to the riches of American cities is just plain blindness. And what has given the reparations fight more steam is the “evidence” uncovering the role of corporations. Here’s a 2003 Nation article:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20030310/friedman

Recently investment bank JP Morgan Chase admitted that two of its companies accepted slaves as “collateral” for loans between 1831 and 1865.

The deep, rich corporate pockets are lined with blood, sweat and tears and if any type of economic reparation were to take place, MANY American corporations, thus cities and related industries would topple over like dominoes!

11. Black Looks

March 29th, 2007 at 8:53 am

[…] Ryan, you suggest many things, you suggest that instead of reparations we should “end the slavery that is still going on in places like Sudan.” It’s not either this or that, my good man. It’s both. You wonder why there are “no calls for reparations from Arab countries who arguably played a greater part in the slave trade than England did.” Well, there are several reasons for this. I think that it’s because […]

12. Ryan

March 29th, 2007 at 10:13 am

@Del

“It’s another denial of black people’s humanity-”raw emotion vs. western, empirical reason and evidence”.”

Actually, I think it’s a matter of balance. Human beings need both a head and a heart

All reason and no emotion and you get a bunch of people who can send 6 million Jews to their deaths. All emotion and no reason and you get Rwandan-style genocide.

Thanks for the information and references. When I get some time I’ll have a go at it. I don’t deny that some American and British people (and therefore the cities they lived in) benefitted from slavery and became very rich. I just doubt the magnitude of your assessment. There is never just “one thing” which makes or breaks a system — except for maybe a meteor strike 65 million years ago.

Regarding facts and reason. If a world court is ever going to preside over calls for (financial) reparations it is going to need to see some numbers. Apologies and acknowledgements are another thing altogether; I think the British government has already taking steps in this direction.

“The deep, rich corporate pockets are lined with blood, sweat and tears and if any type of economic reparation were to take place, MANY American corporations, thus cities and related industries would topple over like dominoes!”

I think GWB can occomplish this all without your help

@Black Looks

I think that it’s because… people are born opportunists

I agree with you regarding looking at the past and at present-day Sudan not being a binary choice. To some extent though focussing on one drowns out the other — the media is very very flighty.

Perhaps some reparations from one nation will cause the other nations who took part in the slave trade to do some introspection. There’ll probably be little deterrant value though. Look at how effectively the Nuremburg trials prevented the genocide in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Sudan (and, and, and…)

If I have been overly focussed on the “Eastern Slave Trade” it is because a few months ago in a bookshop I paged through a book on that trade and was horrified by the violence and brutality suffered by slaves destined for the middle east. That the last slaves were shipped off to harems (and the brutality that went with that) as late as the early 1900s is just horrific.

Anyway, we’re probably talking past each other a bit, so I’ll let you end of this thread now. I really am open minded (and if I am not I aim to be) so I feel I have benefitted from this exchange (more so with all Del’s links), so…

Adios

13. MediaChannel.org

March 29th, 2007 at 6:48 pm

[…] In “Reparations for slavery?,” Black Looks posts a link to a BBC article about the Church of England considering reparations. The Church of England owned African slaves in the West Indies. […]

14. John K

April 16th, 2008 at 6:20 am

Hi folks,

I have really enjoyed the back and forth on reparations. This discussion actually pushed me over the edge in regards to a book I’m going to write on the profitability of slavery and the devastating economic impact that the Jim Crow era and all of the different race riots (whites attacking blacks especially from 1915 - 1922 & beyond) - has had on the ability of African Americans to build wealth since 1865.

My goal is to actually come up with solid peer reviewed numbers. The problem with the reparations debate is that there are no firm numbers to discuss. Everyone understands there is a price to be paid but no one (to my knowledge) has calculated that price.

If anyone –Del, Ryan, Sokari or anyone else - has links they would like to send me or books they would recommend for me to read for this project - please send the information to john.kamoche@us.army.mil or hit me up at my cell at 212-879-4521. Thank you.

15. LYMIS

May 5th, 2008 at 2:48 pm

It is more that their profits and stable financial climate today are a direct correlation to the financing of the slave trade and their profitting from the slave trade. The legal result of that being that they now have to pay seems to be a just result, as they are not paying individuals…but they are paying for the institution that caused the resulting levels of poverty and degradation that blacks have continued to suffer since the slave trade was ended. Did you know that there are whole towns that were raided by white citizen councils and taken from blacks after the emancipation in the south due to the advent of Jim Crow? Did you know that a large portion of the black population live 200% below the poverty level and that this is a generational occurence as a direct result of slavery? There may be opportunities now, but what needs to be considered is that equality only happened as recently as 1964 with the passage of the Civil Rights Bill because whites and white insititutions were so resistant to blacks prospering after the slave trade. Does anyone have any comment on that?

16. Sokari

May 5th, 2008 at 3:43 pm

Lymis @ You are absolutely right. I have spent the last couple of days walking around Manchester in the north of England (once the industrial capital of the Western World and center of the industrial revolution and cotton industry). Walking through the city you see the wealth created from the slave trade and colonialism not to speak of the psychological damage to millions of Black people on the continent and the Diaspora.

17. Herbert

May 5th, 2008 at 7:25 pm

The issue of reparation is comparable to that of race in the United States and other Western nations.It is a hot political potato and politicians,deranged White Supremacist and Western policy makers would do anything to stall it.They labouriously continues to delay the day of reckoning.But for how long would they continue to delay the inevitable?.It is only normal that Western policy makers especially in the US and UK should find a way to address its horrible past.The UK and the US establishment should summon up courage to readdress the callous acts of their ancestors and the current instutionalised acts of bias and hatred against its black population.
God created all men equal and in HIS own image which is the fundermental differences between mankind and all other creatures.But all through the ages subsequents empires have abused others nations and races.History is awash with the all the injustices meted out against the Jews.These atrocites were carried out with the blessings of the Church.Prior to 2nd world war the Jews had no homeland.They were subjected to all sorts of humiliation by the host nations inspite of the enormous contribution they made.At the end of that horrible war Humanity agreed to resettle the Jews and that changed the fortune of the jewish people.They asked for reparation and got it.
In human history no other race has suffered a more terrible crime compared to black Africa and yet nothing is being done to adress it.
In its stead Western media both electronic and print are lashing out on people like Jeremiah Wright(who by the way overdid it) for showing black anger and resentment.But the issue of race is alive and well in the US.
Hurricane Katarina exposed the issue of race in the US.John Hagee said it was an act of God.It was Gods way of exposing the US institutionalised wicked acts against its black population.The Church of england which was an integral part of the callous acts of enslavement should play the vital role of addressing its ugly past.
Today,the US is at the threshold of history .A black man is vying for the highest seat in the land.The US is now faced with the option of writing a new all- inclusive and sound political chapter in its history or risk being drowned by the ugly tide which drowned all past empires.The ancient Egytian empire could have prospered had Pharoah allowed the children of Isreal to go or atleast treated them as humans.
Germany would have ruled the world had the Nazi Germany not prosecuted its Jewish population and paid dearly for it.And now,the US is faced with the same choice.
I wish her well.