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August 25, 2024 - 1:00pm
The government of Trinidad and Tobago has announced that for the first time since its independence in 1962, it will remove images of Christopher Columbus’s three ships — the Santa María, the Pinta and the Niña — from its coat of arms. The move comes as part of an effort to “strike a “dagger through the heart of colonialism”, and other Caribbean countries such as Grenada and the Bahamas have also reportedly contemplated cleansing their heraldry of all traces of Columbus.
This campaign to purge national iconography of symbols “that glorify slave owners, colonisers and oppressors” comes in the context of a movement from these countries to extract reparations for the Atlantic slave trade. It is ironic that despite the cheap, radical nationalist rhetoric, this reparations campaign is still premised on the subaltern Caribbean nations being dependent on the charity of the more powerful Western powers, a far cry from former Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah’s declaration that “the less developed world will not become more developed through the goodwill or generosity of the developed powers.” Of course, any reparations, if they do occur, will more likely be fleeced for the enrichment of national elites than repurposed for social development.
But there is a wider and deeper question about the meaning of Columbus — who acts simply as an avatar for the European colonisation of the Americas — within world history.
The common narrative now is that Columbus’s journey into the Americas instigated 500 years of Euro-American racism, genocide, slavery and oppression. After all, didn’t Columbus himself enslave the indigenous Taino people of Santo Domingo? Wasn’t a consequence of the so-called “discovery” of the Americas the development of the Atlantic slave trade, distinct from pre-modern slavery because of its racialised character? Wasn’t another consequence the extinction of various indigenous tribes and civilisations which had already inhabited these lands?
What is neglected in these narratives is that these ills were the norm in human history and accepted as normal practice in civilisation long before Columbus made his voyage. For thousands of years across the world, human communities extinguished other groups through conquest, enslaved those they didn’t simply kill, and enforced dominance over the defeated peoples.
The creation of modern civilisation, the epochal bourgeois revolution of the world and society, of which Columbus’s voyages and the “discovery” of the Americas were a part, did not so much ignite five centuries of oppression as it did five centuries of emancipation for the whole world. As Hegel put it, this was the “blush of dawn, which after long storms first betokens the return of a bright and glorious day”. It was because of the world-historic implications of Columbus’s exploration that the real potential of overcoming generations of slavery, oppression and racism in the name of universal freedom first emerged.
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SubscribeShort, insightful and worth sending to those who think excising a full history of their failing countries will put them on the fast track to a healthy economy.
Ultimately, this type of language is disempowering. If you blame others for your failings, you are not looking forward. You’re looking back. Wonder what’s happening in Trinidad & Tobago. It’s actually one of the wealthiest and most developed nations in the Caribbean.
The GDP of Trinidad and Tobago is about 2.5 times that of oil rich Nigeria.
Maybe they have come to the conclusion all those gas fields are a form of western colonial oppression.
Trinidad and Tobago has a coat of arms!
Is the Caribbean generally much into heraldry?
Coats of arms are a European invention.
Can’t they invent anything for themselves?
Cultural appropriation anyone!
“Moreover, slavery — whether racialised or not — is not the conspicuous fact of Western civilisation: its abolition is.”
I guess it just doesn’t fit the narrative.
Maybe if the West (predominantly Britain) sent them a bill for the immense cost (lives and money) that was spent to end slavery. That this might just shut down the argument.
I know of no indigenous culture that can out-enlighten the Enlightenment.
I like the article, but the last sentence, in its entirety, is a non sequitur.
Your addition of “in its entirety” to “the last sentence” is superfluous.
So true. If you want to identify as a victim, you need to identify a victimizer to take the blame. There can’t be one without the other; victimizer::victim is a relationship.
Likewise, if you wish to not live perpetually as a victim, you must let go of the victimizer. If you want to decolonize, you must let go of the colonizer.
Quite. Show me another culture that abolished slavery.
Of course, they won’t have finished the decolonisation job until they’ve also renounced speaking English (or Spanish). Perhaps we could encourage them by charging royalties for using it ?
Seriously, this has nothing to do with actually improving the lot of ordinary people in the Caribbean (or indeed here). It’s almost as if there are no serious political leaders left anywhere. Not there. Nor here.
Everybody wants something for nothing. That’s human nature. It’s when people start thinking they’re entitled to it that the real trouble starts.
Terrific article!! I commend Mr Leonard for writing what most other journalists would never dare for fear of the wrath of the progressives.
It is a good piece. Points out an error, uses a bit of local wisdom from the past leaving us with the idea that things can be better. Nicely done
Smart and elegantly written. Thank you for the fresh air.
If it wasn’t for Columbus 99%+ of he current population wouldn’t be living there now. Perhaps they could decolonise by moving back to Africa whence their ancestors originated and leave the lands to the original indigenous few that are left. They’ve had plenty of time since slavery ended and there was absolutely nothing during the post slavery colonial period right up until today stopping them.
The words “cheap” and “radical” are smear adjectives, words of emotion, not reason. They’re used instead of evidence. They are the substance.
But let’s get to the use of President Nkrumah’s statement. It doesn’t follow that because “the less developed world will not become more developed through the goodwill or generosity of the developed powers” that reparations are unwarranted, and that they are “charity.” Linking “charity” to reparations reflects the author’s idiosyncratic view of reparations, not necessarily the reality of them. President Nkrumah’s point is one thing — a reality check to temper expectations — and the value of reparations is another. The first point does not negate the second.
Wait. Why should negotiations for reparations not proceed because of this risk?
Where is evidence that being fleeced by national elites is “more likely” than social development? Even if true, why abandon the effort? There are always risks associated with significant endeavors, but we don’t give them up because of they exist, because they might come to pass. No, we account for those risks and work to eliminate or mitigate them.
Also: Those national elites are typically subordinate to Western, northern, elites, and dependent on them for personal enrichment, exploiting their own. In other words, economic slavery continues, further justifying reparations.
The fact that there has been lots of similar abuse over history has no bearing on whether or not reparations are justified in the case of the Atlantic slave trade. “Sure, Jimmy hit you, but you don’t deserve justice because people get hit by the likes of Jimmy everywhere.”
A convenient logical fallacy. Five centuries of oppression is five centuries of oppression, unmitigated by whatever benefit that oppression allowed. We could debate the finer points of who benefited, and the nature of the “emancipation,” but we don’t need to because the central premise is false.
So, generations of slavery were overcome by the exploration that kick-started generations of slavery. Nice circular argument you got there. Ain’t life grand?
Black is white, war is peace, slavery implies universal freedom. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The author doesn’t offer even a whisp. Why is that?
It could be claimed with equal authority that the “real potential” of Columbus’ exploration was to end up justifying slavery, as this very author has just done. In his case we at least have direct evidence of this form of “real potential.”
So, Western civilization instigates four-centuries of slavery, with its legacy of genocide and rape and every form of exploitation, and then stops doing it, at least so overtly. Why does the author want so much to subsume this fact under its relatively recent, and partial end?
Next we will hear how women-as-property was not the conspicuous fact of many civilizations, but its abolition was.
What is the evidence for this? Why not provide even a hint of it? Why does the author assume that this is necessarily the fate of peoples who believe reparations for their ancestors’ enslavement is justified?
At the very end comes exposure that all of this is merely the author’s speculation, free of any substantiation whatsoever:
Notice how much work “perhaps” is doing there. No reason is given to assume that you are more dependent on the coloniser than you think, than to assume that you are less independent of the coloniser because you asserted your claim on justice by them.
If I “still” pursue justice in court after someone does harm to my family and steals all I had (and by the way continues to exploit that dominance) there is no reason to assume that I’m more dependent on that someone than I think. That I define myself as a victim and am therefore likely to compromise my future. No, I have just as much reason to assume that I am standing up for myself against a bully, and providing inspiration for others to likewise stand up for themselves.
How are you going to isolate and punish those who benefitted from oppression in order to redistribute and repair the oppressed without becoming an arbitrary oppressor yourself?
Reparation doesn’t necessarily mean punishing, or turning the recipient into an oppressor, so the question is moot.
So I assume that means the Reparation payouts will come from a “General Fund.” Will there be private actors that handle and distribute these payouts or will the payouts just go straight from the offending government to the historically oppressed recipient?
Interesting questions. There are a variety of ways of doing reparation. One example is Canada’s The Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.
This fund was established to address “the healing needs” of the people. In the end it’s still financial. What would you think the objective of “healing” would be and how would it be measured? Would you expect an improvement in literacy from what it is? I would think that you yourself would think “healing” is a pretty ambiguous and subjective term.
https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1450124405592/1529106060525
I.e, not exclusively financial. Sometimes reparations involves returning control over land that was taken from people by breaking treaties and other means. If you care you can visit Indigenous websites to get a sense of the varieties of healing considered. Yes, of course it’s subjective — it is not for me to say what healing should mean to them, and how it might be measured. They’re struggling to work out all these things themselves; it’s not a simplistic boilerplate one-size-fits-all.
This discussion in reparations is essentially the idea of “payback”, “an Australian Aboriginal English term (also known in Melanesia) commonly understood to refer to a vendetta. Satisfaction of a grievance, such as a death or wife-stealing, may be sought through ritual ceremony, gift-giving, corporal punishment and ordeal, or even killing. Such phenomena, often characterised as vendetta or feud, have been noted by non-Aboriginal observers during most of the period of European colonisation (from 1788).”
Payback can mean the punishment of a member of the family the perpetrator came from, even if they were not involved, it can also mean the death of someone unrelated to a crime. What it amounts to is that someone has to pay for something going wrong, some satisfaction is required.
The idea of payback is the cultural norm of another culture being applied to Western cultural norms. This is considered one of the great crimes of colonialism. This sort of cultural imposition is either right or wrong. Which one is it?
Reading beyond your quote from the Abstract of the 2001 study, one learns important context that the Abstract doesn’t address. Depending on the Abstract to understand ‘payback” is like scanning a headline and subheading and believing you know all you need to know of the following article.
Going by the study you quoted, apparently the colonist itself has found value in the idea of payback, precisely because of its difference from the “isolated emotional satisfaction that comes from retribution exacted in a secular context” — i.e., the colonist’s own tradition, the one your intepretation attributed to Aboriginal people.
I find it fascinating that the colonist’s criminal law sees potential benefit in the “ambiguous” and complex nature of the Aboriginal tradition. A tradition, it is worth noting again, which is practised by “some” Indigenous communities, with its violent form more recently symbolic. Given the study was 20 years ago, “more recently” means decades before reparations.
Here in Australia we have a word for you. I’ll leave it for you to work out.
However, in response to your confident belief that payback is “more recently symbolic” for your edification the following;
In this video, Shirley talks about the mentality of ‘payback’ in remote Aboriginal communities. She shares her experiences of witnessing payback incidents first-hand and describes how this deeply ingrained mentality can lead to prolonged cycles of retribution between social groups, making it challenging for police and government intervention.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ob5DreC4pIE
Hey Brett, what happened to the study you assumed was vital enough to quote from its Abstract, just yesterday? The one that didn’t say what you thought it said because you only gave it a cursory look. Now — poof! — it’s as if you never summoned it.
Instead you vilify and say “Look at this new thing!”
The English language has a word for that: “disingenuous.” The picking of cherries also comes to mind.
I think your true colours are beginning to show.
You would know everything about that.
By the way, this article was about reparations for slavery, not injustices to Indigenous people.
Your last comment emphasized Indigenous people, by the way.
Reparations are not exclusively and not even typically about payback in the sense you chose to limit the description. Financial compensation is typically only one aspect of reparations, including in Australia.
Please take the time to learn about reparations before responding again.
You hedge with words all the time. Reparations are not “exclusively” payback. Obviously you mean that they can be but you don’t want to say that.
If it’s not payback then what is it?
Would the people of Libya or Algeria be liable for compensation to the people of western Europe? In view of the huge numbers of slaves taken by Barbary Corsairs from Italy, Ireland and even Iceland it might be time for some restitution.
Should the descendants of Hamilton Brown pay reparations to Black people of Jamaican heritage?
As it happens, Britain is ‘a nation of immigrants’. Why should the descendants of immigrants pay reparations for something that other people did 300 years ago?
‘If I “still” pursue justice in court after someone does harm to my family and steals all I had (and by the way continues to exploit that dominance) there is no reason to assume that I’m more dependent on that someone than I think.’
That ‘someone’ died 200 years ago.
Muhammad Ali said after he had been to Zaire, ‘I’m glad my granddaddy got on that boat.’
The richest Africans in the world are African Americans.
Their combined spending power is greater than the GDP of Africa.
The GDP of Trinidad and Tobago is about 2.5 times higher than that of Nigeria.
Hi Steven. You parroted a misquote by Dinesh D’Souza.
Here’s a link to the original quote:
Here is the quote, from the original source:
So. Muhammed Ali didn’t say it. And Sadler’s joke after witnessing conditions in Zaire was deeply ignorant: the contemporary conditions he witnessed (apart from the heat, which he wasn’t acclimatized to and is thus irrelevant) were a result of Western exploitation, using the likes of psychopathic client dictators like Mobutu, and do not indicate that people living in Zaire pre-slavery were suffering in similar conditions.
By that logic, say, Canada’s Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement is unjustified on the grounds that the perpetrators who stole Indigenous children from their families and took them hundreds of miles away where they were subjected to horrific mistreatment, including slavery working farms, are now dead. Never mind that this legacy didn’t die with the perpetrators but is a continuing source of pain to Indigenous people who struggle to reclaim their maimed and sometimes permanently lost, cultures.
I’m impressed you went to so much trouble to write this nonsense.
Well, it is sort of impressive the way you took no trouble to display a total blank. Not my cuppa, but to each their own!
You could have just written “It’s all justified because: “reasons””.
My late father was bullied at school. There must be someone out there I can get recompense from, since that will put a end to bullying everywhere.
You’re starting to actually engage. Good! Unfortunately “that will put a end to bullying everywhere” isn’t a rationale anyone has stated or even implied, so I’ll set it aside.
Somebody else’s cash will come in very
handy for a trauma I did not suffer and the person responsible for my father’s experience is dead… and it won’t put an end to bullying.
Slavery is still widely practiced but we won’t go after that, instead we’ll demand cash from the countries that put a lot of effort in trying to end it centuries ago.
But… “reasons”
Reparations aren’t necessarily about healing trauma, although they can be part of that. They also don’t need to be exclusively financial in nature. They can be relevant and helpful despite the perpetrator/s being dead. And the point about putting an end to bullying you’re repeating, it’s not what reparations are meant to do. Different tools for different jobs, Andrew R.
Your circular argument is still: there should be reparations because “reasons”.
You have contradicted yourself from your original comment, a bait and switch. Sophistry has that effect
What “original comment” are you referring to?
Btw, you still haven’t taken responsibility for the mistaken assumption or red herring that anyone, myself included, has argued that reparations “will put a end to bullying everywhere.”
I was merely using bullying as an example, you referred to the bully “Jimmy” in your original comment but you knew that (you’d have to be pretty stupid not to). Bullying is a power differential, dominance over a individual or a group.
Slavery is bad (so is bullying), it’s been a part of man’s behaviour from the begining. Even though Western nations put an end to their practice centuries ago, they must still be punished. Do you think Western nations are looking to restart the Atlantic slave trade, the Africans have plenty of slaves available.
You’ve written hundreds of words of meandering nonsense, when you could have just said “Reparations are good because they are reparations.
You could have specified the original comment you meant was to you, since without that context it’s reasonable to look at my original comment, critiquing the article.
You’re talking about punishment. That’s not what reparations are for. Speaking of nonsense, you simply don’t know what you’re typing about. Before replying again, please exert at least minimal effort and update your understanding of reparations.
You’re even more stupid than I imagined.
If you’re asking people who were not alive at the time to make compensation for an act they were not responsible for, to people who are no longer alive then I (as would most people) consider that punishment.
How do you understand nonsense, Alice has the answer:
“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn’t be. And what it wouldn’t be, it would. You see”?
Stop wasting everyones time, or you can carry on making yourself sound even more ridiculous.
“Reparations aren’t necessarily about healing trauma, although they can be part of that. They also don’t need to be exclusively financial in nature. They can be relevant and helpful despite the perpetrator/s being dead.”
Thjs is pretty vague in its response. You might be saying that reparations are relative to a group of people. You’ve said reparations may not be “exclusively” financial. What other firms might they take? If they’re not about healing trauma then what else might it be? Is it justice?
Presumably you’re pro reparations. What do you believe the objective of reparations should be?
My purpose in commenting on this Unherd piece was to point out substantial flaws in the author’s reasoning about reparations, which I think make his conclusion unconvincing. In the course of making that critique, I did indeed imply that I think reparations are a good thing, at least in principle. But I needn’t have. At any rate, an argument for reparations is distinct from my more limited purpose of questioning the author’s line of reasoning against them. You aren’t addressing that critique, but asking me to elaborate grounds for a related but distinct point, one I didn’t undertake in the first place.
I am in favour of reparations, in principle. Maybe there are good arguments against them in some cases. Maybe not. But that is a separate matter from the issue I focused on, of whether or not this author made arguments that stand up to scrutiny.
To me it just stands to reason that, yes, the nature of given reparations would be relative and therefore customized to a specific group, negotiated so as to achieve objectives that are most meaningful to them. Priority reparations for one Indigenous group I’m aware of includes cleaning up a toxic watershed caused by mining interests that simply finished business and walked away, with government blessings, leaving the people living on these traditional lands catastrophic rates of cancer, among other things. They also want whatever personal rehabilitation is still possible for the survivors.
For more information, one place to start might be the The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights at the U.N.: https://www.ohchr.org/en/transitional-justice/reparations. Or just type into the Search bar “types of reparations.”
“You aren’t addressing that critique, but asking me to elaborate grounds for a related but distinct point, one I didn’t undertake in the first place.”
That’s true, but by critiquing the article in the way you did you are disagreeing and stating your position.
The West did end slavery. Whether it took too long, or why, is beside the point. The effort of those in the West ended slavery. This you questioned as irrelevant. Which brings into question the justice of reparations and everything associated with it.
I accept your point about your critique of the author’s reasoning,
So, his conclusion which you challenge: “If in the process of discovering yourself as a nation, you are still trying to bring about “justice” for the wrongs of the bitter imperialist past, then perhaps you remain more dependent on the coloniser than you think.
You dispute his conclusion this way:
“If I “still” pursue justice in court after someone does harm to my family and steals all I had (and by the way continues to exploit that dominance) there is no reason to assume that I’m more dependent on that someone than I think.”
But if you pursue justice through reparations as a way to “heal” for instance, or any other forms that enable you to move forward in a positive way then you are acting in such a way as to say you cannot do this fully unless you receive reparations from the guilty, You are behaving in a way that makes your well-being dependent on the coloniser.
Why do you imagine that pursuing justice etc. with an external source as a way to heal is the only way a group has to heal and move forward? I’ve certainly not said or implied it. Why assume that such groups do not have, and/or are not utilizing attributes of their own to heal themselves?
I’m aware of many Indigenous groups, for example, who are, and have long been doing the lion’s share of working toward healing, quite apart from reparations, which, if they come at all, are very late in the order of things.
There is a kind of paternalistic block whereby many people only see the reparations, and assume that’s the whole of it, that these groups are wholly dependent on that resource.
My purpose in commenting on this Unherd piece was to point out substantial flaws in the author’s reasoning about reparations, which I think make his conclusion unconvincing. In the course of making that critique, I did indeed imply that I think reparations are a good thing, at least in principle. But I needn’t have, to argue the case. Regardless, an argument for reparations is distinct from my more limited purpose of questioning the author’s line of reasoning against them. You aren’t addressing that critique, but asking me to elaborate grounds for a related but distinct point, one I didn’t undertake in the first place.
I am in favour of reparations, in principle. Maybe there are good arguments against them in some cases. Maybe not. But that is a separate matter from the issue I focused on, of whether or not this author made arguments that stand up to scrutiny.
To me it just stands to reason that, yes, the nature of given reparations would be relative and therefore customized to a specific group, negotiated so as to achieve objectives that are most meaningful to them. Priority reparations for one Indigenous group I’m aware of includes cleaning up a toxic watershed caused by mining interests that simply finished business and walked away, with government blessings, leaving the people living on these traditional lands catastrophic rates of cancer, among other things. They also want whatever personal rehabilitation is still possible for the survivors.
For more information, one place to start might be the The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights at the U.N.: https://www.ohchr.org/en/transitional-justice/reparations. Or just type into the Search bar “types of reparations.”
“If I “still” pursue justice in court after someone does harm to my family and steals all I had (and by the way continues to exploit that dominance) there is no reason to assume that I’m more dependent on that someone than I think.”
I might be worthwhile defining your “”family”. Do you mean your present family or your forebears? If it was present then they would be entitled to some justice and compensation for a crime committed against them. In what way are you considering reparations for people long gone? Who receives the reparations? And if the preparations are for slavery will there be a definitive meaning of the word slavery for anyone claiming reparations? Would the English peasants under the feudal system fit within that definition?
I’m not considering reparations for people long gone or living because my purpose was to critique the author’s line of reasoning, not to make my own case for the principle of reparations. Also, I have no business considering reparations on others’ behalf. This includes reparations for things like cultural genocide which persists long after a single lifetime.
You want to discuss technicalities about the meaning of slavery. Yeah, not happening.
You’ve failed to critique the author’s line of reasoning and have done that with a load of impenetrable prose and a bunch of non-sequiturs.
None of these nations possess the cultural essentials to be other than what they are. After any amount of reparations these places will ultimately remain failured kleptocracies. By analogy, South Africa was once a best-case scenario, beginning its de-colonizing phase with a first-world caliber economy and functional institutions. It is now an unmitigated disaster. If ridding SA of apartheid and empowering the non-Europeans could not succeed there, it certainly will not in the Caribbean. Consider Haiti. No Caribbean nation has been a greater beneficiary of sustained Western humanitarian support. Billions in Western governmental and NGO aid have flowed into it over decades for the purposes of nutritional support, healthcare infrastructure, education, and economic development. All wasted. It too is hell on earth.
The “cultural essentials.” Wink, wink. Blame Haitians’ nature, don’t you know. Built in. Can’t do anything about it. They’re living in a vacuum, with no external influence. Their situation is entirely of their own making.
Oh, wait. Human Rights Watch:
There’s a lot more context to learn about, for those who actually care, and whose capacity isn’t impeded by unrecognized bigotry.
And my regular reminder that my opening comments were not intended to pursue an argument for reparations, but to point out flaws in the author’s argument against them.
A rather large volume of flatulence.
“for those who actually care”
Nothing more odious than sanctimony. It’s the standard progressive false syllogism: “We care, ergo we are correct; you disagree, ergo you don’t care”
Care to share the tangible ways in which you have so gloriously “cared” for these poor souls in the Caribbean, or is it just BS for the comments section? Been there on holiday perhaps? Left nice tips at the restaurants? Tell us how deeply you care and then I’ll stand down.
Virtue psychopathy
I understand that you need to save face now, and divert attention from the fact that the context quoted from Human Rights Watch contradicted your claim and put a mirror to your bigotry. As Unherd recommends, “think again.”
I understand that you cannot reply to the question I posed as to the particulars of your style of “caring” without exposing hypocrisy, so I have my answer. You can quote from all of the progressive web sites in the world but that changes not a whit the nature of your being. It is not familiarity with or endorsement of concepts of goodness that justify a person, but the lived expression of it. You like to call names and call me a bigot. I have worked my entire career in the physical hands-on realm of administering tangible care to the poorest, least educated, most unlucky humans of all races, most religions (or lack thereof), and many nations. I met them in person, spoke with them, touched them, and did my best to ameliorate whatever misfortune brought them to me. Every day for forty years. I am no bigot and unless you have some comparable lived experience to offer I suggest you “think again”
Not good enough, I am afraid. You are implicly assuming (presupposing) that reparations are a good thing, and then you are demanding that your opponents prove you wrong or (implicitly) concede that you are right. See e.g. comments like
(implying that reparations == justice)
or
Why should your opponents provide evidence of why repararions are bad, when you not only refuse to provide evidence in favour, but refuse to define what reparations are supposed to be good for?
If you want to discuss anything related to reparations, you need to at least provide a definition and some justification. If you just want to provide an exercise in abstract logical analysis without caring about the content of the article, you should go away and stop wasting everybody’s time.
Since I’ve never demanded that anyone prove me wrong about the value of reparations, that complaint can be set aside. I’ve also made it clear more than once that my limited purpose was to critique the author’s line of reasoning in his piece, not to argue for reparations. I said in plain English that maybe there are good arguments against reparations in some cases, but that that is a separate matter from the issue I wanted to pursue. If the author’s reasoning had been rigorous I’d have felt curious, it’s my nature, compelled to follow up and “think again” as Unherd has it. No one has seriously addressed that critique, though. I’ve engaged with people’s claims about reparations because they were provocative in their ignorance, but the whack-a-mole thing is really just a side gig.
If you say so, it must be all true (eyeroll).
Not good enough. According to standard linguistics, if you say something people are entitled to assume that it means something. By pushing so hard on the idea that the author’s reasoning is wrong (and comparing getting reparations to ‘getting justice’) you are communicating that reparations are good and justified. Refusing to own what you are plainly saying amounts to hiding behind your mothers’ skirts (or ‘throwing the stone and hiding the hand’ as the Italians say).
If you are not familiar with this kind of linguistic ideas, here is one of the standard examples:
On a small coaster, the captain one day writes in the log “Today the first mate was drunk”. The first mate took it badly, but could not refute it. The next day the first mate wrote in the log “Today the captain was sober”. Both statements were true. The first mate could not get away with insisting that he was only talking about that particular day, and what might have happened on other days was irrelevant to his argument.
As we are not our great great great times 11 grandparents, people who never owned slaves should NOT have to pay people who were never enslaved, for the crime of slavery.
Much of the wealth of the society you enjoy and take for granted every day, in the present, is built on slavery and plunder. That status continues to be supported by exploitation with less frequent and less overt forms of slavery.
Andrew, this is nonsense.
Hi Hans. There are so many sources you could use to update your understanding. The documentary record is hardly obscure. I recently finished “Cobalt Red: How The Blood Of The Congo Powers Our Lives” by Siddharth Kara. Just arbitrarily, you could start there. Grab a copy at your library. Warning: it will shake you up.
Therefore Africa must be made to suffer in perpetuity for the creation of slavery.
On the contrary, it has everything to do with it. If Jimmy hitting you in the playground gives you a million-dollar claim for reparations, then every playground fight must justify a similar reparations claim. Or, alternatively, it is up to you to prove why you, unlike every other victim of a playground fight, deserve this kind of special treatment.
It is Western Judeo-Christian tradition that the sins of the father are not imposed upon the children. This is not a Afro Centric ethic. No one alive in the “West” is responsible for slavery. There are plenty in Africa living today that still enslave innocents.
Yes, after 10,000 years of slavery the British Empire abolished it. An astonishing feat, only possible because the British had so much clout in the world at the time. It took many decades, billions in today’s money, and force and diplomacy. Why did they do it? Very strange.
There’s some great books: Britain’s War Against the Slave Trade, by Anthony Sullivan.
Royal Navy Versus the Slave Traders, by Bernard Edwards
And also, it is seldom remarked upon that 600,000 Union Soldiers died in the American Civil War to free a people who were not capable of freeing themselves and with whom they had very little in common. Most of those soldiers were volunteers who had nothing personal to gain by the abolition of slavery but went into harm’s way purely as a matter of principle. When in history had anything like that previously occurred?
The irony in the fact that it’s only because the West abolished slavery that reparations are now been demanded of them.
Reparations?
It’s more important to forgive student debt loans first.
The performance capita GDP of the Caribbean countries is significantly higher than that of the West African countries from which their distant ancestors came. So they have suffered no economic harm and no reparations are due.
I would offer them all a free one-way ticket to Benin though. Any takers?
The claim that the ‘discovery’ of the Americas led directly to the racially characterised Atlantic slave trade often overlooks the nuances of pre-modern slavery. Take, for instance, the Zanj, a Bantu-speaking people from East Africa, who were enslaved under the Abbasid Caliphate between the 7th and 9th centuries. Their treatment was notably severe compared to other groups, as they were primarily used for grueling agricultural labour. Unlike other slaves in the Caliphate, who could generally expect their freedom, the Zanj were frequently an exception, leading to the infamous Zanj Rebellion in the 9th century.
This example illustrates that the racialization of slavery was not uniquely European and challenges the simplified narrative that links it solely to the Atlantic slave trade.
Slavery is horrific, but as the author rightfully notes it has been going on for 10,000 yrs. Why is only one form the centre of criticism (and not, for example, Arab slave trading in Africa)?
Is “Andrew” Talia wearing a different hat?
Words have no fixed meaning to “Andrew” So “he” can spout off as much nonsense as possible, changing the meaning of his comments at any time to match his particular reality. Postmodern t0ss
An excellent article, with which I fully agree, as would anyone who paid any attention to history.
The debate continues but Christoper Columbus doesn’t get off the hook that easily.
Like Africa, an economic desert….
We British are constantly being criticised for our involvement with colonialism. But here’s the thing, back then everyone was playing the same game. The French colonised Ghana, the Dutch took over the East Indies, the Germans had a strangle hold over other parts of Africa. It’s just that we were better at it than everyone else.
Blaming our forebears for colonising the world is the same as blaming Spain for winning the recent Euro Championship.
Herd animals dominate this watering hole. No one has wanted to engage with the critique of the article I presented. At least, and this is not insignificant, it has been an opportunity to present dissenting views to the silent majority who, wisely, do not enter these forums.
There are too many herd animals pointing their sharp horns at me, snorting and quivering with hostility. I have disturbed the waters! Spending too much time online is not good for the soul. Especially social media forums like this. Distance and speed combine to overcome people’s better natures and potentials.
Life is too short and precious to waste at virtual watering holes. I’ve had to relearn that, sadly. I’m going to stroll down the road to the park for some morning “forest bathing” as the lovely Japanese phrase has it, and won’t return. I bid you all good fortune!
Bye bye.
It was a parody account all along…
Bored of talk of slavery of the past when slavery in the present goes ignored.