British PM David Cameron basically says "no" to reparations for Jamaica
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They paid the African chiefs for their prisoners. They weren't free. You should be demanding something from Africa for selling your ancestors
Even if you got repatriations - where is the money going to go? To a new school or in the pockets of a few corrupt politicians?
If your ancestors weren't brought over, your parents wouldn't have met and you wouldn't have been born.
Why did the British government pay the former slave owners and not the actual workers?
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I think you know the answer. The British government set out to end slavery in all places under its jurisdiction and did so out of general principles (which is pretty remarkable). In order to accomplish that, it was felt necessary to compensate people for the loss of their property. Of course we no longer accept that humans can or should be the property of other humans, but what the British were doing is trying to get from point A to point B. In other words, they were moving to the idea that slavery was no longer legitimate, and compensation for loss made it politically and practically possible to do so.
Yes, the slaves had endured the loss of their freedom, while the slave owners were enduring only a financial loss (loss of property for which they had paid). So it can be argued that the former slaves were more deserving of compensation than the former slave owners. But that was not done at the time for reasons which probably included both racism and practicality, and doing it now is problematic on many levels including the basic unfairness of punishing people through taxation for something they didn't do.
In other words, get over it and move on and NO to the compensation you people seek.
Why this is a painful insult to Jamaicans and others in the Caribbean from French Guiana to the Bahamas, is because, England, for one, paid former slave owners for the loss of their free labor by ending slavery in the early 1800s. What did the former enslaved peoples receive? Not one penny.
To add insult to injury, in less than a week he attends a somber ceremony in commeration of the Holocaust and reminds England NOT TO FORGET the Holocaust, a horrific event that led to repatriations for both familes of the deceased and survivors. Go figure that one out.
Well first of all I cannot tell if you object to any form of so called "reparations", or that is was essentially done to appease the slave owners of the time. In theory if you object to one wrong, then you cannot say it should be done again, regardless of the first wrong.
That said, I really disagree with what I highlighted in orange. They received their freedom, which you cannot put a price on. Sure they should not have been put into slavery in the first place. However the pragmatic solution to end the practice at the time was to pay off the slave owners. Presumably it was a better solution than bloodshed (i.e. the American Civil War), wouldn't you agree?
As to what I highlighted in red, not only was WWII at lot more recent than slavery, but those reparations were paid not by Britain, but by the Germans. So you cannot conflate the two disparate events in history.
I will end this post asking a question of you.
How far back it too long to address aggrieved ancestors?
For example, should the Jews of today be able to demand Egypt pay for their enslavement back several thousand years ago.
Should the Irish of today be able to get reparations from England/Britain for attempted genocide of the Cromwellian era of savagery against them 350 years ago or so.
The point is that slavery ended 150 years ago or so.
Thus how far back should reparations be afforded to the ancestors of aggrieved peoples?
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Reading everything it seems this discussions comes up quite regularly with various groups, everyone at some point seems to feel that they have been exploited and due compensation. Do people who were exploited as indentured servants or assigned to debtors prison have the right to compensation? Where is the justice of paying someone who is generations removed from the injustice, does it really right a wrong or just placate a squeaky wheel? The holocaust survivors are brought up as an example but here the actual person affected is most often bringing the argument not their relative 20 times removed.
As the above poster said "Thus how far back should reparations be afforded to the ancestors of aggrieved peoples?" I would have to agree.
Why this is a painful insult to Jamaicans and others in the Caribbean from French Guiana to the Bahamas, is because, England, for one, paid former slave owners for the loss of their free labor by ending slavery in the early 1800s. What did the former enslaved peoples receive? Not one penny.
I hear what you are saying but let me play a devil's advocate for a minute. Isn't their freedom what the former enslaved peoples received thanks to the payments to the slave owners? We all know that a government cannot simply confiscate something of great financial value to citizens for nothing and face no resistance or consequence. It is also a common law concept that a government cannot take property from its citizens without reasonable compensation and, as we know, back then slaves were considered just property. Looking at it another way, didn't the white citizens and subjects of England essentially pay (by way of higher taxes, ultimately) to have the slaves freed?
Now, I am not some black militant and I do not hate white people or go around preaching hatred toward them. If I can use a famous line - "I have many white friends." Still, there are just some things that get under my skin about race relations that are not easy to overlook and one of them was the recent visit of British Prime Minister, David Cameron to Jamaica.
While he was there, leaders of that country confronted him with the topic of repatration. His response:
"I do hope that, as friends who have gone through so much together since those darkest of times, we can move on from this painful legacy and continue to build for the future.”
In other words, get over it and move on and NO to the compensation you people seek.
Why this is a painful insult to Jamaicans and others in the Caribbean from French Guiana to the Bahamas, is because, England, for one, paid former slave owners for the loss of their free labor by ending slavery in the early 1800s. What did the former enslaved peoples receive? Not one penny.
To add insult to injury, in less than a week he attends a somber ceremony in commeration of the Holocaust and reminds England NOT TO FORGET the Holocaust, a horrific event that led to repatriations for both familes of the deceased and survivors. Go figure that one out.
One dude who made off like a bandit during slavery and the aftermath was John Gladstone, a big time slave owner in British Guiana (Guyana today). He had already made a fortune during the slave era, but with the help of his son (who would become Prime Minister of England FOUR times), he managed to get the British government to pay him some 50-80 million dollars (in today's money) for the loss of his free labor. He took some of that money and turned around and recreated a modified form of slavery, by selling half baked promises to laborers from India to go on an all expense paid "luxury cruise" to the tropical Caribbean where they could start and find a better life. These people, known as the "Glastone Kulis" (known as "coolies" today in the Caribbean, but an insulting name, referring to the Kuli people in India who are at the lowest rung of Indian society) basically walked into a nightmare as the promises did not necessarily materialize as promised. Yet, Gladstone got what he wanted and managed to keep his plantation system going for next to nothing.
So, while it would be wrong and unfair to "shake down" all white people in Western Europe to pay the descendants of former enslaved peoples, as it would also be a logistical mess, it is an idea to track down ALL of the current families living in luxury from all that old slave money and pool a percentage of that money together and hand it over to the treasury of the 14 Caribbean islands seeking repartriation. That goes for Denmark too which saddled my U.S Virgin Islands (as they are known today) with their instituion of slavery. These monies could be earmarked to build up infrastructure, pay off debts, etc. So, as we would say in the Caribbean, David Cameron too outta order wid 'im bright self!! In great part, western Europe is what it is today because of the stolen wealth and free labor they received on the backs of the native population and the African population they dragged in to build their respective empires.
And these descendents/beneficiaries of past atrocities also have the gall to condemn others for their "violations of human rights" and act lie they are the defenders of what's true, just and fair....indeed.
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