...When economists debate why some countries are poor and others are rich, they often focus on the cultural, political or economic structures of poor countries. But historians of the Caribbean have long argued that national inequality is a direct result of centuries of economic exploitation.

The foundations for this argument go back to a 1944 book by the Trinidadian historian Eric Williams, “Capitalism and Slavery.”...

His argument, that the profits from the slave trade and slavery were the foundation for Britain’s Industrial Revolution, spurred decades of debate and research, and today there are hundreds of books documenting slavery’s profound impact on the modern world.

But knowing is one thing; figuring out what to do is another...

...Despite the rightness of the Caribbean nations’ claim, European governments are likely to respond similarly this time. If Caricom accepts this approach, the call for reparations may ultimately just come to play a strategic role within international negotiations over aid and trade...

...Just as important, the discussions around reparations — in the Caribbean as in Europe — might become an occasion to delve into history, to mourn but also confront the many ways in which the past continues to shape the present.

What would it mean to truly rid our world of the legacies of slavery? In the Caribbean, it would mean undoing the divisions created by colonialism, through regional economic cooperation and reduced dependence on foreign aid and foreign banks...

...In Europe and the United States, it would mean abandoning condescending visions of the Caribbean and building policies on aid, trade and immigration based on an acceptance of common and connected histories.

To Enlist Further Into The Debate, Read More @:

New York Times Opinion Piece:
www.nytimes.com/2013/10/29/opinion/international/confronting-the-legacies-of-sla very.html

Z, thank you so much for posting this article. FINALLY an international, current foray into the Truth behind modern-day Caribbean. Yes We Can.

That Times piece is very informative. Haiti had to pay reparations to the French colonialists for the property obtained at independence. Outrageous. We seem to have forgotten the use to which all colonies were put: a place to despoil and deprive of wealth to the sole enrichment of the colony's conquerors/owners. To consider "benefits" of colonization is hypocrisy.

Z, colonialism did not divide the Caribbean, we were not even here before colonialism.

Without getting too political for the moderators of this site, it ought to be observed that at the height of slavery in the US, the value of the "gross" national product, derived from slavery, was the greatest dollar value than from any other sector of the entire economy. No matter your political leanings, the philosopher Karl Marx has contributed a ton to the analysis of the behaviours of capital & labour in market economies. When discussing the endless reserve army of cheap labour, could any have been cheaper than in the 19th century cotton fields of Louisiana or the sugar plantations in the Caribbean?
Sound familiar...in the current global outsourcing of labour to the cheapest competitor, often in sweat-shop conditions, with little environmental oversight.

In a current negotiating chamber, depending on who is at the power-table, it could be assumed that in this day & age, the idea of Reparations (monetary compensation to whom & from whom), loaded with blame & shame, may not get very far.
National Restitution, on the other hand, as a moral concept of responsibility, community and sharing (debt relief/forgiveness; economic development standards...) may mean more in this Caribbean Initiative of 15 governments, long under the aegis of European colonial rule.

When you take into consideration that perhaps 5% of the total slave trade ended up in the US versus about 45% in the Caribbean countries, whose majority populations are descended from the legacy of slavery, Justice may have a day.

Then, a new Reality may rise with the sun: Europe is in Debt to the Caribbean nations, not the other way around.


12 Years A Slave...Here comes a powerful nuanced movie on the bitterness, violence, systematic beneficial "labour practice", social disintegration & self-denial of a people by Steve McQueen, a British director of Grenadian descent. McQueen's film & art school background has led to personalized experimentations with the nature of film and its social/political/identity/sexual ramifications. Multiple & successive walls of galleries/museums have often been his staging ground.


12 Years A Slave Movie Trailer:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIqodUJ-UfM

A Master Class (Theatrically Speaking) in "Unlearning Slavery"...In the film, 12 Years A Slave, the brutality bestowed by one human upon another, regarded as property, under the misguided promotion of the Christian Bible, will lacerate one's belief in freedom-loving, human-rights aspirations to the core.

There's a scene, in which a woman, a favourite of a slaveholder, who picks substantially more cotton than any other of her slave companions, and forced by him into sexual compliance, is whipped within an inch of her life. And who applies this barbaric punishment...the conflicted, pained slave-protagonist of the story, who is threatened with extinction of himself and perhaps others in his situation, if he doesn't forcefully execute the lash.
The supposed reason for the woman's punishment is presented as psychologically complicated, but the immediate provocation is that she went off to a neighbouring plantation to procure a bar of soap to bathe her body in a little perfumed dignity.

Editorial: What Art Says About The Nation's Past:
http://news.investors.com/print/ibd-editorials-on-the-left/110413-677853-art-rev eals-ugly-american-history.aspx

"Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds!...the greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively...Life is one big road with lots of signs. So when you riding through the ruts, don't complicate your mind. Flee from hate, mischief and jealousy. Don't bury your thoughts, put your vision to reality. Wake Up and Live!...Live for yourself and you will live in vain; Live for others, and you will live again...Just because you are happy it does not mean that the day is perfect but that you have looked beyond its imperfections...Light Up The Darkness.
--Bob Marley


A man living in Flankers, South Side, Majesty Gardens, Tivoli, or any one of our socially and economically excluded communities goes off into a wooded area and returns with a log. Day in and day out he sits chipping and carving away. To the moralising passer-by he appears to be a time waster who could better use his energy searching for the job that does not exist.

With the passage of time, the man's chipping and carving transforms the log to a form bearing human likeness. The snickering and snide remarks stop. No one remembers this man ever entering the gates of Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts. By the time he adds the varnishes, he has created a work of art. Yet he is unable to send his children to school.

If he travels to a resort area and tries selling the product of his creative genius he is labeled a common hustler and accused of harassing tourists. His stall is smashed and he is driven away like that mongrel dog that everybody kicks, back from whence he came. If he goes into a lending institution seeking a loan to invest in establishing a modest facility to produce the items and train a few boys from the community, he quickly realises that loans are for people who already have money to put up for collateral.

So he sits; no longer chipping and carving, but pondering what options he has to provide for himself and his family. The anguish does not inevitably lead to a life of crime, but the link between the two is unmistakable.

Read More in Observer: A Paradigm Shift in Economic Development
www.jamaicaobserver.com/pfversion/A-paradigm-shift-in-economic-development_15394 472


"You never know how strong you are, until being strong is your only choice.” -- Bob Marley

"The power of philosophy floats through my head.. light like a feather, heavy as lead.” -- Bob Marley

I saw 12 Years a Slave last week. It may have been an adequate depiction of the brutalities of slavery in the southern United States about 1860, but it was almost too brutal to take. And I am a white guy. No matter the historical significance and realism, don't take your kids.

Why the sudden interest in something which has been abolished over a century ago? Often the conditions have been exaggerated for effect.

Archie...Which side of amnesia are you on?

While acknowledging that “clearly slavery was abhorrent” Mark Simmonds (UK Minister for Africa, the Overseas Territories, the Caribbean & International Energy) wants the world to focus, not on the past, but on eradicating the practice where it still exists in the 21st century.

“The UK lobbied very hard for the United Nations to set up a special rapateur as it relates to slavery and we’re keen to work together with all governments, wherever they are to eradicate this particular aspect” he added.

Simmonds who was in Jamaica to drum up new social and economic ties between his country and its former colony, wants all parties “to focus on where our commonalities agree and I think that is eradicating slavery as it exists today, also building on the importance of driving the economy and economic development and economic growth."


This suggested approach did not impress Professor Verene Shepherd, Chair of Jamaica’s National Commission on Reparations.

“First of all, the Minister (Simmonds) is clearly ignorant about the form and impact of British colonialism in Jamaica, or he is displaying a willed ignorance” she said, when asked for a response.

Shepherd, Professor of Social History at the University of the West Indies (Mona), affirmed that “the transatlantic trade in African captives and African enslavement were crimes against humanity; in international law, there is no statute of limitation on a crime against humanity.”

She said “using the excuse that these crimes happened too long ago to have contemporary relevance cannot stand in international law. Those who believe in social justice will continue to keep the issue alive. The royal family and others benefitted from the profits of slavery, so they have a responsibility to pay reparation.”

The sentiments expressed by Mark Simmonds in Jamaica, she said, constituted “simply trotting out the old script handed to all civil servants, government ministers and High Commissioners sent down to Jamaica. That script was crafted by the Tony Blair administration in 2007 and it continues to be used in 2013.”

While agreeing that “modern day slavery” must be condemned and eradicated, she insisted that the British must be reminded of “their historic sins and their obligation to make amends.”

Compensation Package:
Estimates of the money that could be owed to the Caribbean in 2013 run as high 7.5 trillion pounds, three trillion of which Shepherd says is owed to Jamaica.

Acknowledging that this might be unaffordable, she is suggesting reparation could be a part of the development package that the Minister (Simmonds) spoke about during his Jamaica trip.

"Helping Jamaica to develop and be placed on a more sustainable economic path can be part of a negotiated settlement. No amount of money can compensate for their wickedness to our ancestors, but they can find ways to repair our societies through infrastructural development and fiancé repatriation."

For Further Discussion Add Your OWN & Read More @:
http://rjrnewsonline.com/local/british-ministers-comments-on-reparations-for-sla very-dismissed-by-jamaican-academic

Slavery was not considered a crime against humanity back then, so the Professor is talking nonsense. Our ancestors participated in it as well so ask them to pay for their 'wickedness' too. Modern day slavery should be fought against, reparations is not reasonable at this stage.

Archie...Undoubtedly, any discussion about Reparations to a class of people or nation-state from other such entities, in an International Courts of Law (which did not exist at the time of the grievance-crime (dare we say holocaust), runs smack into the legal concepts of precedence, standing, jurisdiction,,,

I find it interesting, & an imaginative stretch, that the formerly liberal Jewish-American magazine, Commentary, concedes the legalistic argument for reparations from Germany to the state of Israel (which did not exist until after WW2) for their Holocaust.

Archie...Here is their A Slavery Reparations opinion that seems to sway with you:

For a start there is the issue of what lawyers call standing: Most of these nations did not even exist when slavery was abolished, a process that began with the British Parliament passing the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in 1807.
No doubt many Caribbean citizens are descendants of former slaves, but quite a few also have ancestors who were European; conjugal relations between masters and slaves were hardly unknown. Should the large number of mixed-race West Indians receive reparations with one hand and pay them out with the other?

The problems with this legal action hardly end there. Reparations are generally accorded when nations take actions which are illegal and unethical under prevailing standards of international law.
This, for example, is why it is appropriate for Germany to pay reparations to victims of the Holocaust or for Japan to pay reparations to former comfort women. But slavery was hardly against international law when it flourished in the Caribbean in the 18th century. In fact, slavery had been widely accepted since antiquity and practiced not only by Europeans but by Africans, Arabs, Asians, and many other cultures.
It still exists in many places today.

Commentary Link:
www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/10/22/reparations-for-europe-slave-trade

For the sake of debate & dialectics, what standing, precedent, jurisdiction (moral or otherwise) do the Caribbean nation states (which were mainly colonies for the duration of sanctioned slavery), retroactively have to address grievances to populations which are rainbows of ethnic mixing?

How is the scale of the "crime", bleating for justice, best described?:

I fully believe that there are legitimate moral reasons for the payment of reparations to African peoples by those who were responsible for the instigation of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. During the barbarous period of the slave trade, at least thirteen million Africans were illegally transported from the shores of West Africa to the Western Hemisphere. Of those thirteen million, approximately 11,328,000 were delivered to the New World, amounting to the trans-shipment murder of approximately 1,672,000 persons of 13% or the cargo.
These are extremely conservative figures that do not truly account for the murders entailed.

A Modern Legal Reparations Precedent:

When harm has been inflicted, a cause of action can be created in the law for the satisfaction of that claim of harm. Reparations have been paid for the harm inflicted on a class or race of people.
For example, since World War II, Germany has paid at least 88 billion Deutsche Marks in reparations to the state of Israel and will pay another 20 billion (2) Deutsche Marks by the year 2005.
The United States Government has paid $1.2 billion or $20,000 per person for each Japanese American illegally imprisoned in American concentration camps during World War II.
Further, the American government has issued an apology for the illegal imprisonment of the Japanese in America.
Presently, the Chinese have discussed the possibility of suing the government of Japan for the atrocities committed during the capture of the city of Nanking, which resulted in the systematic murder of more than 300,000 Chinese by Japanese soldiers during World War II.

"Comfort women" from Korea who were forced into prostitution during World War II by the Japanese have similarly organized to sue the government of Japan for reparations. A legal suit for reparations to a race of peoples has been recognized in international, German, and American law.
States may be held liable for damages caused to a class or race of peoples. The case of reparations paid to Japanese Americans by the American government and the case of reparations paid to Israel by Germany establish those precedents.

As The "World" Watches: Genocide, as Defined by the "Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948)"
The Convention defines "genocide" as the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group by (a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group c) deliberately inflicting on the group the conditions of life calculated to bring about its destruction in whole or in part; (d) imposing measures to prevent births within the group; or (e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group" (3). Although this Convention defining genocide exists, the critical question for the reparations movement is whether the states that have suffered because of the slave trade can sue in a court of justice to satisfy their claim for reparations.


By the way Archie, as difficult as the legal issues of standing & litigants (including, lost to history, slaver marauders of every stripe capturing & trading on the continent of Africa?):
The International Court of Justice also has no apparent statute of limitations. So, the fact that the original harm created by the slave trade occurred in previous centuries does not provide an obstacle to litigation.

If Curious About Genocide/Reparations Deliberations Read More @: African Studies Quarterly
www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v2/v2i4a3.htm

Were the slave traders seeking black Africans, or were they seeking non Christians or pagans who could work in tropical conditions? West Africa was geographically near and offered a supply of pagans who happened to be black.

Were the scriptures interpreted to suite economic wants?

If so, there is a further charge of tampering with the bible of King James.

I give thanks everyday for being born on the Rock. I most likely would not be here were it not for the African Slave Trade, the Spanish Inquisition or the clearances in Ireland.

I hope those who are living on the proceeds of my African's blood, sweat and tears, begin listening to their consciences and allow the various flows of capitol, expertise, goodwill and resources to be directed to populations whose growth has been inhibited by past arrangements.

Now for the Vatican and the Spanish and British monarchies. Maybe the Pope has the key to the family home stashed somewhere.

We should be more concerned about the slavery our leaders are putting us under than the enslavement of our ancestors. They are now free we are not.