The United Nations General Assembly has voted to recognise the enslavement of Africans during the transatlantic slave trade as “the gravest crime against humanity”, a move advocates hope will pave the way for healing and justice.
The resolution - proposed by Ghana - called for this designation, while also urging UN member states to consider apologising for the slave trade and contributing to a reparations fund. It does not mention a specific amount of money.
The proposal was adopted with 123 votes in favour and three against - the United States, Israel and Argentina.
Countries like the UK have long rejected calls to pay reparations, saying today’s institutions cannot be held responsible for past wrongs.
I get it is extremely important to remember how bad the transatlantic slave trade was, but I think reparations after two centuries makes no sense. You cannot track responsibility 10 generations separated, you cannot track beneficiaries in a globalized world. Countries not involved in slave trade got indirect benefits through commerce, countries involved are instead not benefiting today from that historic trade. Slavery was common everywhere in the world for millennia. I find it hard to even begin to quantify a reasonable approach to a reparation framework that would work in the context of all the human tragedies in the last 5 centuries.
I agree there are challenges with economic reparations but I do want to point out that the transatlantic slave trade was different from slavery as practiced throughout human history.
It was more cruel than even slavery practiced in ancient Greece and Rome (civilizations which Western nations like to harken back to).
European colonial powers firmly believed in and propagated a global race based caste system. This itself is a crime against humanity but they put into practice the subjugation of people with darker skin, defining them as less human as justification for their enslavement.
Throughout history many civilizations thought other peoples to be inferior or barbaric. But there has not been a global race based caste system based on complexion as colonial era Europeans practiced it.
Entire fields of false science such as phrenology and eugenics sprung from this dogmatic belief in skin tone defining ones worth. The culmination of this vile ‘purity’ ideology was Nazi Germany and even with the end of that movement, we have not seen the end white supremacist ideology.
This is a very unique problem that still has horrific reverberations to this day. I would not be so quick to absolve European colonial powers and their descendant nation states who still benefit from neocolonialism today. Reparations is a complex issue but I think verbal acknowledgment of accountability and an honest teaching of history would be a start in those nations that have been ongoing beneficiaries of these inhumane institutions.
To summarize, I’ll leave you with quotes representative of the worldview of one of the most revered figures in modern colonial/Western history:
"I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place."
"I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion."
"I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses: gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror."
"I think we shall have to take the Chinese in hand and regulate them… I believe that as the civilized nations become more powerful they will get more ruthless, and the time will come when the world will impatiently bear the existence of great barbaric nations who may at any time arm themselves and menace civilized nations."
Winston Churchill
While I agree in part with the sentiment, I think is totally unfair to consider ancient slavery in Greece or Rome as less cruel. It was not less cruel depending on the slave in question. Slaves in mines and agricultural estates were in worse conditions then anything in American south. But if you were an educated slave then your life was indeed better. That also means that was common for slaves in ancient Rome to be able to buy freedom. Slavery was everywhere in society, so the comparison is really hard to make.
There is indeed a racial component in colonial slavery that was not present in ancient Roman slavery. A slave could be from Germany or from Syria and there was no difference in treatment.
I would say that both late trans-atlantic slavery and nazism share a philosophical root in the eugenetic movement, but both grew in parallel with different motives: in one case a justification for economic exploitation, in the other an ideological tool to enforce unity in nationalism.
The transatlantic slave trade started before the concept of race and the eugenetic movement. During the 15th century the justification was more routed in religion and the idea of having prisoner of war being better then to kill the enemy. Still and excuse for economic exploitation, but maybe more akin to what the greeks and romans were doing.
black people live in slums in my colonial country and many of the exploited african nations.
start by letting them access to at least 20th century amenities and dignified work instead of finding every moral excuse not to.
this thread is full of sensitive westerners born on slave trader countries still rich on the spoils (and sometimes still benefiting from it).
I am a westerner, born in a non slave trader country that never existed before the 1860s. The country before was not a slaver country. The country before that was client state of a slaver country, but just for 20 years! The one before that was not a slaver country. Going event further the country before that was still not a slaver country. Then it was not even a country and still not a slaver one. This until the 1200s when we abolished slavery, so I guess that before then slavery was somewhat ok, but was white people slaves so I do not think that counts.
I think we never became rich on the spoils. We were definitely richer in the 1200s (we were so rich we paid for the slaves to be free!) and for some centuries after that. That was definitely our golden age I would say. Post war recovery after 1960 was also good, but mainly driven by local mechanical industries, not spoils I am afraid.
contradictory so far
your lack of understanding of history does not constitute contradiction
your racism does not constitute understanding of history.
I have said nothing racists, so which part of history is incorrect?
the part where you think black people don’t deserve any kind of help for still being fucked by western racism, with the excuse you can’t keep track of it.
the “you are a white westerner” part was an educated guess based on that opinion.
Never said black people don’t deserve any kind of help. That is just stupid. What I said is:
What I agree is:
I see nothing racist in this opinion, but please enlighten me. The only one talking all the time about black and white is actually you
are the descendants of the enslaved people still suffering from it? are the descendants of the enslavers still benefitting from it? yes?
then reparations should be paid.
It’s been too long, and who exactly are you going to blame or get reparations taken from? Hell; If memory serves it was other black people who were gathering up and selling the black people into the slave trade. What you gonna do? Give $40 a piece to 50,000,000 black people, along with an I’m sorry card?
How do you determine who is descended of enslaved and enslaver? How do you identify who is benefitting today for something that happened 500 years ago? How do you deal with people that descend from both enslavers and enslaved? There is a long thread about this. Ultimately it is not possible to do what you are asking. Should a farmer in Turkey pay for the benefit the ottoman empire got from slave trade to a white looking mixed american of west african descent? You realize how stupid that sound?
the states would be paying those reparations, not the people individually
european states should pay reparations to the nations they colonized and enslaved, and colonial states (the usa, canada…) should pay reparations to their colonized populations.
And where do ‘the states’ get their money? Taxes. You’d still be taxing the people to pay for reparations
so? why should they live in the comfort their enslavement created while the majority of third world countries contend with poverty caused by their continued imperialism?
Do you realize the immense hypocrisy in your argument? Collectively punish a group of people, who did no wrong, based solely on where they’re born because people hundreds of years ago were dicks.
do you not realize the immense hypocrisy of yours?
collectively punishing the majority of the world today from consequences of your shit, just so you don’t have to take responsibility for it?
it may or may not be your fault, but the state of colonies and neocolonies is still your responsibility.
‘If white, then pay reparations’ is their answer
You don’t have to look at everything in terms of individual responsibility. We can clearly see that the injustices caused by transatlantic slavery, and imperialism more broadly, are very much still here. I think it would be nice to try to remedy this.
Of course, it’s non-binding, and the countries that should probably be paying reparations just happen to have all abstained (except for the rogue USA of course, voting against) so I don’t expect anything will happen. But it’s a nice idea.
I think it would be reasonable to consider reparations for individual descendants of slaves. There are plenty of people alive today that can prove their descendance from a slave.
Reparations to entire countries in Africa seems a bit absurd to me.
Actually they can easily restitute African countries for the immense damages they were caused.
But restituting the victims of slavery is inconvenient for the empire, while an atrocity like the Holocaust can be abused to fund and raise support for Israel.
That is easy because the Holocaust was between 1941 and 1945 and reparation were between 1952 and 1953. It is the same government, the same people, the same generation. The atrocity is clearly defined in time and space, and can be somewhat measured. Nonetheless, even in a “clear as day” situation, lot of opposition came to be part of this process, with this being a very difficult agreement to reach. Doing that 200 to 600 years apart, across multiple nation, multiple people, multiple culture, is borderline impossible and would settle anything. You cannot make it just for the hebrews with that reparations, you cannot with slave trade either. Same apply to WW2 reparation, Mongol conquest reparation (sound silly just to think about it), or induced famine in China and the Soviet Union.
“induced famine in china and soviet union” lmfao, are you fr
Transatlantic slavery is easily traceable to the countries which committed it and which suffered from it. The time period is irrelevant. In fact Israelis are primarily the Jews which didn’t suffer from the Holocaust because they went to colonize Palestine instead of staying in Germany. So your argument works against you.
Should today citizen of Portugal (under the 1976 Republic) be accountable for the legal (at the time) actions of the Portuguese Crown? Should the citizen of Benin be accountable for the atrocities committed by Dahomey to secure the slaves from nearby tribes? Are the people of Benin both beneficiary and responsible for that? How much? Should Brazil pay for the action of the Portuguese Crown? Should Italy pay because the Republic of Genoa bankers benefited from the loans and contracts with the Portuguese merchants? How much is an Italian descendent from a Venetian born in today Croatia responsible for the sins of Genoese banker that finances the Portuguese crown to pay the Imbangala people to capture slaves?
Yes they should at least pay some reparations. Now why is Germany sending money to Israel?
reply to the entire question if you can, and bring a reasonable justification about who and how much should pay to who. We have Italian descendent from Dalmatia, we have Brazilian descendent from Portugal, we have people from Angola descendent from Imbangala, Benin people descendent from Dahomey, that needs to pay how much to other people from Angola and Benin?
Countries in Africa are still suffering from the consequences of Western slavery. The entire countries as a whole, not taking into account the people. The only reason Africa is still underdeveloped is because of Western slavery and colonialism.
(Primarily black) communities in the West could also be given restitution funds to make up their deficiency in socio-economic status caused by past discrimination
You are still not saying who should pay. The west? Is Poland, Italy, Germany, Greece, Norway, Finland, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, and tens more supposed to pay for the past government of Britain, France, the US, Denmark, the Netherland, Spain and Portugal? Should also Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia, Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Sudan pay for the trans-saharan slave trade?
What exactly is “Western” slavery, and how does it differ in your view from other forms of slavery?