National reparations commissions in the region will also approach Lloyd’s of London and the Church of England with demands of financial payments and reparative justice for their historic role in slavery.
Inconvenient truth. Africans captured and sold other Africans to slave traders. The 'white devils' did not sneak into the African interior and steal them away, they waited for them to be brought to the coast. Still an awful practice, but the question has to be asked, "Why not demand reparations from modern day African nations?"
JasSmith@kbin.social 1 year ago
This is getting silly now. We’ve agreed for thousands of years that children aren’t responsible for the sins of their fathers. This attempt to resurrect Babylonian era values is absurd. Critical thinking is clearly absent in modern schooling.
Blake@feddit.uk 1 year ago
It has nothing to do with punishing children for the sins of their fathers, it’s about paying people for the work they did. Living descendants of slave owners still benefit today from the unpaid labour, to pay reparations isn’t a punishment, it’s the smallest possible attempt to make the victims of slavery whole.
JasSmith@kbin.social 1 year ago
Okay, so pay slaves for the work they did. But we can’t, because they’re long dead. So that’s not what you’re asking at all. You’re asking for people who never owned slaves to pay people who were never slaves. Not all British white people are wealthy as a result of historical slavery. In fact, most British were dirt poor and never owned any slaves at all. Today, their ancestors remain dirt poor. You’d ask them to pay recompense for something for which neither they nor their ancestors are guilty.
I’m white and of Irish descent. My ancestors were subject to genocide under the Irish Potato Famine. Am I morally owed restitution? Further back, my ancestors were subject to slavery along the North African coast and Middle East for hundreds of years in the Barbary slave trade. Am I owed reparations from the numerous countries involved in that? To me it quickly becomes apparent that any feigned moral outrage begins and stops at white people. Everyone’s ancestors are guilty of atrocities if we go back far enough. Everyone’s ancestors were subject to atrocities as well.
byroon@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The UK government was still paying off former slaveowners as recently as a few years ago
RobotToaster@infosec.pub 1 year ago
Paying off the loan they took out to compensate the slave owners for their “property” to be more precise.
As repugnant as that was, it was still preferable to the terrible waste of life the USA endured fighting a civil war over slavery.
JasSmith@kbin.social 1 year ago
Yes they made a financial commitment to various states, companies, and individuals to compensate slave owners for their financial loss when Britain ended the slave trade. I think that was pragmatic and commendable. I don’t see how that addresses me comment.