NEW YORK, USA — Three Caribbean countries — Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados and St Vincent and the Grenadines – on Saturday called for reparations for injustices suffered by African slaves and their descendants.
The prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Baldwin Spencer, said that segregation and violence against people of African descent had impaired their capacity for advancement as nations, communities and individuals.
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You savages don’t deserve cash just to buy alcohol, drugs and “pimping your ride”. Deal with it
The slave master wanted the subjugated to internalize the feeling of inferiority. There no longer needs to be a slave master. The feeling of inferiority reinforces itself. Apologies, reparations, none of these remove a personal feeling of inferiority. These feelings feed jealousy, covetousness, low levels of responsibility, and over compensating swagger and BS. No reparations will restore personal pride. No apology no matter how sincere will remove the pain of feeling poor in spirit. Only individual responsibility for the condition you find yourself in will free you to become a whole human being. Only personal application to a course of study, mastery of a skill, and accomplishment will provide the compensation we all seek. We want to love ourselves and when we do we can love others and they can return our love. That is what God wants. That is how we can love God.
“It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know that it has begun.” ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
People who talk about reparations should think first. The governments that allowed these atrocities are not in power. The people are all gone! If modern governments are being asked to pay, where do you think the money going to come from? If there ever was one dollar granted for this it would be worst injustice in history by having a 20 year old mother of two, a 45 year old father of five, a 70 year old grandfather of eight and every single other taxpayer in the countries they may be referring to on responsibility. Is it right to have modern taxpayers of all races foot the bill for some people trying to extort anything they can get? Think about it…. If your great grandfather tortured and killed my great grandfather, do I have the right to punish you? I think not! Really people think before we act………
Beore we start asking for compensation,we have to start asking the white arabs who started the slave trade,the chiefs and witch doctors who participated in the trade.Then we start asking the europeans who came after.
why when is we doin medicine its witch doctors but when is then their just doctors..they did rituals just as we did. and infact we teached them about medicine. and another thing their the ones in power so an apology from them would be of greater value.
Google this book ‘Stolen Legacy’ by George G. M. James and read at least some of it. A must-read!
very good book I have it
Reparation must come with acknowledment, apology and restitution.
Both European/USA and African leaders have apologised for the worst atrocity in “human history”.
Many African governments are making concessions but they will move faster if the Caricom,American and european civil societies increase in this demand.
While there were Africans involved in the sale of their brothers and sisters, the reason was that originally they thought the treatment would be the same treatment meted out to their workers on the continent.
That reason doesnt erase their responsibility in facilitating the europeans in their quest for securing their interest… free labour to build their empire.
Their empire has been built.
We must focus on all the present institutions who benefitted from slavery….
We are not focusing on individuals but institutions who may have changed thier names during the course of time.
Research does reveal many of them; eg. Barclays bank who changed their name to Ist Caribbean, the Vatican that have investment in coca cola and who blessed the boats for the trade because they received their cut, all european and american govts. who received taxes from the planters and traders; even the royal famillies in england and europe as a whole.
It will not be dificult to identify them. Records are there; if we are serious, it is possible.
Peace on earth is waiting for the descendants of those slaves who cant inherit from the labour(500) of their ancestors who were critical in the building up of the west.
Africans MUST BE PART OF THE COLLECTIVE SECURITY THAT IS FLOATING IN THE WIND AND HAS NO RESTING PLACE.
IN OTHER WORDS JUSTICE IS THE KEY TO PEACE.
AND BY THE WAY JUSTICE IS NOT SELECTIVE. IT IS FOR ALL
African Tribesman, you are SO WRONG!!Clearly you suffer from historical amnesia.You have become a victim of European history as mythology, as propaganda and as the creator of personality.
European mythology (hallucination) can only work against us where there is an absence of contact with reality, an absence of knowledge of AFRIKAN history. Mythology and hallucinations, such as those European history represents, can take us where it has taken us ONLY as a result of the fact that we are not in touch with reality, not in touch with our Afrikan history in a realistic sense. European history is written in such a way, or projected in such a way, that we become detached from the reality that maintains our sanity, maintains our balance and orientation. We can then fall victim to created visions and hallucinations, delusions and illusions.
In the final analysis, European history’s principal function is to first separate us from the reality of ourselves and separate us from the reality of the world; to separate us from the reality of our history and to separate us from its ramifications. We will then take the hallucinations which result from these separations as representing what is real.
That is its primary function – mythology.
And, sadly, you have allowed yourself to be entrapped in this hallucinatory statement.
I forgive you and wish you would be willing to LEARN.
You forget to mention european religion as one of the main engine for the creation of this mythology which i usually call (faitytales)
Since ‘Gonsalves told the UN that in the remaining months of this year
“we must ramp-up efforts to confront the challenges facing the people of African descent, seek justice for historical and MORDERN wrongs….”
So then, is it not also Time to ask for repatriation from the french man who has been giving away our(Dominican) mountains as quarries, road and colas contracts to fellow french men while Dominican truckers, colas workers, investors business persons…can’t get work, contracts, investment opportunities…
French arrested fishers are released/rewarded so they can continue harassing/threatening us Dominican fishers?
What is meant by:
1. “it is with DEEPEST REGRET that I make a formal application to renunciation of my french citizenship” (statement of allegiance?)
2. “thank you for your USUAL kind COOPERATION and assistance” (Is this not an admission of personal collaboration?)
Does the French government cooperate with persons who break the French law which states that working in a foreign Military or Civil service are the grounds for loss of French citizenship? Unless authorised by/given permission by the French Government.
I to agree with this however I think the repatarations should come from the original enslavers who sold our brothers to the Europeans. The white man did not go into Africa & hunt for slaves they where sold to them by BLACK AFRICAN TRIBESMEN who made huge amounts of money from the transaction. Why am I not hearing the need to get retribution from these people as well?? In my eye they where even more quilty than the white man!!!!
Makes no sense….
If I kidnap a teenager and sell her to you as a sex slave, who is responsible for her pain and suffering? Don’t you think that we are both guilty? To make matters worse, you pay me with beads, trinkets, colored cloth, guns and ammunition. Then you use this young girl to service your clients and amass a fortune 24/7, 365 days, for 4 years. Who exploits her “labour”?
Why don’t we stop these lame excuses and wake up to reality? Had there been no slave merchants and slave ships, the slave trade would be impossible. Remember too, that, African slaves were brought to the West after the enslavement and extermination of the native indians. Africans were more reliable replacements. So, stop blaming the victims.
Lord our caribbean people are thinking .praises to the government of the caribbean who have started the ball rolling .we need to jump on board. people of dominica that is why i love the haitians so much. they fought and sacrificed their all so we could be free today. free from the hands of those wicked white men. consequently they have never recuperated and we ignorant dominican are saying we do not like them.
Haiti set an example for other slave countries to fight for their freedom. And for that the french devised a plan to keep haitians and future generations of haitians as economic slaves. Haiti is still paying for that freedom from the 1800s.
Haiti use force to gain freedom and the white man tricked haitians and use the pen to re- enslave haiti.
We are still not free, move from under the whip slavery to under the pen slavery. Ask the IMF with their loans and austerity programs; which leads to economic slavery and exploitation..
omg.. i came on to DNO saw this and it just light up my life right now. this is such a passionate issuse for me and i am proud of the leaders! very pourd to be from the caribbean right now!!
At Last some real talk of freedom and compensation for the atrocities suffered at the hands and swords of our colonial enforcers.Although we are still mentaly and financially enslaved ,but we are one step closer to getting through with this.The true emancipation will come forth when the Queen’s Crowns and jewels will be once and for all broken and shared amongst the former slave colonies as a form of “Payment owed” .
God Don’t Like UGLY ….
“segregation and violence against people of African descent had impaired their capacity for advancement as nations, communities and individuals.”
I totally agree, but unfortunately we’re not white jews, so no reparations for us, sorry….
White men will never admit to their participation nor apologize for benefiting from slavery….let alone repay their monetary debt or moral/social debt to society.
Lost cause here!
i disagree
It is about time that we start looking into compensation for the many wrongs done during slavery.
To those person working behind the scene tirelessly to get the message of reparation on the UN plateform, kodos to you. This a a cause we should support because it affects all those of African decent.
West Germany paid reparations to the Jews for persecution, lost property and forced labour during the holocaust. Japanese Americans were paid reparation for internment during World War II. What did black people get after 400 years of slavery followed by another century of neocolonialism?
Was it by accident that the Jews have so much influence in American politics with their largess? Our ancestors were uprooted, raped, brutalized and many,even murdered. The slave masters who “lost” their slaves were compensated. The promise of 40 acres and a mule never materialized. Today we are enslaved by the debt the imperialists impose upon us. It’s about time we stand up and demand cancellation of our debt and reparation for past injustices.
there is strengh in numbers,please tell me that the rest of the carribean leaders are involved.
That is so true, Dominica should jump on board!!!! The Native Americans in America gets reparations and so should blacks!!
laws are not retroactive, and we weren’t the only race, it must be said, as shown by the history books, to be slaves. foolish proposition, in my way of thinking. what we should try to do is advance or pioneer novel aspects in science and technology which, i think, in the first instance, caused us to be asking for this payment now; rather we are requesting compensation from the enslavers. It just shows the racial inferiority to the Caucasians. We are all idiots as ‘Afro-WestIndians’ if no single person has recognizes this. we are all a product of western civilization ( the white man laboratory), and have scarcely made any significant transformation to them — their science, politics, religion, education, etc., we are all in their laboratory as now voluntary guinea pigs.
what are you really saying?
It is true that Africans were in many cases (though not all) the vehicle by which the Europeans received other African slaves (and, furthermore, African tribes themselves frequently possessed their own slaves, though their conditions were not as lamentable as in the colonies), and many races have practiced slavery in some form (the Caribs would capture Arawaks, primarily their women, though it is true once more that the conditions they were placed in were different from the colonists’). Still, it’s also true that the colonists’ forms of slavery, as practiced in their own colonies with the slaves they received from the African merchants and collectors, were nonetheless the most brutal on record, and, if anyone has the possible right to ask for reparation, it is those of African descent in the Americas. But the fact is that the colonists are no longer around, and even if parties who feel guilty are able to issue more than an apology (that is, financial assistance), what will that do? Make us feel better? I think you have a point about our lack of achievements, though it is also true that, given our historical situation, it is not shocking that we have taken much longer to develop than nations that have had greater freedoms and opportunities for the kind of advancement you mention. With that said, we need to bring the Caribbean into the present century; it is THAT, above all, that will make us something. Financial assistance might be able to help us do this, yes, but we need more than that. We need the mentality to learn about the past and present and the desire to look into the future. We need competent artists and scientists. We need people who are not simpletons and psychopaths and fundamentalists. We need to show the rest of the world that yes, we too are capable of creating great things, that we are not an incompetent, inferior people. We need, in short, a vast change.
But we are stuck in a sad cycle whereby those who can leave to pursue higher education abroad rarely wish to come back, as there are few to no opportunities readily available in the island, and those who do not or cannot pursue higher education abroad tend to be skepetical of or even display hatred towards those who get the chance. There is a strong anti-intellectualism on this island–perhaps largely because so few people on it have gotten the chance to really get educated. This is not something we can change overnight; and, frankly, I don’t know how it can be changed. Financial assistance won’t brush this away overnight.
its about time this becomes an international agenda. However with the current economic crisis, we will have to cry blood before anything is done.