Because the people who have been slaves have been dead a century:
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]”If under the Constitution we compensate people because we take their property, why wouldn’t you compensate people who actually were property?” he said.[/perfectpullquote]It’s also true that those who gained the benefit of their being property have also been dead a century. There’s no one alive who suffered directly as a slave, no one alive who gained directly from enslaving.
All of which is a reasonable answer to this:
As to the larger answer about reparations this is the major point:
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””] This lets lies survive even in the words of those fighting against them. After denouncing “genocidal whiteness”, Coates demands “reparations” for slavery. Consider the following thought experiments. – Suppose the US government tells Mr Coates they have just learned he was in fact born in Senegal and adopted as a tiny infant by his US parents, who neglected the relevant legalities – so he is not a US citizen and should depart for his true country. In this thought experiment, Mr Coates’ true parents were not descended from slaves sold to white traders on the West African coast centuries ago. His true ancestors did not suffer from “genocidal whiteness”. How much money would Mr Coates spend on lawyers and investigators to overturn this assessment? How much money would Mr Coates pay to reacquire the legacy for which he says he should be paid? [/perfectpullquote] [perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””] – As another way of asking the same thing, suppose a powerful witch offers to wave her magic wand over Mr Coates. His ancestors’ past will be changed. The “genocidal whiteness” that has affected that past will be expunged. At every moment when one of his ancestors was about to be pushed onto a white trader’s ship – at every moment when the white western world was about to impinge upon them – they will instead be among the unselected, remaining in Africa. As a special bonus, the witch will ensure that they are not instead sent into the King of Dahomey’s murder spectacle, nor have their eyes gouged out by the Bemba, nor die entertaining the Ashanti, nor be eaten by a cannibal tribe. They will instead live to give rise to Ta-Nehisi Coates, still himself, but now a slave-descended citizen of Senegal from whose past all “genocidal whiteness” has been erased. How much would Mr Coates pay the witch not to wave her wand? It seems so superfluous to point out that the sums Mr Coates would pay (in these hypothetical examples) to keep his heritage are the sums he should pay, not be paid, if his agitation for reparations ever overcame the many better, more fundamental reasons against it. [/perfectpullquote]The descendants of slaves in the United States are better off than the descendants of not-slaves in West Africa.
What reparations, for what?
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My late Mother had an uncle who was born in the Boer Concentration camps. Weaned on Afrikaaner nationalism he never spoke English in his long life and was also disdainful of Australians, Canadians and Kiwis who answered Empire’s call and sided with the British.
When this bigoted skeleton in my closet came to light in my late teenage years, my then socialist ‘friends’ subtly turned against me. Invitations to our regular socialist soirees, where we would furtively read Marx and Lenin (Not Mao, as he was considered beyond [the] pale), stopped. I became an Other.
I believe I am due compensation for this ostracisation. I will let the Brits, Australians and Kiwis off the hook as they allowed me to live, study and work in their midsts. Actually, I owe them thanks as I was able to build a career and raise my family outside of SA.
But, I do feel the Canadians owe me some money. And money for my sisters and cousins as well. I am sure that nice, guilt-wridden Mr Trudeau will agree. After all which feminist would not?
And to show I am not greedy, I will divert some of the compensation to build a monument in Parliament Square Westminster; a wall, say, at the base of the statue of J.C. Smuts. I will call it the Whinging Wall.
When someone wrongly convicted and imprisoned is pardoned and released, they are due compensation.
This is calculated according to set criteria, how long they were incarcerated, loss of possible earnings,etc then a deduction is made for the cost of board and lodgings whilst in prison.
So if reparations are to be made for the decendents of American slaves, deductions should be made. The cost of the Civil War would be a good place to start, then education, healthcare, other welfare, to date.
Then those Africans in Africa whose ancestors sold other Africans into slavery and cooperated in the capture and embarkation of the unfortunates who ended up on the plantations, should also be apportioned a share in the net reparations.
Whilst at it the UK, which at the time spent 10% of GDP to prevent the slave trade by sea and to compensate plantation owners in the Caribbean islands for freeing their slaves, should put in a claim to the successors of those saved. Additionally back rent or acquisition price for the British territories given to the freed Caribbean slaves.
After that the UK should seek reparation from the descendants of the Romans, Danes, Franks, Irish, Normans all of whom took British slaves and plundered British property. Oh and the descendants of British loyalists who had property plundered or confiscated by the Rebolutionary forces, or who had loans not repaid, should get reparations. These reparations were in fact agreed in the Treaty but never paid.
What fun.
Also what about the Native Americans - they had all their land taken so surely they are owed too?
Approximately half a million slaves were shipped from almost exclusively West Africa to what is now the USA, the vast majority were already slaves and were purchased by the slave traders from those who had enslaved them, Africans. Approximately one and a bit million Europeans were kidnapped, enslaved and shipped to in large part Africa. Why are there few or no descendants of these European slaves in Africa as opposed to the USA where a descendant of the slaves became President? The answer is that many of the European male slaves were castrated and the females murdered if they became pregnant.
When musing on the politics of slavery in the USA it is always worth remembering that the Republican Party was founded as a primarily anti-slavery institution and that Democrats were the party of Jim Crow, the KKK and until the late 1960s pro-segregation.
Of interest, the first owner of a slave in the Colonies was black and there were also white slaves. Thomas Sowell was a fascinating source of information on this subject, as indeed he was on numerous issues, economic, historical, political and sociological.
Proposals to pay reparations to the modern day descendants of slaves is akin to asking modern day Germans to do the same to the Roma people, Russians to the Lithuanians or Algerians to the Cornish. It is against the most basic tenet of natural justice, the innocent should not pay for the crimes of the long dead guilty and it dis-empowers black people by endorsing a culture of victimisation. It is also historically illiterate, until recent times slavery was the norm, whether in Africa, India or China.
It is European Christian and particularly Anglo Saxon protestantism that drove the abolition of slavery world wide (despite the existence of slaves in some parts of Sub-Saharan Africa today). Should we then demand that a tax be levied on African Americans so that the descendants of the mostly British anti-slavers should be compensated for the "much blood and gold" that was extended fighting the slave trade?
"Why are there few or no descendants of these European slaves in Africa as opposed to the USA where a descendant of the slaves became President? The answer is that many of the European male slaves were castrated and the females murdered if they became pregnant."
Really unsure where that comes from. Castration - and murder if pregnant - were not commonplaces against European or Christian slaves. Working to death in the galleys maybe. The castration was very much a commonplace of those sub-Saharan Africans who were moved north in the Arab slave trade. And Obama wasn't descended from ex-slaves, his ancestry derives directly from East Africa.
Much of the rest is true enough and Sowell is indeed interesting upon this as so many other subjects. I even mentioned that first Virginia slave holder as being black myself in a piece a few weeks back. But we should be getting these other details right too.
I concede the point on Obama, he was not personally descended from a slave, although in the American cultural mind he is associated with slavery, despite the fact of his maternity.
On the issue of castration I beg to differ. Slaves were routinely castrated in both the Maghreb and Ottoman worlds. The eunuch was often preferred as he insured that no infidel blood could pollute the blood line, especially as many of the wealthier owners tried or indeed did claim to be direct descendants of the Profit. In many cases only eunuch infidels were allowed to serve as slaves in a master's domestic retinue or indeed the military. Of course castration wasn't a phenomena unique to the Muslim world, the last choir boy to be so mutilated in the Vatican was in 1905. Female slaves were not always killed when pregnant if still nubile, but their offspring most often were, the expense of their upkeep and doubts as to their paternity being the motivation.
Some slaves no doubt did interbreed, whilst walking far from tarmac roads deep in the Riff mountains I came upon a Berber settlement where red hair and even blue eyes and a palish complexion were not uncommon. Where this genetic divergence comes from is open to debate, but perhaps some slaves escaped and fled to the almost pagan and semi-independent mountainous regions, I would like to believe that was the case, if only for reasons of romance. Never-the-less and considering the much lower population levels of the time, for over a million souls to have left next to no descendants is remarkable.
Last week I mentioned the plans within the EC for Justice and Home Affairs harmonisation that will impact on jury trials and that I would try to find some public domain corroboration. This I have been unable to do, however, I have today written to The Directorate-General for Justice and Home Affairs (DG JHA) to ask what publicly available information there is. We shall see what, if any, is the response that they make.