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Reparations for Slavery
Definition
The strugglecall for slavery reparations has a long traceable global history, in which a variety of individuals and organizations in different periods across the Caribbean, the USA, South America, Africa, and, to some extent, in Europe, were advocating. Reparations, also known by similar concepts such as restitution, compensation and redress, appeal in a broader sense to the 'correcting of a wrong', in this case of the slave trade and slavery with and its persistent legacies, by implementing measures of compensation at different levels. It embraces a multitude of symbolic and material dimensions, including the call for apology and recognition, recognition, but also for collective investments that would fight the structural inequalities and racial discrimination people of African descent still suffer in terms of accessing education, health systems, income, housing and, labour markets, to name just a few. Besides financial transfers, claims for reparations call for demand the support of historical and commemorative activities, the erection of memorial days of remembrance, memorials and museums that would contribute to decolonizing the history of slavery and its legacies. Through the transatlantic slave trade and slavery, at least 12.5 Million Africans were forcefully removed from Africa to the Americas (Voyages; Eltis and Richardson 2010). The exploitation of their labor force in the various slavery economies of the Americas stimulated Western European industrial development. The devastating material and non-material economic, social, cultural and epistemological damages, in particular for Caribbean and South American post-slavery societies continue to haunt the present. European governments have never addressed their role within slavery, neither the historical injustices committed in the various regions, nor the ongoing legacies of historically rooted global inequalities. Contrary, they continue, to ignore the call for reparations, despite the fact that various international civic as well as state organizations have urged them consistently to assume their historical responsibility to rectify this wrong, as in particular the Caribbean reparations struggle since the second half of the 20th century demonstrates. In 2001, the United Nations finally condemned the transatlantic trade and slavery as a crime against humanity and called on the former European colonizing countries to fight structural marginalization and racial discrimination still affecting the lives of Africans and people of African descent (United Nations 2001).
A brief history of reparations claims
Recent claims for reparations build on a long legacy of activism by the descendants of the enslaved who have always focused attention on pointed on the injustices of slavery by calling for reparations, or compensation, restitution redress. Their struggles across the Americas involved different actors in various historical moments (for a global overview see Araujo 2017; Journal of African American History 2018, and for the crucial role of Jamaican and Caribbean activism Beckles 2013; Rauhut 2018b; 2018c) Individual and collective claims for compensation were included in the lawsuits presented by the enslaved at courts during slavery and soon after it slavery ended, within the early Pan-African movement at the beginning of the 20th century such as the "National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People" founded in 1909 by W.E.B. Du Bois in the USA or the "Universal Negro Improvement Association" of Jamaican Marcus Garvey. African Americans in the USA have established a complex network of civil society activists, organizations and advocacy in favor of reparations during and in the aftermath of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, such as the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N'COBRA) in 1987 or the Congressional Black Caucus (founded in 1989), whose member and US Congressmen John Conyers has introduced his bill H.R. 40 Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act to the US Congress. (Ogletree 2003; Martin et al. 2007). The fight for reparations has been championed in particular by Jamaican Rastafarians, who since the 1950s have repeatedly petitioned the British Queen and the government to facilitate their repatriation to Africa as a form of reparations. They were also forerunners within the global mobilization for reparations. Furthermore, inspired by Marxism, Caribbean intellectuals of the mid-20th century like C.L.R. James, Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon or Walter Rodney have appealed to Europe to come to terms with colonial guilt in relation to colonized people by emphasizing the constitutive interrelations between colonizing and colonized societies. At the same time, they have written and advocated against the negation, devaluation and inferiorization of African practices through colonial hegemonic values and discourses (Rauhut 2018a).
New directions and transregional approaches to reparations
The two path-breaking steps that brought the agenda for slavery reparations to international organizations were the above-mentioned Durban declaration of 2001 and the current call of the CARICOM Reparations Commission (CRC, 2013), a transregional organization composed of civil society delegates from Anglophone Caribbean countries (CARICOM Reparations Commission 2014). CARICOM seeks to engage current European governments as successors to the colonial powers that have invested in and profited from the slave trade and slavery such as Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Denmark in a dialogue on reparatory justice. It urges them to recognize native genocide, the transatlantic slave trade and chattel slavery as a crime against humanity, to apologize officially and to implement measures in order to rectify the long-term damages still affecting Caribbean societies, and in particular the lives of people of African descent who in many countries represent the great majority of the population. As a key issue, CARICOM (and the CRC) links present fundamental developmental problems to the long-term patterns of inequality caused by slavery, colonial exploitation, ongoing resource extraction, and the colonial-racialized social orders that persisted long after the end of slavery. Consequently, instead of calling for individual compensation, the CRC seeks European states to facilitate collective measures in benefit of Caribbean societies, calling for instance for investments in infrastructure in areas of Education, Health, Culture, or Development (CARICOM Reparations Commission 2014). The CRC has supported the establishment of national commissions in 12 Caribbean states working on their particular local issues as well as on a transregional agenda that is highly inspired by Jamaican, in particular Rastafarian,activism of the 20th century.
The Commission is chaired by Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, Vice-Chancellor of the University of the West Indies, and co-chaired by Professor Verene Shepherd, chair of the National Council for Reparation in Jamaica. Among the diverse contexts of grass -roots, Rastafarians, scholars, human rights activists and politicians engaged in the reparations struggle, they are the most prominent leaders and also known as historians for their important works on about the history of slavery, abolition and emancipation in the Caribbean and on about the resistance against colonization and enslavement by indigenous and African people (Beckles and Shepherd 2000). Both are frequently sought after requested by national and international media, civil and state organizations and universities around the Caribbean, the USA and Europe to give lectures and interviews. Beckles' book in particular has become a sort of political manifesto for the current Caribbean claims (Beckles 2013). Based on archival findings of British Historians (Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership; Draper 2010) he reconstructs in detail the enrichment of British royal families, churches, merchants, and intellectual elites through the transatlantic slave trade and slavery, but also through the compensation British slave owners received in cash and unpaid labor at the moment of emancipation in 1833/34 (Beckles 2013). Present narratives in Jamaica still refer to that compensation process as 'injustice done' and construct a central basis build a central ground for reparations claims, linking the historical archives to the issue of accountability and political responsibility (Rauhut forthcoming).
Benefitting from historical forerunners of reparations, the recent CARICOM call has reached a new level of public and political recognition and global circulation. Along with the backing of local grass -roots it is supported by Caribbean national governments and international organizations like the United Nations, who included the issue of reparations in its current decade for "People of African descent: recognition, justice and development" (United Nations 2014). Moreover, Also the UNESCO explores the topic within its Slave Route Project that encourages international work on the memory of slavery and the remembrance ering of its victims (UNESCO; Rauhut 2018b). Beyond CARICOM or Anglophone claims, which indeed seem to be the most elaborated agenda presented to European governments, further regional, historical, cultural and political approaches to reparations can be found in the USA, in South America as well as in Europe and in Africa. In the Spanish-, French- and Dutch-speaking Caribbean and in South America, individual and organized activism in civil society might not always use the term "reparations", nevertheless address similar issues, e.g. fighting social inequalities, economic dependencies and racial discrimination, as for instance the Spanish term "Afro-Reparaciones" implies (Mosquera Rosero-Labbé and Barcelos 2007; Lao-Montes 2011). As the struggle for reparations has become globalized in its arguments, goals, advocacy and politics, academic research also requires transregional approaches. The movements for reparations claims contribute to a stronger awareness of the still relevant consequences of slavery, not as a non-European experience, but as an intrinsic part of European history. It deliberately and urgently calls urges for political responsibility to redress the slavery past and the ongoing global inequalities as shared and entangled history (Rauhut 2018c).
Claudia Rauhut
Please cite as:
Rauhut, Claudia. 2019. "Reparations for Slavery." InterAmerican Wiki: Terms - Concepts - Critical Perspectives. https://uni-bielefeld.de/einrichtungen/cias/wiki/r/reparations-for-slavery.xml.
Bibliography
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