Royal commentator says that African descendants of past kings should pay reparations for slavery

[cocococococococo]

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www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-jr-fordwich-slave-trade-reparations-b2171510.html

I thought compensation had been paid in around 2013 and 14?

All white bad. All black good.

I think this gormless argument is starting to wane.

When you speak to Germans, they very much own up to the history of Nazi Germany and say never again etc.

But will Germany pay up now?

www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/02/germany-rejects-polands-claim-it-owes-13tn-in-war-reparations

There are some difficult facts in history which need to be discussed more and this is one of them.

True. I've been in Libya and seen the old slave markets, maybe they want to include them as well.

Can we also have the money back we paid to the slave owners when the slaves were freed?

The past is the past and can't be changed. Many many countries have a shameful slavery past. It would be better to look to the future and how to make things better rather than thinking reparations will fix the problem. I fear in many cases, any money wouldn't trickle down and help the general population anyway.

That isn't quite true from what I understand. I believe we were still paying the loans that were taken out to pay the slave owners. Their descendants may or may not have benefitted from that.

It’s only an offensive response if you don’t know why it’s been suggested.

If various generations have to make reparations to various disgruntled generations, it would no doubt need to go back to Homo sapiens making reparation to the Neanderthals. It's a ridiculous concept. As for slavery, the biggest slavers were Africans themselves who enslaved members of defeated tribes for their own purposes and eventually started selling slaves to the Europeans. So if we give money to an African country, will we be able to reclaim that money from the original slave traders?

There have been horrendous atrocities throughout human history. The clue is there in the sentence. History.

We are effectively paying reparation when we abolished slavery and fought for it to be stopped around the world. We fund multiple agencies to improve the lives of people in poorer countries, we still pay funds to India and other countries that just don't need it. It's a type of reparation no one mentions

I actually agree entirely with this! I didn't want to express too much of an opinion in the OP because AIBU can be a petty place and sometimes people attack the OP for the sake of attacking the OP, it seems to be like a sport here! Hence why I posted without my own feelings - I wanted to see how people actually felt and not just have people disagree with me for the sake of it 😂

I think some of you are commenting without watching the video/reading the article?

Some of the posts make perfect sense but some seem to be misunderstanding and thinking the article says that reparations should be paid TO descendants of African kings.

No.

The interview is an American news presenter asking the British Royal Commentator about how some people are saying such a blatant display of wealth (at the queen's funeral obvs) is a bit inappropriate given the amount of people living in poverty at the moment. He then goes on to mention reparations and how a lot of people feel that the British royal family need to be paying back reparations to countries where slaves were taken.

The British Royal Commentator then replies that not only was Britain the first country to get rid of slavery (which is something that ALL cultures have had on some level) but they had also lost a LOT of men at sea preventing the slave trade from being able to continue.

She then went on to say that if anyone should be PAYING reparations to people whose ancestors were slaves, the people PAYING the reparations should not be the British but the descendants of the African kings - the African kings who literally rounded up their own people on the beaches to sell into slavery.

She then suggested that these descendants of African kings should also pay reparations to British people whose ancestors were killed fighting the slave trade which the African kings did not want to give up.

Surely it would be better to focus on modern day slavery than on the past.

So why is it such a huge leap to consider reparations to the descendants of slaves?

Let's look at the practical side

1. How you identify the descendants of slaves and check the genuineness of a claim
2. How much is enough as reparations
3. Where this money is coming from and how much
4. How long does it have to be paid for
5. When you say descendants, do you mean for hundreds of years into the future?
6. Who is going to run this and oversee it and decides what's paid?
7. What if some descendant thinks they haven't been paid enough? what's the process for arbitration there?

They have already paid extensive reparations tbf

Such a sensitive subject matter should not be discussed by people with neither the knowledge nor the intellectual ability to form any type of argument, let alone express it in public. So please spare us.

Not really though- we need to work on present day inequality not inequality that happened hundreds of years ago. It doesn’t matter if someone’s ancestor was a slave or a slave owner or both. What matters is what that person’s situation is now in the present day.

giving money to people because of what their ancestors were is nonsensical imo.

Britain along with virtually every other developed country at the time and countless countries and tribes prior to participated in slavery. Britain agreed to end not only its own but the actively stop Slavery. It was very effective because of the Royal Navy. Well done Royal Navy, thank you from the grateful slaves freed?

I have placed plenty of arguments up thread. Have a little read.

The post you have quoted is a reduction but the thrust it is one that has made its way onto the agenda and leads to ridiculous theories about paying one race of people for something that many were happily involved in themselves!

It also leads to a shield being put around a certain race-black-so that any criticism of them must be bound up in the fact that they are black and must therefore come from a place of racism.

At the queen's funeral, the white wife of an ambassador was somehow overlooked when she put out her hand to be shaken by a dignitary as she entered the church.

He had shaken the hand of the people in front of her and behind her but ignored her proffered hand.

What do you think would have been the reaction if that wife of an ambassador had been black?

At the very least, there would have been a riot or two and the dignitary wheeled out to make a public apology.

If some daft twats want to pay African nations compensation for something that happened generations ago and something that many nations, including African nations were also involved in-then let them set up a Go Fund Me page and contribute directly.

Maybe you can do it?

If we are all going to jump on the shit cart then maybe other groups entitled to compo might include:

1. Conscripted soldiers
2. Irish and Highland families kicked off their land
3. Jewish people not just from Germany in the war but those killed in York and other places back in the mists of time.

It won't take a lot of head scratching before we can all find some way in which we can be compensated.

Time to move on.

Who are you arguing with? I'm confused? Me? I agree with you. 😂

Oh not me. Sorry. You didn't quote the other post so I just assumed it was me!

Anyway. I agree with you.

So how much are women owed by men in almost every country around the world I wonder?

I think Americans really need to shut their mouths when thinking they have some moral high ground over the British in terms of slavery. Their history of slavery is far, far worse.

I think this is a good point.

Many Americans seem to be under the impression that the British empire rocked up, alone, colonised the whole land and invented slavery to work the land there. Then some of those people rose up called themselves American, threw some tea in the water and threw ‘The British’ out at which point it became the land of milk and honey for all people of colours and nationality.

Slavery was an important part of most economies. It was an intrinsic part of African life long before the Europeans arrived. It's also not commonly known but the European involvement in the slave trade was largely confined to shipping the human cargo across the Atlantic. They arrived by ship on the "slave coast" and bought slaves from African traders there. Europeans didn't mount expeditions into Africa to capture slaves themselves, they relied on African merchants to do that. Indeed, Europeans tried to minimise the time spent near Africa as much as possible, it was a deeply unhealthy atmosphere and the number of European fatalities was huge - as many as 10% of a ship's crew would be expected to die if they were moored for even a few weeks.

Without African cooperation the slave trade couldn't have existed. It's therefore completely logical to argue that the people of Africa and their descendents should be liable to pay reparations if anyone is.

But the whole idea of reparations is idiotic anyway. Someone who has never been a slave owner being forced to pay money to someone who has never been a slave? It's daft.