We are, of course, not meant to find such things amusing but then we tend to have a rather dry sense of humour around here. In the current demands for slavery reparations:
Sadly, too many of us do not know that it was the slavemasters – not the slaves or their descendants – who received reparations after slavery ended and the plantations collapsed.
We tend to think of that not as reparations but as a bribe to overcome political resistance. And, at £20 million, an absolute bargain at the price. Without that “compensation” slavery would have persisted for some more decades, at that great cost to those enslaved. It was a bribe, money well spent.
On the larger issue:
Work has already been done. The Caricom Reparations Commission has outlined a clear 10-point action plan with a tangible plan forward for creating justice.
One of those points leads to our amusement:
2. Repatriation
Over 10 million Africans were stolen from their homes and forcefully transported to the Caribbean as the enslaved chattel and property of Europeans. The transatlantic slave trade is the largest forced migration in human history and has no parallel in terms of man’s inhumanity to man. This trade in enchained bodies was a highly successful commercial business for the nations of Europe. The lives of millions of men, women and children were destroyed in search of profit. The descendants of these stolen people have a legal right to return to their homeland.
A Repatriation program must be established and all available channels of international law and diplomacy used to resettle those persons who wish to return. A resettlement program should address such matters as citizenship and deploy available best practices in respect of community re-integration.
Well, OK. The expansion of the Liberia programme perhaps, the country having been founded to do exactly this. If that’s what people want, then why not?
Except there’s little to bar this right now. We’d not insist that migration from, say, the Bahamas to Ghana is entirely simple but we’re equally certain that it’s possible. Also, that it doesn’t happen very much.
The reason it doesn’t is because the economic situation of near anyone in the Caribbean is between largely and hugely better than that of near anyone in West or south-west Africa.
That is, the very fact that the repatriation being demanded doesn’t currently happen is the very reason that reparations aren’t due. Because - we agree, the experiences of the intervening generations were very different - the descendants of slaves in the Caribbean are now better off than the descendants of the non-slaves in Africa. It’s not in fact possible to compensate someone for making them better off.
That very reparations demand proving that reparations are not due, yes, that does amuse.