EDTORIAL: What do we want from Reparations?

March 25, 2022

When will the descendants of slaves be granted reparations from Europe and America? It seems as if everyone else gets to have something or some notification, at the very least. But when it comes to African people everyone decides to do something else with their money and time. For example, America spending money in the Ukraine to fight the Russians is a prime example of American and Europeans wasting time and money.

Most of the CARICOM’s ten point plan for reparations is not unreasonable. Descendants of slaves and African people in the Western world want a formal apology, first and foremost. We should start from there.

Where it gets a little screwy is with the second point where they ask for Repatriation back to Africa. Some of you bozos can go back o Africa, but for this editor we will stay in the Caribbean where we are born and where we belong, or else we would not have been here in the first place?

This is where we would jump off of the Reparations trip, because when they start to romanticise “going back to Africa” we tend to look at those folks who promote such a foolish and naïve idea with a side eye. So you want to go back to the descendants of the people that either sold you to the White slave masters in the first place, or at the very least were too unconcerned or lazy to lift a finger to stop the slave raids? So what, do you think those people in Africa is what the European media tells you, some skirt wearing, Amapiano listening, buck dancing nitwits and would not abuse you like they did your ancestors? So you’re just going to walk into Ghana or Nigeria and say I have come back for my land? Get real! As said, you can go back, but I will keep my Caribbean and my home here.

The other points like an Indigenous Development Programme sounds nice too, but there aren’t many of them left. The Europeans killed nearly all of them, sadly. But what is left do deserve something and they need it more than the African descent Caribbean people, despite our suffering being extraordinarily, but compared to the humiliation their people suffered, we should be able to understand the gravity of their plight.

Of course we need money from this reparations scheme, and most of that is couched in debt reductions schemes and investments into cultural and education systems. I would say too, ask and ye shall receive. Ask the Europeans for cold, hard cash. I want $100,000 in my bank account by next week Friday and weekly instalments of $50,000 for the rest of my life, as a starting conversation. I also want choice portions of the Crown Lands that are available too.

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