#BTEditorial – Reparations vs revenge debate

There is no shortage of opinions in Barbados. We have had varying positions on hot button issues such as crime, youth deviancy, parenting, the celebration of Independence and republican status, and of course, the controversial Inter-American Development Bank schools questionnaire debacle.

Often, some sections of the Barbadian community keep their opinions only to those who share their positions. The subject of race and classism in Barbados, for example, are topics that citizens tend to approach with a level of discomfort.

Historians and others who seek to enlighten us about our past of slavery and colonialism can find themselves accused of stirring up disquiet and not allowing sleeping dogs to lie.

To speak of our history of slavery, racism, and colonialism will of necessity force us to ask questions about who acquired wealth and how. We will also have to confront the systematic repression of the efforts of black Barbadians to be involved in commerce and to acquire wealth.

The average Black Barbadian’s foray into enterprise up to the 1930s was reduced to mainly itinerant vending. From then until today this form of enterprise provides only for subsistence living and not real wealth creation.

When Barbados’ lobby for reparations began, led in the main by University of the West Indies Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, it was laughed off as an unrealistic pursuit of an overly ambitious historian.

Professor Beckles has remained dogged on the issue despite scepticism among a still highly conservative public. Sir Hilary also appeared before a historic United States congressional hearing on the matter.

The cause for reparatory justice has taken wings since then as more and more countries get behind the cause, while institutions around the world, from museums to universities, have accepted their role in and benefits from the slave trade.

Most recently, the British Museum which holds the world’s largest collection of over 900 cultural objects, accepted that many of their treasured African artifacts were stolen from the city of Benin by British troops.

Britain earlier this year returned several bronze pieces to Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums that were stolen when the Benin royal palace was burned and looted by the British.

The Smithsonian Institute in Washington, United States of America, has also returned 29 bronze pieces taken illegally from Nigeria.

We mention these facts to contextualise the relationship that existed between the colonised and the colonial powers, and how the natural and human resources were exploited.

Against this backdrop has come the perspective of a local newspaper columnist and farmer Richard Hoad, who in his last column, seemed to liken reparations to revenge, as he addressed Barbados’ attempts to go after Sir Richard Drax, the British politician who inherited Drax Hall Plantation in St George.

Of course, this is a false equivalency.

He wrote: “I see reparations as one country compensating another for past wrongs. For Barbados to be targeting an individual, Sir Richard Drax, for the actions of his ancestors hundreds of years ago, is, to my mind, sick.”

He added: “After Drax, will all the other estates which employed slaves be similarly targeted? And what about the providers of slaves? If it is shown that the ancestors of some of the wealthy Africans, we are now hobnobbing with got rich from selling slaves, will they too be sued?”

Known for his forthrightness, the columnist’s thoughts allow the mainly black population to appreciate that there are some among us who reject the entire idea of reparations.

Divergent views are expected in a democracy. However, it should be noted that the reparations cause is generally accepted as justifiable. For reparations are not new.Though it has been effected for other groups, when it comes to the descendants of slaves, who arguably suffered the longest and worst under an institutionalised system, the process has not been completed.

At the regional level, the CARICOM Reparations Commission asserts that European governments were owners and traders of enslaved Africans, 10 million of whom were stolen from their homes and transported to the Caribbean as chattel. That they instructed genocidal actions upon indigenous communities, and foremost, created the legal, financial and fiscal policies necessary for the enslavement of Africans.

Apart from a full-throated apology, regional governments are resolute in their list of requests which include debt cancellation.