Will reparations for slavery, and white apology tours improve the national psyche?

The notion that people of European descent should apologize for the role their ancestors played in the trans-Atlantic slave trade is only topped by the even more ridiculous assumption that somehow a so-called “white apology tour”, with the added bonus of reparations, will ameliorate the ills of blacks throughout the world, particularly here in Saint Lucia. The descendants of those who participated in the trans-Atlantic slave trade are not guilty of the sins of their fathers.  

Even if they were, and consequently owed reparations to the descendants of slaves from the trans-Atlantic trade, you and me and our relatives—that is, not to mention everyone else with a drop of African blood in his veins—the fact is that most whites alive today are not descendants of slave traders and plantation owners. What do Germans, Russians, Slavs, Georgians, Greeks, Hungarians and Poles have to do with the slave trade? As for the Brits, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and Danes, I’m sure the peasants who made up the bulk of their populations in the time discussed were too busy struggling to feed themselves and their families to think about West African slaves being dragged out of their huts to be taken to the New World.  

A negligible percentage from slave-trading nations participated in the buying and selling of slaves. As historian Joseph Glatthaar explains in his book General Lee’s Army: From Victory to Collapse, “One in every twenty white persons owned slaves.” That is, five per cent of white persons in the American South owned slaves; a percentage that drops further when taking into account the non-slave owning whites of the American North. So, to ask an apology of every white person for slavery is reaching a mile too far; absolutely disingenuous if not downright dishonest.

So is pretending slavery is a phenomenon unique to the black experience. As economist Thomas Sowell so eloquently points out in The Thomas Sowell Reader: “Of all the tragic facts about the history of slavery, the most astonishing . . . is that, although slavery was a worldwide institution for thousands of years, nowhere in the world was slavery a controversial issue prior to the 18th century. People of every race and color were enslaved—and enslaved others. White people were still being bought and sold as slaves in the Ottoman Empire, decades after American blacks were freed.” 

Which leads us to another common slavery myth: that the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and slavery in general, was an affair involving exclusively white masters and black slaves. The website myjewishlearning.com says Jacob Rader Marcus, “a historian and Reform rabbi, wrote in his four-volume history of American Jews that over 75 per cent of Jewish families in Charleston, South Carolina; Richmond, Virginia; and Savannah, Georgia, owned slaves, and nearly 40 per cent of Jewish households across the country did.” Which of course is a higher percentage than the whites. 

Ronald Segal in his book Islam’s Black Slaves puts the number of African slaves shipped to Muslim countries between the years 650-1600 AD at 11.5 million to 14 million, with the near thousand-year span of that slave trade dwarfing the just over 200-year period of slavery in the New World. Are Jews and Muslims today the subject of apology tours and reparations to blacks?  

All the while, modern-day slavery continues to be ignored. According to a 2003 article in National Geographic titled ‘21st Century Slaves’: “There are an estimated 27 million men, women, and children in the world who are enslaved—physically confined or restrained and forced to work, or controlled through violence, or in some way treated as property.” That more than doubles the estimated 11 million slaves brought over to the New World. 

But whites aren’t the main perpetrators of contemporary slavery. Here we are, 40 years after Independence and celebrating yet another Emancipation Day, demanding an apology and reparations for an event that ended almost 200 years ago—not once acknowledging the billions of dollars donated to our survival by the same “white man” we claim to hate, primarily because some ancient relative enslaved our forebears physically, and us psychically and otherwise.

I am reminded by the following from Rick Wayne’s Lapses & Infelicities: “The year John Compton took responsibility for Saint Lucia’s future, Kenny Anthony and his brother Brian breezed through their Common Entrance Examinations, then moved to the newly established Vieux Fort Senior Secondary School, the first to be built outside the island’s capital—paid for by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).” As the author likes to remind his TALK viewers: the more things change, the more they remain the same. A quick look at our annual budgets demonstrates that in the forty years since Independence, a significant amount of Saint Lucia’s survival money comes by way of grants from the United States, the EU, the UK and Canada. Not from Nigeria, Benin, Ghana, and Côte d’Ivoire. 

The mind-boggling hypocrisy blinds us to the criminality of all varieties that has become, after countless years, normal Looshan life. How many advocates for justice took time to march in solidarity with Kimberly De Leon’s family three weeks ago? Who cried for reparations when Arnold Joseph, Hardy John, Bob Hathaway and Kadeem Joseph, Verlinda Joseph, Shakadan and so many others were murdered? Has anyone demanded an apology for the sad state of our justice system going back decades? But then we know it’s not our fault how we think and act. Slavery is responsible. And we know who invented it!      

Just under three months ago, policemen were adjudged negligent in the shooting death of Mandy Louisy. His mother, Sophia Louisy, was awarded $14,838.98 plus interest after successfully filing a civil claim against the government. The money remains, at time of writing, unpaid. Without a whimper from the criers for justice.