Let's Build a Better Jamaica

I am thoroughly exhausted by the intellectual gymnastics and extraordinary moral cowardice that emerge whenever Africans and people of African descent raise the question of reparations for slavery and colonialism. Every time we discuss the transatlantic slave trade, someone rushes to remind us that Europeans were not the only people who enslaved Africans. There was the Arab slave trade, they say. Africans sold other Africans, they insist, as though they have just unearthed some extraordinary historical revelation capable of absolving Europe of centuries of organized human exploitation. And what exactly is the argument here? That because several people participated in a crime, none of them should be held accountable? That the involvement of an African merchant somehow diminished the suffering of the African who was sold? What a spectacular bankruptcy of moral reasoning. Yes, some Africans participated in the slave trade. Some African monarchs, merchants and elites profited from the trafficking of human beings. These are historical realities that deserve serious examination. We can even discuss the Afro-Brazilian returnees who settled along the West African coast. Some were formerly enslaved Africans who had obtained their freedom in Brazil, returned to Africa and subsequently participated in the very trade that had once deprived them of their own liberty. Joaquim d’Almeida, for example, was enslaved in Brazil, obtained his freedom, returned to West Africa and became a slave trader. Francisco Félix de Souza, a Brazilian-born merchant, built an immense commercial enterprise around the trafficking of enslaved Africans from Ouidah. We can examine the royal families, merchant dynasties and political institutions that benefited from this commerce. We can investigate the fortunes accumulated, the properties acquired and the privileges transmitted across generations. I have absolutely no objection to holding African historical actors accountable for their participation in slavery. But now that we have identified some of the sellers, can we please return to the people who were SOLD? Can we talk about their descendants? Can we talk about the millions of human beings whose bodies became commercial merchandise, whose children were born into captivity and whose descendants were subsequently denied access to land, education, property, political equality and economic opportunity for centuries? The participation of an African king in the slave trade does not absolve the European merchant who purchased human beings, the shipowner who transported them, the banker who financed the enterprise, the plantation owner who extracted their labor or the governments that legalized and protected the entire system for centuries. And then comes my favorite exhibition of historical illiteracy, the claim that Europeans today cannot be expected to pay for the sins of their ancestors. How convenient! Apparently, nations can inherit the wealth of their ancestors, the institutions of their ancestors, the territories acquired by their ancestors, the commercial advantages secured by their ancestors and the accumulated prosperity produced by centuries of exploitation. Oh they can even compensate the slave owners for freeing their slaves. But the moment we discuss the obligations attached to that inheritance, history suddenly becomes irrelevant. You can inherit the estate, but apparently the debts buried beneath its foundations must remain with the dead. What an extraordinary understanding of justice!