The Caribbean’s case for reparations: Part I · Global Voices
Screenshot of the Facebook live stream of Bocas Lit Fest's “The Case for Reparations,” a conversation with Sir <PERSON> (right), chaired by <PERSON> (left), which took place on October 11, 2020.
This is the first article in a series that highlights the question of slavery reparations in the Caribbean. It is based around issues discussed in the NCG Bocas Lit Fest's live stream event, “The Case for Reparations,” which featured an in-depth conversation with Sir <PERSON>, chair of the CARICOM Reparations Commission.
On October 12, 1492, <PERSON> forever changed the trajectory of the “New World” by planting the seeds of colonisation: centuries later, the region still grapples with the debilitating ripple effects of occupation and unspeakable acts of violence, including genocide and slavery. To draw attention to the issue, the CARICOM Reparations Commission, chaired by Professor Sir <PERSON>, an academic and historian who is also vice-chancellor of The University of the West Indies, decided to commemorate this date as the International Day for Reparations.
On Sunday, October 11, the NGC Bocas Lit Fest live-streamed a conversation with Sir <PERSON> on the topic as part of its calendar of online events celebrating 10 years of the annual literary festival. Titled, “The Case for Reparations,” it garnered thousands of views from across the region.
Calling colonisation “one of the phenomena that has most disrupted humanity [leaving] a deep and lasting impression on all continents,” the commission has connected the dots to prove that the effects of this inhumane system go way beyond the psychological, to include economic, cultural, demographic, political and ecological fallout:
When a wrong has been committed, it must be repaired. If you recognise that colonization has been a source of massive crimes against humanity, then reparations are legitimate. 941
If you refuse these reparations, then you deny the criminal nature of colonial crimes.
This is why we are forcefully demanding reparations, and this demand is non-negotiable.
There has been some success thus far, most notably the signing of a historic 20 million British pound [26,130,000 United States dollar] agreement for slavery reparations between The University of the West Indies and the University of Glasgow in 2019. However, the Commission believes that more needs to be done.
In addition to its 10-point action plan, it is advocating for a high-level Caribbean reparations summit aimed at turning mere apologies into action that can herald a developmental turnaround for the region.
In this instalment of the series, Global Voices takes a look at how the legacy of slavery made the murder of <PERSON> possible, and why colonisation in the Caribbean is an ongoing process.
The ‘George <PERSON> moment’
The international attention being given to the Black Lives Matter movement has offered the Caribbean an opportunity to draw attention to the need for reparations.
<PERSON>, who interviewed Sir <PERSON> for the live stream, noted that it took “the 21st-century lynching of a 46-year-old man […] displayed on television for all the world to see, to finally spark that sense of indignation globally” as <PERSON> begged for his life. His dying words, “I can't breathe,” have since become symbolic of the asphyxiation of opportunities “that Black people around the world have had to endure for over 400 years.”
Sir <PERSON> made the link between <PERSON> and the legacy of slavery by referring to a key point in his book, “The First Black Slave Society — Britain's ‘Barbarity Time’ in Barbados, 1636-1876,” which was published by The University of The West Indies Press in 2016. It was the moment in which he says Black lives only mattered in relation to an economic paradigm: in 1636, Barbados’ British colonisers passed legislation — known as the Barbados Slave Code — that marked the first framing of the notion of Black people as property.
This code then spread across the region and to the United States as “the template for plantation America” — a framework in which Black people were perceived as being valuable only as tools for extreme wealth accumulation. The brutal manner in which <PERSON> died 384 years later, according to Sir <PERSON>, is a graphic pictorial of the consequences of this code, underscoring how easy it is to dispense with Black life as a spectacle and a display of power. 678