This relates to the BBC article [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66596790] which states “the UK should pay $24tn (£18.8tn) for its slavery involvement in 14 countries”.
The UK abolished slavery in 1833. That’s 190 years ago. So nobody alive today has a slave, and nobody alive today was a slave.
Dividing £18tn by the number of UK taxpayers (31.6m) gives £569 each. Why do I, who have never owned a slave, have to give £569 to someone who similarly is not a slave?
When I’ve paid my £569 is that the end of the matter forever or will it just open the floodgates of other similar claims?
Isn’t this just a country that isn’t doing too well, looking at the UK doing reasonably well (cost of living crisis excluded of course), and saying “oh there’s this historical thing that affects nobody alive today but you still have to give us trillions of Sterling”?
Shouldn’t payment of reparations be limited to those who still benefit from the slave trade today, and paid to those who still suffer from it?
(Please don’t flame me. This is NSQ. I genuinely don’t know why this is something I should have to pay. I agree slavery is terrible and condemn it in all its forms, and we were right to abolish it.)
Some countries ended slavery by buying off the slave-owners — paying them for the property that they were being deprived of.
It’s kinda weird that they didn’t pay the enslaved people, who had been deprived of their own work and work-product and life and freedom.
As an American whose ancestors came from Europe around the same time that slavery was abolished here, I can be sure that none of my ancestors benefited directly from slavery; but also that they joined a society that had profited immensely from slavery. The whole reparations concept is complicated.
The same is true for the descendants of slaves. They benefit from the same society that their enslaved ancestors participated in creating. They receive the same benefits of that society that you and your non-slave-owning ancestors receive, so for you, that issue is a wash.
Further, I would say that the descendants of Union soldiers who fought and died during the Civil War are owed at least similar reparations. When the deacendants of slavers get done paying the descendants of slaves, the descendants of slaves can turn around and pay the descendants of abolitionists for their sacrifices.
What of the descendants of the daughter of a former slaver and the son of a freed slave? Wouldn’t they, as descendants of slavers, owe as much in reparations as they are owed as descendants of slaves?
I mean if they didn’t buy the slaves to set them free, there’d have been a massive war, killing a bunch of the slaves and others, and likely costing more money. Imagine the American civil war but worldwide.
It was a necessary evil.