In March this year the UN declared slavery “the gravest crime against humanity”, though the US voted against and every European nation abstained.
With very few exceptions, slavery was an awful and often fatal experience for anyone who suffered it. No ex-slave thanked their master for owning them. Not only was it often physically and mentally traumatic, but it also felt shameful in a moral sense.
As Aristotle put it, “if you were not willing to fight and die to avoid slavery it pretty much suites you and you deserve it”, and the classical Greeks acted as though they agreed. Nonetheless, until recently every society practised it. As anyone who reads the Bible knows, their religion endorsed slavery. Rightfully and fortunately, the institution of slavery is now illegal and unlawful everywhere.
In recent years there have been growing calls for apologies and compensation to the descendants, and fellow ethnics, of former slaves. Initially these were coming from the US and the Caribbean, but this has spread to Africa.
Initially, too, the argument was that slavery (like colonialism or apartheid) resulted in long-term harmful effects that are still in operation multiple generations after it ended.
Lately, some are going further in saying that compensation is due even if no current harmful effects are apparent. In California, where no one alive today was ever a slave or slave owner and slavery never even existed, a task team has called for million-dollar levels of compensation to all black people in the state.
Included among those black people are those who have no slave ancestors, such as, for example, recent immigrants. There are similar task teams in other states. The ‘analysis’ generally assumes rather than proves harmful effects of slavery or any subsequent practice like red lining or separate schooling.
I once had a conversation with a young medical student of Indian extraction. He flat out told me he was profoundly grateful to the British for removing his ancestors from India and bringing them to South Africa as indentured labourers. He believed the overall effect on him personally was highly positive.
According to him, had that not happened he would not have had the opportunity to become a doctor and would likely be a beggar in Calcutta. Could something like that be true of the US descendants of slaves too? Reparations task teams pointedly do not consider the possibility.
Cumulative relative benefit
I made an estimate once; the average American black person today has 10.5 times the standard of living of a black person in those African countries the US slaves came from. The cumulative relative benefit since slavery is equivalent to 70 years’ worth of current black per capita income in the US. That is about $3 million each, or three times as much as the proposed California reparations.
I’m pretty sure there has been no assessment of what that may have cost the rest of America. The analysts may assume the cost must be zero or they simply don’t see it as relevant to justice at all. Sometimes however, it is relevant. While the whole world practised slavery, it was Britain that ended it. The costs of that enforcement caused meaningful suffering among British citizens at the time.
The African Union gave Ghana special responsibility to be ‘champion for reparatory justice’, and Ghana is quite enthusiastic about it.
But here is the thing; Europeans did not catch slaves or create the slave market in West Africa.
In Ghana, the Ashanti Empire, the Fante Confederacy and the Akwamu and Denkyira people were enslaving neighbouring people at an industrial scale before Europeans ever arrived. They captured far too many to use (often as human sacrifices) and so started marketing them to the British and other Europeans.
Those slaver groups make up the Akan ethnic group in Ghana today and account for 47% of the population. They typically support the party currently in opposition but over a third of the government’s support is Akan.
In other words, the ancestors of a significant fraction of those calling for reparations were directly responsible for – to quote a Ghanaian official – “forcibly removing people from their homes, tearing them from their villages and dehumanising them”.
Extremely offensive
That is not simply hypocritical. It is extremely offensive.
The Ghanaian enslavers strongly resisted the end to their slavery business and the British colonial effort in the region came about in large part in order to stop Africans enslaving Africans.
Yet the effects of slavery by Africans in Africa have not disappeared. For example, in places like Ghana and Nigeria, the descendants of those slaves not sold off to Europeans still suffer open contempt and discrimination at the hands of their fellow Africans.
Africa has little, if any, conscience about intra-African slavery. The last country to officially ban slavery was Mauritania – in 1985. It still exists there unofficially.
Note that only European societies face calls for apology or compensation. Arab countries, and the Muslim world in general, aren’t sorry about their role in enslaving Africans (of any other group) at all and don’t face such demands. It is primarily ‘the West’ that has a conscience about it.
Clearly this is either pure opportunism or an anti-West campaign. Instead of enabling it with suicidal empathy, Britain should demand that the ungrateful formally acknowledge its role in ending slavery. The same holds for the enormous gifts the rest of the West gave the world.
[Image: by oneinchpunchphotos’]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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