The United Nations General Assembly has voted to recognise the enslavement of Africans during the transatlantic slave trade as “the gravest crime against humanity”, a move advocates hope will pave the way for healing and justice.
The resolution - proposed by Ghana - called for this designation, while also urging UN member states to consider apologising for the slave trade and contributing to a reparations fund. It does not mention a specific amount of money.
The proposal was adopted with 123 votes in favour and three against - the United States, Israel and Argentina.
Countries like the UK have long rejected calls to pay reparations, saying today’s institutions cannot be held responsible for past wrongs.
Jews are in mud
Trump : The gravest crime against humanity is I didn’t get the Nobel Peace Prize, everybody knows that. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
I can agree about the reparations part. There is no institution in the world that you could trust to handle a reparations fund and it would never be given to the people who actually need it. It would be a slush fund for the rich.
feddit.org mods banning people because that is disrespectful to the grandioseness of Nazi Germany in 3… 2…
Seriously. How dare they take away from the only true victims of history.
What are we back in the 60s?
“Israel” strange coincidence !!! (ironic)
They’re just jealous
Not for nothing but many many different people have been enslaved, to this very day.
You know that’s just gonna sound like “All slaves matter” right?
If you have two brain cells sure
Let’s see if you can use your two brain cells to look up whataboutism
True. But if you knew anything about how other slaves were kept vs the way African slaves were treated beyond this dog whistle sentence you’d probably stop repeating it.
Or you’d repeat it more often and harder because repeating it is intentional
All slavery is evil.
got it. a little bit of a thing happened to a whole variety of people so we can safely ignore the huge injustice that was forced upon an entire continent because these things are somehow equal.
They are equal. African slavery was more recent and it’s effects are still noticable today, but it was still fucking slavery no matter how long ago it was. Is it that hard to show some respect for the long dead people who lived through it?
Slavery happened to whole peoples in multiple places. Rome enslaved peoples from all over europe. Slave traders from Europe and America didn’t introduce Africa to slavery. Africa was already fighting wars and enslaving each other across the entire continent. That is where the slave trade came from. They enslaved europeans if they got caught there. They had slaves to sell and Europeans found that they wanted to use them. It was a global problem and any peoples left in Africa are just as guilty of it as any European or American. Which is to say, not at all, because all of those people have been dead for two generations.
So it’s pretty definitionally oppression Olympics, but I feel like the slave trade is a decent contender. It lasted centuries; maybe more depending a bunch of history that’s still up in the air. The Holocaust (for example) only went on for a few years.
I’m not sure Ghana has hands as clean as they’re implying, though. The victims of the transatlantic slave trade had to (ahem) leave Africa entirely, and usually it wasn’t the Europeans catching and selling them on their own.
So it’s pretty definitionally oppression Olympics,
That is the reason so many countries abstained from the vote.
I’m guessing afraid to contradict the US probably fits in there, too.
No, those countries are satellite states of USA.
No because they would be agreeing to having to pay reparations.
holocaust is not even top 10 in crimes against humanity if we are doing olympics here
Yeah but many of the victims of the Holocaust were white. Have you considered that?
If we’re doing Olympics probably, yeah. It might be top 20 but there’s a whole lot of world and a whole lot of history. The one that happened in Europe is the one European and European-like countries took notice of, though.
It’s great that we learn so much about it, and the fact that people just like us did it. Just bury ugly things is the natural tendency. It’s given us a framework to understand earlier genocides, and genocides in distant places like Israel or Rwanda when they happen.
It shouldn’t be the average taxpayer in these countries who has to pay for reparations (especially when many were descendants of peasants who were also often exploited in other ways), while the wealthy families who benefited the most evade responsibility, smuggling their blood-earned fortunes to tax havens.
It should, because the collective wealth of most of Europe and the United States is built upon slavery.
Any time people profit from infrastructure and education, which isn’t available in the previously enslaved countries, they are benefiting from the fruits of slavery to this day.
We don’t recognise any non-white responsibility in any form of slavery here
Slavery has existed in many different cultures, and Africa has had slave trade after it was abolished in Europe and North America, but I think it’s fair to say that the transatlantic slave trade was the most cruel and inhuman form of slavery. The only form of slavery that may have been worse was the one Leopold II imposed on Congo.
It’s racism that made those forms of slavery even worse. I think racism makes everything worse.
I think the biggest contender for worst crime against humanity was the Native American genocide. That was also driven by racism. So was the Holocaust.
but I think it’s fair to say that the transatlantic slave trade was the most cruel and inhuman form of slavery.
I can think of other contenders, actually but Sparta and Russia are both retconned as white. Maybe something in east Asia, or the Middle East. Basically any society that ends up with a supermajority of slaves starts a kind of parallel development.
I think the biggest contender for worst crime against humanity was the Native American genocide.
I mean, they also did that in Australia, for example, and there’s tons of similar events in prehistory we can see through sudden shifts in genetic makeup.
Genocides aren’t rare, and since the Americas were a bit more sparsely populated I’m not even sure that’s the biggest.
I don’t see how any of that relates to the white washing of African people’s involvement in enslaving and selling other African ethnic groups but go on
You guessed it, it’s the usual map:
The EU abstained because bla bla TLDR: they don’t want to pay reparations.
I don’t think Estonia, Poland or Montenegro were very worried about paying reparations. Maybe colonial powers, but those are a minority in Europe.
I am so fucking disgusted (yet not surprised) by this dipshit traitorous worthless pile of shit government of Germany, bootlicking fascists all over the world. Once, in the 80s/90s I was naive enough to think we had learned our lesson. But turns out, Germans will happily flock back to fascism the moment being decent human beings slightly inconveniences them.
Yeah - I know - it’s a matter of brainwashing & capitalist propaganda, and this is not a problem unique to Germany, but I prefer to be disgusted at the mess in front of my own doorstep before complaining about others.
Leck Eier, Fritze.
Soviets were generous towards germany.
The US would owe several times it’s worth in reparations for slavery, The War on Drugs, The destruction of the Middle East, Imperalism leading to the deaths of countless people, genocide of Native Americans, poisoning the world multiple times with chemicals, etc. The list is so long it isn’t funny.
I often say if you were to list all the atrocities and lives destroyed by the US it would be more than my lifetime just to read them all off. It is mind boggling.
Gravest crime so far
So Ghana proposed to punish itself and all of its neighbors for selling slaves to Europeans passing through towards Americas, or what?
What you are mentioning is something that happened before there was a Ghana. It was, however, done by countries that existed back then and still exist, and benefited from the system.
It should be Haiti putting forward the motion, probably.
Why…? Haiti’s population is a fraction of Africas as a whole.
So it Ghana’s.
I get it is extremely important to remember how bad the transatlantic slave trade was, but I think reparations after two centuries makes no sense. You cannot track responsibility 10 generations separated, you cannot track beneficiaries in a globalized world. Countries not involved in slave trade got indirect benefits through commerce, countries involved are instead not benefiting today from that historic trade. Slavery was common everywhere in the world for millennia. I find it hard to even begin to quantify a reasonable approach to a reparation framework that would work in the context of all the human tragedies in the last 5 centuries.
I personally give substantial direct financial support to an African American family, not because I feel personally responsible for what happened 200 years ago, but because I know that what happened 200 years ago didn’t end 200 years ago but continued on and eventually became Jim Crow and eventually became the War on Drugs and all the while has just simmered there as subconscious racism. It affects them all day every day every time someone looks at them, every time they board an elevator.And alltogether it has unfairly advantaged me and disadvantaged them. I can’t even imagine the mental stress of being a black American over the last several years. And the entire 200 years we’ve been abusing and short changing these people, they have paid us back in unique gifts of art, music, and literature (on top of their everyday contributions to science, industry and education like everyone else makes too). I pay because it’s the least I can fucking do to help and say “someone sees, someone cares.” I give because I can, and never had to face what they face. I give because it’s their money.
You do you.
You don’t have to look at everything in terms of individual responsibility. We can clearly see that the injustices caused by transatlantic slavery, and imperialism more broadly, are very much still here. I think it would be nice to try to remedy this.
Of course, it’s non-binding, and the countries that should probably be paying reparations just happen to have all abstained (except for the rogue USA of course, voting against) so I don’t expect anything will happen. But it’s a nice idea.
black people live in slums in my colonial country and many of the exploited african nations.
start by letting them access to at least 20th century amenities and dignified work instead of finding every moral excuse not to.
this thread is full of sensitive westerners born on slave trader countries still rich on the spoils (and sometimes still benefiting from it).
I am a westerner, born in a non slave trader country that never existed before the 1860s. The country before was not a slaver country. The country before that was client state of a slaver country, but just for 20 years! The one before that was not a slaver country. Going event further the country before that was still not a slaver country. Then it was not even a country and still not a slaver one. This until the 1200s when we abolished slavery, so I guess that before then slavery was somewhat ok, but was white people slaves so I do not think that counts.
I think we never became rich on the spoils. We were definitely richer in the 1200s (we were so rich we paid for the slaves to be free!) and for some centuries after that. That was definitely our golden age I would say. Post war recovery after 1960 was also good, but mainly driven by local mechanical industries, not spoils I am afraid.
I am a westerner, born in a non slave trader country
contradictory so far
You will make many friends in the Baltics or the Balkans I am sure.
your lack of understanding of history does not constitute contradiction
your racism does not constitute understanding of history.
I have said nothing racists, so which part of history is incorrect?
the part where you think black people don’t deserve any kind of help for still being fucked by racism, just because you think you can’t keep track of it.
are the descendants of the enslaved people still suffering from it? are the descendants of the enslavers still benefitting from it? yes?
then reparations should be paid.
I think at this point it would be better to focus on providing things like universal healthcare, education, and retirement, to everyone, keeping the cost of living in check, and working on ensuring opportunities for dignified labor and fair compensation are available to everyone, regardless of race or ethnicity.
That alongside rigorous policy measures to reduce (with a mind towards eliminating) things like workplace discrimination, redlining, racial profiling, etc.
There are some examples where the descendants of enslaved people can trace their heritage to their enslaved ancestors, and identify the descendants of their enslavers (often generationally wealthy business tycoons who own factories that pollute the neighborhoods of the enslaved people’s descendants…). The people of Africa Town near Mobile, Alabama are a prime example, and there’s a pretty good documentary about it.
In those cases, where there is a demonstrable chain of ancestry, yes, civil law should require the descendants of the enslavers to pay reparations to the descendants of the enslaved.
But so many times it happens that everyone wants to paint with a broad brush, where there’s no room for nuance, and say things like “all white people should pay reparations to black people.” And that’s just too clumsy and would never work.
One, because not all white people are generationally wealthy descendants of enslavers, so such a blanket policy of collective punishment meets the definition of racism. Two, because there’s no way to quantify in abstract terms how much money “every white person” owes to “every black person.”
It’s better to focus on making society better as a whole, filling in the gaps where racial disparity still exists (by lifting up the disenfranchised, not by tearing down the privileged), making the wealthy pay their fair share to the government’s coffers, making the government ensure robust social safety nets which benefit everyone who needs them, and only demanding reparations in specific cases where there is a direct link between the descendants of enslavers and the descendants of the particular people they enslaved.
It’s been too long, and who exactly are you going to blame or get reparations taken from? Hell; If memory serves it was other black people who were gathering up and selling the black people into the slave trade. What you gonna do? Give $40 a piece to 50,000,000 black people, along with an I’m sorry card?
How do you determine who is descended of enslaved and enslaver? How do you identify who is benefitting today for something that happened 500 years ago? How do you deal with people that descend from both enslavers and enslaved? There is a long thread about this. Ultimately it is not possible to do what you are asking. Should a farmer in Turkey pay for the benefit the ottoman empire got from slave trade to a white looking mixed american of west african descent? You realize how stupid that sound?
the states would be paying those reparations, not the people individually
european states should pay reparations to the nations they colonized and enslaved, and colonial states (the usa, canada…) should pay reparations to their colonized populations.
And where do ‘the states’ get their money? Taxes. You’d still be taxing the people to pay for reparations
so? why should they live in the comfort their enslavement created while the majority of third world countries contend with poverty?
Do you realize the immense hypocrisy in your argument? Collectively punish a group of people, who did no wrong, based solely on where they’re born because people hundreds of years ago were dicks.
reparations are a form of wealth redistribution.
do you think taxing billionaires is “collective punishment”? but, oh no, what if some of them inherited that wealth 🥺 it would be so unfair to punish them by taking it away 🥺 all of that for what, the crime of being born into wealth? oh no, those poor, poor billionaires 🥺
do you not realize the immense hypocrisy of yours?
collectively punishing the majority of the world today from consequences of their shit, just so they don’t have to take responsibility for it?
it may or may not be their fault as individuals, but the state of colonies and neocolonies is still their responsibility as a country.
the states would be paying those reparations, not the people individually
Where does the state get that money? An eternal mystery
‘If white, then pay reparations’ is their answer
I agree there are challenges with economic reparations but I do want to point out that the transatlantic slave trade was different from slavery as practiced throughout human history.
It was more cruel than even slavery practiced in ancient Greece and Rome (civilizations which Western nations like to harken back to).
European colonial powers, in modern history, firmly believed in and propagated a global race based caste system. This itself is a crime against humanity but they took it as far as to define people with darker skin as less human, justifying their subjugation and slavery.
Throughout history many civilizations thought other peoples to be inferior or barbaric. But it wasn’t a caste system based on complexion as colonial era Europeans practiced it.
Entire fields of false science such as phrenology and eugenics sprung from this dogmatic belief in skin tone defining ones worth. The culmination of this vile ‘purity’ ideology was Nazi Germany and even the end of that movement has not ended white supremacy in this world.
This is a very unique problem that still has horrific reverberations to this day. I would not be so quick to absolve European colonial powers and their descendant nation states who still benefit from neocolonialism today. Reparations is a complex issue but I think verbal acknieledgment of accountability and an honest teaching of history would be a start in those nations that have had ongoing benefits from these inhumane institutions.
The only reason they didn’t have an Atlantic slave trade earlier was that they didn’t have the technology to do so earlier, there was virtually no transatlantic trade beforehand.
I don’t think it was a particularly cruel time. My ancestors didn’t have transatlantic trade, but they were among the cruelest people on Earth of any time. They certainly would have been Atlantic slave traders if they were able to, no doubt.
While I agree in part with the sentiment, I think is totally unfair to consider ancient slavery in Greece or Rome as less cruel. It was not less cruel depending on the slave in question. Slaves in mines and agricultural estates were in worse conditions then anything in American south. But if you were an educated slave then your life was indeed better. That also means that was common for slaves in ancient Rome to be able to buy freedom. Slavery was everywhere in society, so the comparison is really hard to make.
There is indeed a racial component in colonial slavery that was not present in ancient Roman slavery. A slave could be from Germany or from Syria and there was no difference in treatment.
I would say that both late trans-atlantic slavery and nazism share a philosophical root in the eugenetic movement, but both grew in parallel with different motives: in one case a justification for economic exploitation, in the other an ideological tool to enforce unity in nationalism.
The transatlantic slave trade started before the concept of race and the eugenetic movement. During the 15th century the justification was more routed in religion and the idea of having prisoner of war being better then to kill the enemy. Still and excuse for economic exploitation, but maybe more akin to what the greeks and romans were doing.
I think it would be reasonable to consider reparations for individual descendants of slaves. There are plenty of people alive today that can prove their descendance from a slave.
Reparations to entire countries in Africa seems a bit absurd to me.
Europeans and other monarchy-states are happier still feeding aristocrat and noble pigs, you mean? Yeah, I hear you.
Actually they can easily restitute African countries for the immense damages they were caused.
But restituting the victims of slavery is inconvenient for the empire, while an atrocity like the Holocaust can be abused as an excuse to fund and raise support for Israel.
That is easy because the Holocaust was between 1941 and 1945 and reparation were between 1952 and 1953. It is the same government, the same people, the same generation. The atrocity is clearly defined in time and space, and can be somewhat measured. Nonetheless, even in a “clear as day” situation, lot of opposition came to be part of this process, with this being a very difficult agreement to reach. Doing that 200 to 600 years apart, across multiple nation, multiple people, multiple culture, is borderline impossible and would settle anything. You cannot make it just for the hebrews with that reparations, you cannot with slave trade either. Same apply to WW2 reparation, Mongol conquest reparation (sound silly just to think about it), or induced famine in China and the Soviet Union.
“induced famine in china and soviet union” lmfao, are you fr
Transatlantic slavery is easily traceable to the countries which committed it and which suffered from it. The time period is irrelevant. In fact Israelis are primarily the Jews which didn’t suffer from the Holocaust because they went to colonize Palestine instead of staying in Germany. So your argument works against you.
Should today citizen of Portugal (under the 1976 Republic) be accountable for the legal (at the time) actions of the Portuguese Crown? Should the citizen of Benin be accountable for the atrocities committed by Dahomey to secure the slaves from nearby tribes? Are the people of Benin both beneficiary and responsible for that? How much? Should Brazil pay for the action of the Portuguese Crown? Should Italy pay because the Republic of Genoa bankers benefited from the loans and contracts with the Portuguese merchants? How much is an Italian descendent from a Venetian born in today Croatia responsible for the sins of Genoese banker that finances the Portuguese crown to pay the Imbangala people to capture slaves?
Yes they should at least pay some reparations. Now why is Germany sending money to Israel?
reply to the entire question if you can, and bring a reasonable justification about who and how much should pay to who. We have Italian descendent from Dalmatia, we have Brazilian descendent from Portugal, we have people from Angola descendent from Imbangala, Benin people descendent from Dahomey, that needs to pay how much to other people from Angola and Benin?
Countries in Africa are still suffering from the consequences of Western slavery. The entire countries as a whole, not taking into account the people. The only reason Africa is still underdeveloped is because of Western slavery and colonialism.
(Primarily black) communities in the West could also be given restitution funds to make up their deficiency in socio-economic status caused by past discrimination
Except that many of the descendents of the people who suffered most from slavery are now citizens of the countries which “committed it”, if by that you mean the countries which enslaved them. So telling the US to pay reparations to Ghana would in effect make descendents of enslaved people in the US pay reparations to the descendants of the people in Ghana who weren’t enslaved.
Add to that, as someone else pointed out, the people who actually captured Africans in Africa to sell to the European enslavers, were other Africans, often from rival tribes.
So not only would it mean US descendents of enslaved people would pay reparations to countries of descendants of non-enslaved people, but they’d actually be paying it to people who are in some cases the descendants of the people who captured their ancestors.
There’s no way to do this with precision, and people need to stop calling it racism every time someone points that out.
And guess what? The people living in those countries are still the most systematically disenfranchised and discriminated against of the population. Frequently getting the blame for all the problems caused by the right-wing politicians, white people keep voting in.
And the countries of their ancestors are still in shambles from the slavery and colonialism. So returning is not an attractive option.
That doesn’t change the fact that saying “the US should pay Africa reparations” misses the mark by a long shot.
And the countries in Africa are in shambles for many reasons, but the transatlantic slave trade is a relativey small part of that. Try colonialism more broadly, especially ivory trade and gemstone mining. Try the rivalries and warlords that colonial powers left in their wake when they left. Try harsher environmental conditions, harsher epidemiological condition, harsher pests and parasites.
There’s lots of reasons QOL in most of Africa is among of the lowest in the world, but transatlantic slave trade mainly affected the African diaspora, who today are mostly citizens of countries that you’re suggesting should pay Africa reparations. It’s an overly simplistic attempt at a solution which ignores reality in favor of convenient half-truths.
Also, I never suggested returning as an option. You’re just full of red herrings, aren’t you?
Argentina, United States, and Isreal voted against.
and 52 abstentions, including the UK and EU member states.
canada, australia and new zealand also abstained, what a surprise
Them: “Hold my beer.”
Not going to dispute this other than to say that it’s “the gravest crime against humanity in MODERN TIMES.”
In past times, enslaving the populations of entire conquered nations or villages was common. Bringing slaves back to Rome was a regular part of an Army’s return. Enslaving one’s neighbors has been extremely common across the globe, since the beginning of humanity.
Beyond slavery, there have been marauders like the Huns or the Khans, who would attack a city, and kill every single living thing, and then move on the the next one.
Unfortunately, there are lots of candidates for the award.
In past times, enslaving the populations of entire conquered nations or villages was common. Bringing slaves back to Rome was a regular part of an Army’s return. Enslaving one’s neighbors has been extremely common across the globe, since the beginning of humanity.
This is true, but not all Slavery is equivalent. All of it is obviously awful, but in the ancient world, conquering your neighbors provided an easy way to acquire more land and agricultural labor to feed a growing population of citizens. Enslaved people were not enslaved forever, and it was more akin to indentured servitude than chattel slavery. Rather, enslaved people would eventually be free, and become citizens of Rome, for instance, with more or less the same rights as any other citizen.
Chattel slavery, on the other hand, was inedibly unique, as far as historic slavery is concerned. People were now being enslaved, for life, based on the color of their skin, shipped off across a continent, and their descendants were also slaves upon birth, and those descendants were bought and sold as commodities on an open market.
Chattel slavery required the invention of modern notions of race to be invented, in order to justify it, which has had ongoing social impacts that extend far beyond the relations of production which birthed it.
Probably because life was so difficult, life and death and feudal lords warring for power.
Now we buy rotisserie chicken from Walmart, dump the trash in a landfill, and virtue signal people in the past who lived in a north korean style hellscapes.
I feel like creating an entire system dedicated to mass-murdering people industrially because of their origins or convictions is still the worst thing we’ve done as a species. Slavery is in the top spots, for sure, but it’s not “let’s create an industry solely dedicated to murder a specific ethnic group in the most efficient way possible” levels of crime against humanity.
Like, it has no economic benefits, it’s not for personal gain, it’s not because of lust or any human impulses, there is no reason to it apart from “let’s eradicate a part of humanity just because I said so”.
Valid.
Yeah, but it wasn’t hereditary in Rome, but lots of slaves did manage to achieve freedom, and anyone could end up a slave. It was still messed up and they still abused them really badly or fatally at times, but it wasn’t as bad as the American style of slavery. Sparta’s was closer.
That said, this does raise the whole question of the Medieval and Arab slave trades. There isn’t really a good demarcation between them and the Atlantic trade, and of course they themselves would have roots in classical times.
Beyond slavery, there have been marauders like the Huns or the Khans, who would attack a city, and kill every single living thing, and then move on the the next one.
There’s reasonable evidence the Mongols, at least, liked to kill civilians, but you have to be careful about taking the historical accounts of their enemies at face value. Unlike many wars between agricultural civilisations, they didn’t have literature of their own for us to draw from.
Trans-atlantic slavery was worse because it maximally exploited the humans as cattle. A quick death is much more convient than a lifetime of suffering.
I’m not going to argue which is worse, slavery or watching centuries of your entire culture destroyed in a day, along with every person in your life, before dying yourself. There are no winners in that argument.
rome wasn’t even physically capable of enslaving that many people as the african slave trade did.
Not just Rome, but Egypt, and every other nation, or whatever they were back then.
is that how you justify your own?
That’s not what I was saying, and you damn well know it. I mentioned Rome, and you seized on that to make an illegitimate point, which I countered that Rome wasn’t the only civilization participating in slavery, and you took that as an opportunity to accuse me of being soft on slavery, which is really, really stupid.
Highly disengenuous.
that’s exactly the point you are making though.
“we can’t help africa because the romans did it too! and then everyone will want restitution!”
if I believed that, I would say that, but I don’t believe that, and I didn’t say that. I will not engage with a liar who places their own words in quotes, and attributes them to me.
Done with you.
no, just some of the infamous whataboutism.
