Colonist States Still Deny Slavery Impact

Demands for reparation for centuries of slavery from the Caribbean and elsewhere are not about seeking aid or emotional compensation but a quest for fundamental historical corrections, says Sumangala Damodaran, professor at Ambedkar University Delhi, in conversation with Prabir Purkayastha, editor-in-chief of NewsClick. Anger in Jamaica over the recent British royals' visit is over atrocities of slavery and how resources were expropriated, but not just that. "The demands for reparations are not just to pay money for what was done to the slaves but for the damage caused over generations that last to this day," Damodaran says. Purkayastha and Damodaran discuss the demands of Jamaican activists who have given the British royals a 30-point charter of reparations, including educating the child descendants of those enslaved. A fifth of the wealthy British had roots in slave-owning and trading in the 19th century. Purkayastha says slave-owners were given reparations for giving up enslaving people, but the slaves never got reparations. Those reparations to slave-owners were the biggest bailout in British history, Damodaran says. Purkayastha says Haiti is one of the poorest countries because it was asked to pay reparations over 130 years, well into the 20th century.