Barbados turns sights on Benedict Cumberbatch in slave-owning families’ reparation row

It's wonderful when the "principles" of luvvies catches up with them

His mom looked good back during her most famous role

Something similar worked out so well for Zimbabwe, so why not try it in Barbados too? 🙄

That’s completely ridiculous. You can’t hold him accountable for the actions of his ancestors.

r3 what happened in Zimbabwe?

not one dime of any reparations will ever be spent wisely.

Santa Joe trying to buy more milk and cookies to be left on the table for himself. $55 billion

Is they are clear ties and records, yes recovery needs to happen.

Try again, r8, but this time in English.

Urged on by local activists, the government of Barbados is currently pursuing British MP Richard Drax for “hundreds of millions” (and Drax is worth “only” £150 million) in compensation for his ancestor’s importation of African slaves to one of the island’s sugar cane plantations, which Drax still owns, 370 years ago.

Meanwhile California, never a slave state, has established a Reparations Task Force, whose report last month called for the state’s 2.5 million black residents to be financially compensated for slavery and historical racism. Some panel members envisage restitution in the form of housing grants and tuition; others prefer direct cash payments.

For housing discrimination alone, black residents are apparently due $223,200 each — which would cost $569 billion. The state’s total spending plan for 2022-23 amounts to $303 billion. Perhaps California could go a year or two without government — which, given the shambolic condition of its Democrat-controlled cities, some Californians might welcome.

These stories are two sides of the same coin. Golden State worthies are flaunting their progressive bona fides, as reparations for black Americans have become de rigueur in the era of Black Lives Matter. Much as poorer nations have been jumping on the gravy train of western climate guilt, Barbados is opportunistically cashing in on our fashionable hair shirts. Self-flagellating liberals keen: “Everything we have and don’t deserve is built on historical injustice!” Resourceful grifters naturally respond: “Oh, yeah? So pay up.”

The practical problems with reparations are legion. Barbados has singled out Richard Drax — who’s never enslaved anyone that we know of — because his wealth traces directly to a slave trader, when many other families benefited from plantations whose profits long ago diffused. Because few fortunes stay intact for centuries, the logical target of Caribbean restitution is the UK state. To compensate foreigners whom today’s Britons have never harmed, UK taxes would have to soar even higher, when thousands of Brits can’t afford to turn the heating on.

The unworkability of California’s proposal makes the head spin. The panel suggests any black resident would qualify who is the descendant of a black slave or of a black person living anywhere in the US before 1900. Given patchy record-keeping, how will this heritage be determined? Will this be a windfall for the genetic testing firm 23andMe? What proportion of one’s genetic make-up must be African? Half? A quarter? An eighth? Which recalls the odious 19th-century tarnishing of mixed-race Americans as “quadroons” and “octoroons”.

Will the state administer DNA tests, or will applicants self-identify — in which case, will all 39 million Californians suddenly discover a long-lost black aunt? Moreover, once word goes out that black residents of the state are in line for a free quarter mil and counting, a nationwide stampede westward will make the Gold Rush look like a family outing to Disneyland. At least reparations might reverse the escalating emigration from this high-tax, high-regulation, high-drug-addiction progressive hell-hole, which used to be quite a nice place to visit.

Why should black people alone be made whole, while other groups subject to historical discrimination have to suck it up? Chinese Americans could justifiably seek damages for the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. Hispanics, indigenous peoples, the offspring of illegal immigrants, descendants of the Windrush generation, people whose forebears were disabled or gay would all have a case. And if 370-year-old injuries aren’t too distant to seek redress, why not 1,000-year-old crimes? 2,000! Can we sue the Italians over the depredations of the Roman Empire? Who will compensate the descendants of the victims of Genghis Khan?

People have treated each other abominably for ever. We’re a tribal species, and we’ve been invading and enslaving one another from the year dot. There’s not enough money in the world to make up for all that suffering and injustice.

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The present’s crude attempts to adjust for the wrongs of the past inevitably create still more unfairness. Should the proposal be adopted (I bet not), numerous beneficiaries of California’s theatrical mea culpa would be well-off, while many non-black taxpayers who bankrolled reparations would be hard-up. Worse, no programme could be more disastrous for race relations than one that awarded vast cash or cash-in-kind payments purely based on skin colour. The consequent resentment among the folks expected to finance such largesse would be political poison. And isn’t the notion of paying off an atrocity on the scale of slavery a little insulting? Would the debt ever be seen as paid?

For the biggest problem with reparations isn’t practical but moral. Traditionally — and rationally — Judeo-Christian cultures do not visit the sins of the fathers upon the sons. Britons and Americans alive today were not complicit in the slave trade. One of the most atrocious offshoots of the BLM movement has been the sudden popularity of heritable guilt, leading to the demonisation of “whiteness” because of what some Europeans did hundreds of years ago. I wouldn’t hold present-day Nigerians liable for selling their countrymen into slavery, either.

As individuals, we’re all born into a complex set of advantages and disadvantages. A host of factors beyond our control influence our standing as adults: the poverty or wealth of our family and forebears; the power or obscurity of our country of birth; physical comeliness or unsightliness; athletic ability or constitutional weakness; good or bad health, including a genetic proclivity for longevity v cancer or high blood pressure; an urban or isolated rural upbringing; natural intelligence, wit, and charm v the shy disposition of those too easily overlooked; a loving two-parent childhood or early years blighted by parental substance abuse, economic desperation, mental health crises or broken relationships.

Life is intrinsically unfair, on top of the injustice we actively perpetrate. Decency is hard enough to pull off in the present. Reparations for the directly injured who are still alive, such as payments to living Japanese Americans interned during the Second World War, are more than justified. But trying to adjust for iniquities hundreds of years ago is a fool’s errand and would almost certainly make everything worse.

[quote]“The money should be used to turn the local clinic into a hospital, support local schools, and improve infrastructure and housing.”

Why can't the government just focus on these type projects for minorities anyway? Like the article said most of these "fortunes" no longer exist and its a huge waste of time to seek money from people 10 generations removed.

And as a POC with Caribbean heritage, I too am a descendant of a white slave owner, and nobody is getting any of my coins! Most people of color in the Caribbean are descendants of white slave owners too, its a melting pot. Americans (black and white) need to get over people belonging to these huge racial monoliths. Just cancel this whole thing and start investing money in needy communities by improving schools and bringing in more jobs.

That would be ironic... a mixed race person having to fork over. Well, pay yourself first, I guess.

It feels wrong to me that we now judge people for their ancestors. You would never ask a murderer's child to apologize for his or her father/mother.

[quote] That’s completely ridiculous. You can’t hold him accountable for the actions of his ancestors.

He's not being held personally accountable. They're not going after his assets just the real estate on the island. It's like a taking by eminent domain except with no compensation.

Public-funded reparations unfairly take money from people whose family lines played no role in slavery. However private reparations should be fair game. If you inherited money provably gained directly from the labor of someone subjugated by your ancestor, then it really isn’t your money. The direct descendants of that person have a right to recover it. In the words of that Bajan poet, Rihanna Fenty:

[quote]Bitch better have my money, Y'all should know me well enough, Bitch better have my money, Please don't call me on my bluff, Pay me what you owe me.

R10/R11, it requires a creative, fair solution. Hopefully, CA will invest at least as much time determining how to execute a plan as you've spent finding reasons it can't work.

[quote] As individuals, we’re all born into a complex set of advantages and disadvantages.

If we were all regarded as "indivuduals" there would be no racial inequality. African slavery created a permanent caste system. In America, the Black descendants of Black slaves are born with a complex set of disadvantages simply based on ethnicity and/or skin color that white people are not born with no matter what their socioeconomic status. This has been true since before the United States of America was founded.

Bear in mind that reparations are a response to the tangible multi-generational injustice of institutionalized racism. The acts of a government and society that held Blacks as chattel and even after emancipation LAWFULLY denied them every right, opportunity and advantage afforded to every other citizen.

I am mystified why everyone takes this issue so personally. No individual is being held responsible because their great-great-grandfather was a slaveholder or a Klansmen. The government is attempting to pay the moral debt that is owed to victims of institutionalized racism that has uniquely disadvantaged a race of people for centuries. Just because that debt can NEVER be adequately repaid doesn't mean America (or CA) shouldnt make the effort.

I worked in Salem for a decade in the tourism industry. One thing I always thought was weird was the Peabody Essex Museum separates itself from the Salem Witch Trial tourism. You would think one of the oldest museums in the country in Salem, MA would have a bunch of witch shit but it doesn’t.

They actually DO and it’s all kept out of the public eye. I think within the last 2 or 3 years, they’ve put some stuff on display but only recently. And only certain things.

What I learned was that the old money families who come from the Salem Witch Trials are still keeping certain records and documentation of the Salem Witch Trial executions out of the public eye in fear of lawsuits and etc.

There were people during the witch trials who were executed over land and estates and whatnot and are the reason why some of these families still have their wealth.

There are thousands of people who visit Salem because they descend from a Salem victim. If the identity of the judges and accuser families were revealed today, you’d bet your ass there would be a bunch of white people looking to get money from these old money families that are in Marblehead and Ipswich and shit. Without a fucking DOUBT.

R19 Here here. The US gives billions to foreign countries the average American has never heard of or find on a map and they don’t give a fuck but resorting a group of wronged AMERICANS after 350 years of brutalizing them is just TOO MUCH!

R17, try not to take it personally and I won't take credit for somebody else's words.

I meant restoring*

[quote]They're not going after his assets just the real estate on the island.

R15, tell me you're not a tax accountant.

Well, it's America, R20. It's on the money. We Sueyourass Soonum.

R25 Absolutely.

And this is why I call bullshit on white people. Because I know if there was ever a way for descendants of the Salem Witch Trials (and there’s thousands, maybe a million at this point) to sue and get money from the accusers and judges and city of Salem or whatever, they would go after that money 100% with no fucks given.

And like I said, that’s why 80% of documents and records from the Salem Witch Trial stuff is underneath the Peabody Essex Museum right now.

It's not a bad line in the Times piece, R26: Will the state administer DNA tests, or will applicants self-identify — in which case, will all 39 million Californians suddenly discover a long-lost black aunt?

Reparations can only be done through infrastructure and I still don't know how you sell it in a country like the US - which is to say get political credit for it as reparations, vs. just governing and directing policy to the areas of greatest need and most promise for a majority. In case you haven't noticed, the we're all in this together national conscience isn't exactly a strong suit.

R27 The thing is, most black people are well aware of their slavery ancestry.

I think white people think “400” or “200” years ago or something and there’s just been so much time in between or something.

If you’re black and in the South, you’re most likely living in the same place the last slave in your family settled in lol.

The last slave in my family died in 1920. My Grandmother was born in the same house they lived in. Then she moved to Boston in the 70’s.

Black migration from the South really happened in the 60’s and 70’s. Most black New Yorkers and New Englanders still have family in the south. Just like the Spike Lee movie “Crooklyn” lol.

I don’t know about the West.

But it’s really not that hard. Like I personally have enough records and documentation to qualify for reparations to prove my connection to the last slave in my family.

[quote]not one dime of any reparations will ever be spent wisely.

r20 that's very interesting, I had no idea about the families who are descended from the accusers keeping records out of the public eye.

R28, I hope you get your family's wealth back from the govt that prospered from those enslaved.