Anthony L. Hall is a descendant of the Turks & Caicos Islands, international lawyer and political consultant - headquartered in Washington DC - who publishes his own Internet Weblog at www.theipinionsjournal.com offering commentaries on current events from a Caribbean perspective

This is the clarion call CARICOM Chairman and St Vincent and Grenadines Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves made as host of the 18th Intersessional Heads of Government conference on Tuesday.  And, as political rhetoric goes, this call to action is sympathetic, morally compelling and quite appealing.  However, as a demand for actual compensation for African slavery it is indulgent, politically specious and wholly infeasible.

With all due respect to Gonsalves, the record of futility in making such demands should be instructive.  After all, far more influential and credible claimants than CARICOM heads of government have demanded reparations to no avail from what were generally recognized as the most amenable governments in history to offering them; namely, the UK government of PM Tony Blair and the US government of President Bill Clinton.

Claimants for reparations for slavery invariably cite two very cogent precedents:  1) The Reparations Agreement of 1952 between Israel and West Germany, pursuant to which the Germans compensated Israel for slave labor and persecution of Jews during the Holocaust, and for Jewish property that was confiscated by the Nazis (in addition, Holocaust survivors have also filed successful claims against German banks and other corporations for compensation for forced labor); and 2) The Civil Liberties Act of 1986, pursuant to which the US government paid $1.65 billion in reparations to “82,000 of Japanese ancestry who had been subjected to evacuation, relocation and internment during World War II”.

It must be noted, however, that these claims were successful primarily because direct links could be established between the perpetrators of the harm alleged and surviving victims of that harm.  By contrast, no such links exist between the institution of slavery and modern-day claimants for reparations.  And, to disabuse blacks of any feelings of racial discrimination in this respect, it would be helpful to know that reparations were paid to blacks who suffered from the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment precisely because this direct link could be established.

Moreover, all precedents aside, since virtually no European feels as guilty for slavery as many Germans felt (and still feel) for the Holocaust, it would be politically prohibitive for any European government to even countenance a demand to pay for reparations for African slavery. 

Never mind that even if this demand were not made infeasible by the passage of 150 years, most Englishmen would probably still take umbrage by arguing that -- whilst seafaring merchants and New-World colonizers were exploiting African slaves for unjust enrichment -- they were enduring unspeakable hardships of their own, which have been chronicled with such vivid imagery by Charles Dickens.  And, at the risk of defiling the myth that all blacks were victims of slavery, I wonder what portion of this claim, if any, Gonsalves and others intend to charge against the African kings and nobles who profited from selling fellow Africans into slavery, thereby sanctioning their use by Europeans as property bought and paid for?

Meanwhile, given all of the political, economic and psychological wounds we’ve inflicted upon ourselves (from fostering rampant social maladies to perpetuating artificial differences amongst us that make it impossible to integrate our economies), it behooves CARICOM leaders to focus on healing these instead of picking at the scab of old wounds that will do nothing to improve our regional condition.

Moreover, I am dismayed that the very notion of this claim does not shock the conscience of an erstwhile enlightened and progressive leader like Gonsalves so much as to make it unconscionable.   After all, given the ravages of HIV/AIDS, famine and genocide now plaguing people all over our purported Homeland, one would think that any demand on Europeans for payment for grievances would be for the benefit of these truly aggrieved and helpless African victims.

Finally, even though it might be too politically incorrect for many to concede, I suspect that the vast majority of us in the Caribbean look at the life of the average African -- whose ancestors were not “harmed” by the European slave trade -- and thank God that we are here, and not there….

Therefore, I admonish Gonsalves and his fellow CARICOM heads of government to refrain from burdening our people with this predominantly “African-American” grievance.  Because piggy-backing “our destiny” on this Faustian claim for a full apology and reparations for slavery tethers us to a Lilliputian chord of obligation which only compromises our bona fide independence. 

That said, if our leaders wish to pursue a more sustainable and constructive cause of action on behalf of descendents of African slavery throughout the Caribbean, I would be honored to help them present a claim to the British government - based on an equitable assumption of quantum meruit - for compensation for exploitative labor and other civil rights abuses suffered during colonialism.  After all, not only the perpetrators of the harm but also the victims in this case could be readily identified.  

NOTE:  I deem the “full apology” prong of this demand so inherently fatuous that I did not think it worthy of comment.  But, for those of you who think it has merit, consider that, after dutifully ignoring all Congressional Bills for actual reparations, former president Bill Clinton traveled to Uganda in 1998 and apologized for the slave trade. 

But his apology was summarily exposed as cheap political pandering when proud Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni felt obliged to explain that if any place in Africa were appropriate for Clinton to make such an apology, it would have been in West Africa, not Uganda. And, moreover, that if an apology for slavery were even warranted, Africans whose ancestors collaborated with the Europeans traders or enslaved their own people all over the continent should be first in line to offer one.  (Never mind that his apology has done absolutely nothing to better the lives of the few black Americans who heard, or the even fewer who demanded it.)