This relates to the BBC article [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66596790] which states “the UK should pay $24tn (£18.8tn) for its slavery involvement in 14 countries”.

The UK abolished slavery in 1833. That’s 190 years ago. So nobody alive today has a slave, and nobody alive today was a slave.

Dividing £18tn by the number of UK taxpayers (31.6m) gives £569 each. Why do I, who have never owned a slave, have to give £569 to someone who similarly is not a slave?

When I’ve paid my £569 is that the end of the matter forever or will it just open the floodgates of other similar claims?

Isn’t this just a country that isn’t doing too well, looking at the UK doing reasonably well (cost of living crisis excluded of course), and saying “oh there’s this historical thing that affects nobody alive today but you still have to give us trillions of Sterling”?

Shouldn’t payment of reparations be limited to those who still benefit from the slave trade today, and paid to those who still suffer from it?

(Please don’t flame me. This is NSQ. I genuinely don’t know why this is something I should have to pay. I agree slavery is terrible and condemn it in all its forms, and we were right to abolish it.)

  • Thatsalotofpotatoes@lemmy.world
    253·
    1 year ago

    It’s not intended to be punitive. The idea is that slavery generated a massive amount of wealth for slave owning economies that left us richer and the descendants of slaves poorer. Think of it as being the child of a crime boss. You haven’t committed any crimes but the hosue you live in and the school that gave you the education to get ahead were paid for with dirty money. The idea is fair, but just not likely to ever happen. I think the point is more so to make people recognize the problem so that more is done to catch up the people on the wrong end of the generational wealth spectrum

      • orrk@lemmy.world
        41·
        1 year ago

        by your logic, if someone stole something, have it to his brother and then got caught, having the brother give back the stolen goods is something Nazis would have done.

        But this isn’t Sippenhaftung, also known as gilt by association in English, this is a societal thing, you, even if your great great gandpappy didn’t himself own slaves, the society is still at fault and needs to right the wrongs done to a whole ethnic group

        • Kaleunt17@lemmy.world
          22·
          1 year ago

          by your logic, if someone stole something, have it to his brother and then got caught, having the brother give back the stolen goods is something Nazis would have done.

          According to Sippenhaftung the Nazis would probably have shot the thieve, his brother, their parents, other family members and burned down their houses.

          In case of societies you mean collective liability then?

          The society in question (which exactly?) of today is not the same compared to the society of the past. How can it be at fault?

          • orrk@lemmy.world
            1·
            1 year ago

            look, YOU are the person framing this as some form of individually targeted thing.

            as for the idea that the society is different, how can it be at fault? because the foundations of the society we have now are built on these injustices, to go back to the earlier example, “look, you can’t take the stolen stuff back from the thief, he’s a different person 10 years later”

    • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.caEnglish
      21·
      1 year ago

      This.

      OP is correct in the statement that any person alive has not been alive to either own slaves or be slaves. But that’s not the point of reparations.

      The point is that you have and continue to benefit from the times when slaves were legally permitted. It might not seem like it, and maybe someone along the line blew a bunch of that money on booze and gambling… But someone you are related to, and by proxy you are benefiting from the proceeds of slavery.

      By extension, all of those proceeds from the work that slaves performed was robbed from them by their masters. Making most of the slaves insanely poor while the former masters were able to keep the money those slaves earned for them. So they started from nothing. Sure, they were “free” to some variation of free (not sure all the racism made it feel like much of a change)… Fact is, they started at zero, at a time when most established families were sitting pretty.

      After all this time… There’s interest.

      I don’t know where they got these numbers and I haven’t looked into it all that closely, but it doesn’t seem too unreasonable given all of that.