The Financial compensation of slavery is a crime of intellectual fraud.
If in the previous editorial our crew did not agree with the soft understatement of the term slavery, which is far from embodying the crime against humanity of over 4 centuries, which did cut down millions of lives of African peoples, and reduced to the condition of simple work tools millions more; This month we focus on the paradigm of repairing the damage caused by what is commonly called alas slavery.
A multi-volume encyclopedia should be needed to speak of the damage of slavery, however unpretentiously it is far from illusory to speak in an editorial of the ins and outs of the new scheme advocating material reparation of slavery, which seem to be the new modus of the establishment, both in France and in the United States.
The era of time is in the hollow slogans, and manipulation of minds, for absolute control of human beings. Also the idea that it is necessary, now to have material reparation of slavery is another ploy straight from the laboratories of the same class of people, who once implemented racism in order to have a capitalist exploitation of African peoples. The sub humans by Decree (papal bull) who allowed brewing insolent fortunes were a very big deal.
Not content with their lot of the past, today they expect a headlong whose hidden aim is the total destruction of the memory of this heinous crime, turning it into a mere historical banality.
While in the United States US President Barack Obama said he intends to push for material reparation of slavery, he implicitly serves the agenda of this establishment, which wants to end the remonstrance of a global black populace who is increasingly aware and educated, and demands accountability.
What reparation can you talk about, when since the official end of slavery countries like France, the United States, or Brazil, instead of an agrarian reform, rather had good pleasure to compensate former slave masters, and were not shy to advise them to use capitalism to continue to exploit the black labor, which at the time didn’t receive any compensation, but the employment promise, of a 2 pennies job, in the new system of slavery that was getting on track. A new capitalist system, no less inhuman, would replace the old slave system around the world, and will make victims in colonial Africa as well as in the white working class community with the strikes of workers in Europe in the late 19th century, as so well highlighted in the book Germinal of Emile Zola, Or more recently in the Phantoms of King Leopold II of Adam Hochschild a book that meticulously dismantles the mechanisms of an incredibly violent criminal capitalism, an essential factor in economic profitability by coercion. King Leopold, who never went to the Congo, realized huge profits from the exploitation of rubber and copal.
Atypical slavery was by then unprofitable because of the socio-economic environment, it was urgent for the colonial powers to think of something else. The underpaid workforce who would be submitted by greed had potential, and the introduction of competition in the labor market with the import of laborers from distant region like India would be even more crucial in the logic of control by division, using confrontation of interests of each other. Also if racism was already well known, colorism, advocating social progress based solely on the skin shade, would become a safe ally in the maxim divide and rule. Along the way in the same vein, ethnic rivalry in Africa will be exacerbated to create retrograde scourges such as tribalism and regional selfishness that continues today. Dismay of xenophobia in South Africa came to remind the world with horror what could be the consequences of slavery and neocolonialism in the relationship between Africans.
Sure of Western preeminence Jules Ferry said in a speech July 28, 1885 that the superior races have a right towards the inferior races, namely to civilize them. The man who had been Minister of Finance of France in 1848 was even more trivial, explaining that the compensation of slave masters did not meet any legal principle, but just the need to use cash to boost white domination in Guadeloupe. One can understand easily that the domination of one race over another remains the cornerstone of the various stratagems used. And worse to abound in the same direction how one can expect reparations of France which by a sleazy racket, imposed on Haiti, the first black republic in 1802 a fine of 90 million gold francs in 1838 under threat of invasion and restoration of slavery. An ignoble ransom was paid to the civilized kidnapper by the people of Haiti until 1947. It is estimated that the current price of such a ransom amount to about 17 billion euros.
With examples whose veracity does not suffer any doubt, how can one expect reparation from an entity that seems to glorify his misdeeds and seems to want to add into the hands of its vainglory, the perfect crime of corruption of minds? The West presently has no means to pay damages related to slavery and to argue the opposite is pure fabrication, an intellectual fraud that seems defended by the misguided minds who believe themselves very smart, to give unstoppable shots, because invisible to the eye of the layman.
What would happen, if there was any material compensation of slavery to African descendants? Who should be paid and in what, that money will be used?
In the current configuration of racism and social injustice characterized, it is a plain lie to speak about reparation of slavery if the system that governs the West is not changed. At the same time paying a symbolic dollar to whomever it is, those who, for centuries have exploited shamelessly members of the black populace, are thinking by that sham to buy themselves a good conscience, and especially take away from the overall black diaspora, any means of pressure related to the slave history of the West. It would be easy now to tell peoples to close the debate on this issue that troubles the establishment, for the simple reason that the culprits have already paid.
In this humiliating ploy, some seem to forget the fact that if a quantifiable material debt may be payable, the moral damage of a series of secular crimes, meanwhile remains immeasurable and makes any material compensation, which would not destroy the conditions first who created the slavery and exploitation of Black people a simple view of the mind.
In a cynical scheme one would see some associations defending the black cause sponsored by the oppressor, receive the funds that its members, would be eager to spend in the commercial institutions of the same oligarchy, that had previously organized, and profited from the ignoble slave trade. A pattern that seems outrageous, but yet it’s the norm in the current configuration of power relations between the global black populace and the Western establishment.
In absolute terms, the "pretium doloris" price of pain, once paid, if it was to be quantifiable, could open the door to new abuses. If one can commit such a crime and pay to go scot-free, some may well have ideas of copycat, of such heinous acts, which would make them damn rich first, and then pay in the end, a ridiculous per diem to be at peace with the victims. It would be a very profitable investment in the amoral capitalist logic.
Also when one think of Africa, if the mother continent had to be compensated what would they pay to address the lack of these millions of souls, who logically would have contributed to its economic and social development. Some would call to allocate funds for development; a development based on which design? One favoring the deterioration of terms of trade, and neo-colonialism, while it’s well known that Africa needs more than ever to take its destiny in hand; or a design that will promote the privatization of African economies by the same multinationals whose ancestors once contributed to the vile trade?
In any event, following the Western rationae, a "compensation" of Africa would probably be a return to imperial colonialism, as the smallest funds allocated to Africa then, would become the new means of neocolonialist pressure, allowing the former slave masters to interfere directly in African affairs. After the right of humanitarian intervention, they would have a right of funds of reparation interference, in line with the disdain policy so dear to the West. Cynically, a right of humanitarian intervention that the West seems not to apply to Arab monarchies, their appointed co-authors in the criminal association, which decimated millions of lives for over 4 centuries. Looking closely at those who display an insolent opulence today, one does not need to be psychic to know who took advantage of the biggest crime of all times.
At the present time nothing has changed the structures of contempt of the black race continue to exist with a disappointing arrogance, from Paris to New York via London or Toronto, blacks are still living a nightmare, undermined by all out of ailments that are the direct consequences of past and contemporary slavery. However one can logically ask the question to know, whether life, virginity, honor and moral integrity, can be given back to a woman, who was humiliated, raped, beaten, and killed, if the answer is negative, sound minds can at least all agree that this example should be the reference, and the exhortation to future generations to move away from the shame ailments, because the Rubicon of infamy should never be crossed again.
By Hubert Marlin Elingui Jr.
Journalist - Writer
