White Privilege in Alabama
A fight over rewriting the Alabama state constitution — as racist a state charter as was ever written — reveals the racial fault lines which run throughout the South. While this Economist article perpetuates the muthos of Old and New South, it’s still a readable, cogent introduction to the issues facing Alabama, a state I’ve only recently started to pay attention to, since some of my best friends have taken up employment at the only liberal arts university in the state system.
The constitution was itself the product of electoral fraud. The decisive votes that returned a collection of white supremacists to the convention were cast in areas of the state which were 75% black. Yet this squalid history is not necessarily a reason for scrapping the existing constitution.
If it contains racist language, so does the US constitution, which defines blacks as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of census-taking. The racist provisions have no legal force, having been amended away. The clause preventing the state from dealing with private companies did not prevent Alabama from wooing Mercedes-Benz with copious subsidies. And many Alabamians like the restrictions the constitution places on the state’s power.
Read more…
March 30th, 2002 at 6:57 pm
From: the desk at www.ar-africare.com
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Circulation caption:-
An address to the Jamaican people and regional Caribbean governments
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TITLE:-
ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT, REPATRIATION AND REPARATION
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INTRODUCTION
August 1st, 1838, signifies “freedom” for Jamaica’s majority.
August 6th, 1962, signifies further “freedom” for Jamaica’s majority.
ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT
“Freedom”, initially from shackles and slave labour, and then freedom to vote and govern national affairs has complementary prerequisites for empowerment. There are requirements of access to capital on reasonable terms, access to investment opportunities, responsible husbanding of public finances, representational accountability with checks and balances, and appropriate educational and technical training for the majority of the populace, if empowerment goals are to be realised as tangible developmental reality, and be more than declaratory freedoms or mere dreams.
Conventional political representation, since 1944 “universal adult suffrage”, has failed to this day to empower the masses. National concerns exist about, public expenditures for satisfactory levels of employment opportunities, road development and sustained repairs
within the interior of the island, adequate mass education and technical training, and various provisions for public welfare ( water supply, sewage treatment, through to agricultural support for farmers), among other concerns.
Jamaica’s constitutional structure of 1944 reflects the dictated consolidation of power in a colonial Governor. The post 1962 Constitution reflects the consolidation of power in an independent Prime Minister, governing under much the same flawed constitutional
structure. Inadequate accountability, representational loyalty structurally co-opted into blind support for the central head (colonial or post-colonial), instead of representation structured for primary loyalty to the people, their needs and public welfare. There is an inadequacy of entrenchment provisions for protection of fundamental constitutional rights and freedoms, especially for protection against human rights violations. There are both statutory and constitutional inadequacies of absent severe and effective sanctions for misappropriation of public funds. There is a need for “term limits”, for timely democratic removal of aged, ineffective, and assumed ‘indispensable’ leaders. These, and more factors, have led to the present juncture of Jamaica’s development (underdevelopment?).
Adverse terms of trade, propelled by externally dictated, misconceived and failed notions of “structural adjustment programs - ’saps’” (Argentina most recently) has led to a global debt crisis across the southern hemisphere countries. Literal “debt slavery” acts as a strangling yoke upon the Jamaican people. At the end of the twentieth century, in 1999, Jamaica’s debt was $139 billion. In 1999 the foreign debt burden ran at just below half of the country’s annual GDP.*
REPATRIATION
Some within Jamaican society see salvation, from the “Babylon” of this
postcolonial system, in a return to the ancestral homeland, Africa.
Immigrant Irish descendants in the United States of America celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day, and have not forgotten their ancestral homeland. The Jews, after over 2000 years of being away from Palestine, never forgot an historical homeland, to the extent that in 1948 the Jewish people had returned en mass to Palestine and established a homeland. Almost 164 years after the abolition of slavery, some Jamaicans of African descent express a frustrated urge to return to the African continent from where their ancestors arrived as involuntary migrants providing forced unpaid labour on slave plantations for generations.
REPARATION
On the 1st August, 2002, it will be 164 years since British statutory abolition of slavery in 1838. In 1833 the Emancipation Act enacted a 5-year apprenticeship system. The 5-year hiatus until the 1838 abolition has much to teach about a national political determination for ensuring payment of reparations and compensation.
William Wilberforce, “the liberator”, was primarily a politician. He had opposed women abolitionist movements and banned them from association with his abolition movement. In 1824, Elizabeth Heydrick (nee Coltman - born 1769), a leading woman abolitionist, published her paper entitled, ” Immediate, not gradual abolition”. Sweden had abolished the slave trade from 1813. Before that, in 1802 the slave trade had been abolished by Denmark and Norway. In Wilberforce’s assessment, Britain had to be “gradual”, as it was evident that Britain had economic interests to protect. Britain remained economically well positioned for decades with adequate colonies, slaves and profits from slavery (albeit declining in profitability over time). Wilberforce fully understood the eventual economic consequences of loss of “chattels” (people as property - slaves), by way of abolition. In Wilberforce’s view, political and economic expediency were paramount. Wilberforce, “the liberator”, advocated prolonging Britain’s
abolition of slavery in the interest of the master’s purse, not the slave’s interest. Ultimately, reflecting Britain’s primary concerns, the British parliament voted 20 million pounds sterling as compensation to the slave owners for loss of their property - the slaves, “chattels”, who were finally freed. The British government, for as long as it was economically viable, aggressively protected its share of trade and the lucrative slave trade. Britain’s position at the Congress of Vienna, following the Napoleonic Wars, is highly indicative of Britain’s true interests of protection for effecting colonial advancement, and further colonial exploitation and pilferage.
Anglo-centric history dotes on the benevolent concerns for the Negroes’ welfare. Our ‘colonials’, imbibed with such ideas, remain, to this day, loyally grateful for the timely benevolence so magnanimously bestowed.
The Atlantic African Slave Trade stands distinct in the past 500 years of human history. There had been slavery before this system of Atlantic Trade slavery, and slavery after Britain’s abolition; but, the Atlantic Trade stands uniquely as an institution in the history of mankind in its methodology and proportions. The prime movers in the Atlantic enterprise were the European nations. Portugal, Spain, Britain, Holland, France and others were all prime European movers. In 1441, the Portuguese sailor, Antam Goncalves, seized the first group of Africans near Cape Bojador, for Portugal. This European enterprise started
with ships financed from Europe, sent to Africa, transporting millions of kidnapped human beings for centuries of forced uncompensated labour in the Americas. The imprisonments - brandings- mutilations- whippings, coupled with extraction of unpaid labour from black people over generations, denial of original names and language, stripping of identity, suppression of indigenous culture, destruction of family life, psychological destruction of self-worth over centuries, and
systemic dehumanisation, makes the Atlantic African Slave Trade a horrendous European commercial enterprise. Size of transshipment, magnitude of European financial investment, substantial profits generated for advancement of European slave trading nations, and degree of institutionalised brutalisation of human beings, are indicia of the Atlantic Slave Trade’s brutal distinctiveness. The prime movers, financiers, shippers, and plantation owners, were all indubitably from the European nations that were the pivotal beneficiaries.
The suggestion that because Africans captured Africans for Europeans this exonerates reparations claims against European nations is an untenable argument. Mr. Abs was a German Jewish financier who was central to the financing of Auschwitz. He was a collaborator against his own people. It has never been suggested that Hermann J. Abs and other Jewish collaborators’ assistance to the Nazi regime should exonerate the German nation from either reparations claims for
Auschwitz in particular, or the holocaust in general.
As early as 1526, a Congolese Chief who was a literate Christian convert wrote the following words:
“Each day the traders are kidnapping our people - children of this country, sons of our nobles and vassals, even people of our own family. This corruption and depravity are so widespread that our land is entirely depopulated. We need in this kingdom only priests and schoolteachers, and no merchandise, unless it is wine and flour for Mass. It is our wish that this kingdom not be a place for transport of slaves.”
(Written to King Joao 111 of Portugal in 1526 by Nzinga Mbemba Affonso 1, crowned ruler of the Congo in 1506).
There were indeed African opponents to the slave trade at the time, and, as with other crimes against humanity, there were facilitators
and collaborators from the subject peoples.
The point is not that Africans subjugated by European military might,
religious influence and collusive power facilitated and/or collaborated with the subjugators, but that the Atlantic African Slave Trade was a distinct European led criminal commercial enterprise for which a claim is being made, against the prime movers - subjugator European nations responsible for initiating, organising, financing, and sustaining the specific crime against humanity, the Atlantic African Slave
Trade.
THE CLAIM
The Geneva Conventions effect is to establish universal jurisdiction. It is under Article 6 of the 1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the slave trade, and institutions and practices similar to slavery, and enslavement of a person, that we find the
criminal offence.
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide 1948, second article of the Convention, defines genocide
as:-
a.
Killing members of the group
b.
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
c.
Inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring
about its physical destruction
d….
From as early as 1772 in his seminal judgment, in the James Somerset case, the then Lord Chief Justice of England, Lord Mansfield, pronounced slavery an “odious” condition, as signified both his moral and legal appreciation of this unacceptable condition against
humanity at the time. Slavery henceforth was not lawful in England, but the “odious” condition was acceptable for Africans and their descendants to the lasting benefit and profit of England, for generations to come in British colonies. The Congress of Vienna, as between European nations, in 1815, declared
the then existing slave trade, an uncivilised condition. Legal declarations and acknowledgements therefore exist at the
time, confirming that a wrong was knowingly being perpetrated.
The definition of “genocide” in international law is a starting point for a claim against Her Majesty’s Government. A legitimate claim in
international law is sustainable.
The claim is against the prime movers, not subordinate and/or subjugated facilitators and/or collaborators. In much the same way, other claimants, Jews, Native Americans, etc. focused on the primary perpetrator of their sufferings.
THE PRECEDENTS
Prior instances of successful claims for historical injustices are well known - Native Americans, Inuits ( Eskimos - Canada), Aborigines (Australia), and Maoris ( New Zealand) are all precedents. Suffice to say that not one member of those group(s) was alive when the initial historical injustice, as claimed for, was done. The descendants from the group advanced a legitimate derivative claim.
THE MECHANISM
An ad hoc tribunal of the United Nations, on the models of the Tokyo or
Nuremberg tribunals (albeit military), can serve the purpose of globally addressing a compensatory claim for the specific crime against humanity, the Atlantic African Slave Trade.
AN APOLOGY
In the early 1990s Prime Minister Tony Blair of England, apologised to the Irish people for England’s complicity in Irish suffering at the time of the 1845 Irish famine. A mere 7 years earlier Britain abolished slavery in Jamaica, and the slaves had suffered quantitatively and qualitatively far more than did the Irish. Her Majesty Elizabeth 11 apologised to the Maoris. What then is so inconceivable or unreasonable, that Her Majesty’s Government apologies, as has
already been done for others, and pay reparations to the descendants of African slaves, as ought justly to be paid in adequate amounts?
THE PAYMENT
Practical and effective ways of paying reparations are as follows:-
1.Total debt relief
2.Educational trusts established for a minimum of 50 years for the
descendants of African slaves, whose ancestors contributed slave and
colonial labour over 300 years.
This will not be adequate payment from Britain and the other prime mover European slave trading nations. But, in practical terms, can partly suffice to effect meaningful payment from Britain to former British colonies for the centuries of suffering, extracted wealth from forced unpaid labour, and for the legacies of the slavery of the Atlantic African Slave Trade. Quite frankly, the western world would be bankrupt if it tried, in all conscience, to make full payment for the injustices meted out to black people over the centuries, arising from the Atlantic African Slave Trade with its lasting oppressive and discriminatory consequences.
CONCLUSION
Informed opinion in the international community knows that a legitimate basis for reparations claims exist, arising from the Atlantic African
Slave Trade.
After the Durban (South Africa) anti-racism conference, 2001, the world trend between concerned governments is towards settlement. Some class action claims have been filed, and more are contemplated, such as suits against insurance companies that had insured slaves as property (i.e. in the United States of America).Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth 11 was sued for reparations on the occasion of Her Majesty’s visit to Jamaica in 2002.
Jamaicans, and other Caribbean peoples, have challenges to face in several areas, for constitutional change, developing accountability mechanisms for expenditures of public funds, expanding development opportunities through investment and job creation, to mention but some of the pressing needs for economic empowerment. These realities, in and of themselves, do not negate the genuine claim for reparations, that exists. Indeed, if debt relief can be channeled directly via non-governmental organisations to the people most in need, and to community based programs, this is the best way of ensuring that those in greatest need benefit most. While good and bad elected governments are transient - the interest of the people and their needs and rights are constant and paramount.
Reparations, by way of total debt relief and educational trusts, need not invoke any hatred, anger, or hostility, upon a justifiable claim made, as between claimants and defendants at the international level. There was a brutal denial/theft of generational wealth for centuries. The British nation owes Jamaica, and all the colonies, a tremendous debt; or, as Winston Churchill accepted, “… you made us rich, you made us great. It is the colonies in our possession that enabled us to win the Napoleonic wars. It is your wealth that made us the greatest nation in the world”. And, I might add, the extracted forced unpaid slave labour, created for generations a corresponding massive debt. So, the time has come to pay back to the colonies - at the very least, part of that which was stolen.
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* Sources of 1999 information:- Jamaica Ministry of Finance and Planning Paper # 10 1999/2000; and, BBC news report of April 22, 1999. There have been 39 years of worsening debt, and there is no objective reason to believe that the next government figures to be published, forty years after political (not economic) independence, are likely to be any less dismal.
Courtenay Barnett is an Attorney at-Law. For more information on reparations and related issues visit www.ar-africare.com and
www.globaljusticeonline.com