It is common
for us to assume that all the descendants of the African slave trade have the
same history. However, I have only recently
started to learn that as bad as the British were, the Americans were far
more savage slavers and for a much longer period.
Slavery was
abolished In the USA in 1865 but ours in Jamaica was abolished in 1834 but that’s
only a tiny part of the story.
Because the descendants
of slave masters have always been in the majority in the USA, they have continued
to use legislative power to maintain near-slavish conditions up
to, in some cases, recently.
The Gleaner
should be highly commended for publishing on May 20, 2022, information re the 500-page
document produced in California which outlines the tremendous harm suffered
by descendants of enslaved people long after slavery was abolished.
These were mainly manifested through discriminatory laws and actions in all
facets of life, from housing and education to employment and the legal
system.
This report resulted
from measures developed at the behest of the slavery Reparations movement in
the USA, which lobbied Governor Newsome of California. So, in 2020, he created
a two-year task force to investigate and detail California's role in
perpetuating discrimination against African Americans.
California
is home to approximately 2.8 million blacks and it has the fifth-largest
Black population in the US after Texas, Florida, Georgia and New York, the
report said. And while African Americans make up less than six per cent
of their population, 28 percent of them are in jails, youth
detention centers and prisons.
The report concluded
that; “Four hundred years of discrimination has resulted in an enormous and
persistent wealth gap between Black and white Americans. These effects of
slavery continue to be embedded in American society today and have never been
sufficiently remedied. The governments of the United States and the State of
California have never apologized to or compensated African Americans for these
harms.”
Newsom
issued a statement praising California for leading the USA in the long
overdue discussion of racial justice and equity. The state's Attorney
General Rob Bonta, whose office is assisting the task force, said, “California
was not a passive actor in perpetuating these harms.”
While the
demand for reparations is increasing in the USA and indeed in many former slave
societies, California the only place to move ahead with a study and plan.
Without an in-depth study however, one city and a few universities in the USA had
taken up the issue of their illegal enrichment from slavery. So far, the
Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, became the first city to make reparations
available to Black residents last year and Georgetown University in Washington
is the first to have put measures in place to compensate descendants of the
slaves they used.
However, the
giant step taken by the state of California is a watershed.
The fledgling
reparations movement in Jamaica will no doubt be inspired by this bold move in California,
although I doubt that our government will be willing to fund any move to
study in-depth how slavery has affected our society.
For calls
for such action have been made locally and ignored over many years.
I can’t wait
to get my hands on the full report out of California which will play a great role
in educating the public in general.
It is
interesting though that this report has come out in the USA, at a time when several
states under Republican control are trying to further hide America’s
history of slavery and oppression from the people, with the Governor of Florida
even signing legislation to remove information on the topic from text books. If a giant
step is not therefore taken by the current US administration to deal speedily and
effectively with the issue of reparations, despite the best efforts of people
like Governor Newsome, the movement will surely be set back for another few decades
if a new Republican administration takes over in 2024.
