ManLikeMrJones

Sensible

[ManLikeMrJones @ManLikeMrJones1]

@sqlblues @babamatwinsand1 @Farida_N Very ironic given what's happening to the Palestinians

[Sai Ishaya @Sai_Ishaya_]

Meanwhile, you never see them turn out in numbers to induce amnesia regarding the holocaust or try to diminish the realities of antisemitism with arguments like this.

B/c, in fact, several Jews betrayed other Jews during the Holocaust.
In the Warsaw Ghetto, Abraham Gancwajch, himself Jewish, led Group 13, a Gestapo-linked organisation that extorted fellow Jews & led them directly to their deaths. Several other organisations were like this.

Germany's later reparations didn't cancel its earlier crimes either. It would be insane for you to say it did, and yet even popular British politicians keep talking about "Britain took a loan to end the slave trade".

You don't also see people respond to Holocaust restitution claims by invoking ancient Rome. You'd probably be cancelled for every statement like that.

If someone discovered their Jewish grandfather had informed on the Gestapo, would that absolve the Nazi state? It seems to be an argument only brought up when the transatlantic slave trade is being discussed.

"Reparations are a scam." & yet people will actively support efforts by Germany to compensate Holocaust survivors. Some restitution of stolen property has also reached heirs over the years.

Holocaust restitution involved lost records, disputed ownership, dead claimants & heirs scattered across borders. It was difficult & imperfect, yet several mechanisms were established. Complexity was never brought up as an issue not to kickstart the proces.

Nobody thinks antisemitism outside Germany absolves Nazi Germany. Multiple perpetrators can be accountable at once. The same way when the Holocaust comes up, people don't go back in history to dig up
another genocide to dismiss it.

Arab & other slave traders have their own historical responsibility. Why would that excuse British or other European participation?

I have written about historical memory and how even that is believed to be only for a Western, Caucasian palate. Anyone else who brings it up is told to forget the past. There is a holocaust memorial in several cities across the world. It is understandably seen as important, even necessary, to remember, apologise, reflect and learn.

Anyone whose reflex response to discussions around a formal apology by the British government is to list several counterarguments meant to minimise the history of the transatlantic slavery in an effort to rob people of their own right to remembrance & accountability is despicable.

[ManLikeMrJones @ManLikeMrJones1]

@babamatwinsand1 @sqlblues @Farida_N I'm actually on your side, this dude couldn't answer your question now he's requesting for you to go away

[ManLikeMrJones @ManLikeMrJones1]

@LoinDuTribu @neoconpapi Where do you find time to debate these fools

[Farida Bemba Nabourema @Farida_N]

I am thoroughly exhausted by the intellectual gymnastics and extraordinary moral cowardice that emerge whenever Africans and people of African descent raise the question of reparations for slavery and colonialism.
Every time we discuss the transatlantic slave trade, someone rushes to remind us that Europeans were not the only people who enslaved Africans. There was the Arab slave trade, they say. Africans sold other Africans, they insist, as though they have just unearthed some extraordinary historical revelation capable of absolving Europe of centuries of organized human exploitation.

And what exactly is the argument here? That because several people participated in a crime, none of them should be held accountable? That the involvement of an African merchant somehow diminished the suffering of the African who was sold? What a spectacular bankruptcy of moral reasoning.

Yes, some Africans participated in the slave trade. Some African monarchs, merchants and elites profited from the trafficking of human beings. These are historical realities that deserve serious examination. We can even discuss the Afro-Brazilian returnees who settled along the West African coast. Some were formerly enslaved Africans who had obtained their freedom in Brazil, returned to Africa and subsequently participated in the very trade that had once deprived them of their own liberty. Joaquim d’Almeida, for example, was enslaved in Brazil, obtained his freedom, returned to West Africa and became a slave trader. Francisco Félix de Souza, a Brazilian-born merchant, built an immense commercial enterprise around the trafficking of enslaved Africans from Ouidah.

We can examine the royal families, merchant dynasties and political institutions that benefited from this commerce. We can investigate the fortunes accumulated, the properties acquired and the privileges transmitted across generations. I have absolutely no objection to holding African historical actors accountable for their participation in slavery. But now that we have identified some of the sellers, can we please return to the people who were SOLD? Can we talk about their descendants?

Can we talk about the millions of human beings whose bodies became commercial merchandise, whose children were born into captivity and whose descendants were subsequently denied access to land, education, property, political equality and economic opportunity for centuries?

The participation of an African king in the slave trade does not absolve the European merchant who purchased human beings, the shipowner who transported them, the banker who financed the enterprise, the plantation owner who extracted their labor or the governments that legalized and protected the entire system for centuries.
And then comes my favorite exhibition of historical illiteracy, the claim that Europeans today cannot be expected to pay for the sins of their ancestors. How convenient!

Apparently, nations can inherit the wealth of their ancestors, the institutions of their ancestors, the territories acquired by their ancestors, the commercial advantages secured by their ancestors and the accumulated prosperity produced by centuries of exploitation. Oh they can even compensate the slave owners for freeing their slaves. But the moment we discuss the obligations attached to that inheritance, history suddenly becomes irrelevant. You can inherit the estate, but apparently the debts buried beneath its foundations must remain with the dead.

What an extraordinary understanding of justice!

[Farida Bemba Nabourema @Farida_N]

When you talk about reparations, some of the first people who come to oppose them are ignorant Africans whose confidence far exceeds their intellect telling you, “We don’t need reparations.”

Do you people even understand what you are rejecting? Do you think reparations mean a workers’ compensation cheque, that we are all going to queue at the bank and receive $100 or $500 for the suffering inflicted on our ancestors? Or that those our corrupt leaders receiving a $1billion check to acquire their next mansion in Dubai or Monaco? Is that really the extent of your imagination?

Reparations mean repairing structural harms left by the slave trade and its immediate child colonialism and it takes multiple forms.
Economic reparations include changing trade laws and agreements that keep formerly colonised economies supplying cheap raw materials while making it difficult for them to develop industries of their own. They can include preferential access to markets, removing tariffs that penalise processed goods, supporting local manufacturing, and changing procurement rules so African businesses can compete for valuable contracts.

Reparations can include tax advantages for building businesses: tax credits for productive investment, relief for new enterprises, incentives for research and manufacturing, and measures that help businesses owned by affected communities accumulate capital. They can include debt cancelation, investment funds and ownership stakes that help people build lasting wealth.
They can include returning identifiable stolen assets, millions of acres land, mines, confiscated gold reserves ( More than 2/3rd of the French gold reserve was taken from African countries since the colonial era).

Cultural reparations can mean returning looted artworks, sacred objects, royal treasures, manuscripts and human remains ( The German are still holding onto tens of thousands of African skulls they massacred in Namibia for ex), with the resources necessary for their preservation under the authority of the communities to whom they belong. You cannot steal somebody’s heritage, charge admission to see it, and then present a temporary loan as generosity. Repair can also include funding museums, libraries, publishing houses, theatres, film and cultural institutions whose development was obstructed or whose work was treated as inferior.

Historical reparations can mean opening colonial archives, returning records, identifying burial sites, documenting atrocities and supporting research led by the communities concerned to restore the names and lives of people reduced to numbers in those shipping registers.

Linguistic reparations can mean investing in reinstating African languages as languages of education, science, administration and intellectual life. That includes training teachers, producing textbooks, and recovering knowledge that colonial institutions dismissed because it was transmitted in a language they refused to respect.

Our nations have been so tied by debts that the IMF and our western debtors slash our educational budgets leaving our schools underfunded, making such reforms financially impossible. And this was intentional!

Reparation means our Children should be able to learn through their own languages and acquire other languages without being taught to despise the first words through which they understood the world.Reparations means revising our school curriculums, both in formerly colonised countries and in the countries that profited from their subjugation.
These measures require negotiation, enforceable commitments and public accountability.

But listen to how quickly some of you ignoramuses dismiss the entire demand before making the smallest effort to understand it. The ignorance is sickening !

[ManLikeMrJones @ManLikeMrJones1]

@SossouMd @Farida_N What is fascinating is no one questioned reparations for Jews or the Japanese, no one asked why Egyptians didn't provide reparations for enslaving the Israelites but as soon as it's da Blacks everyone becomes an expert, even other Black folks arguing for the coloniser. Crazy.

[ManLikeMrJones @ManLikeMrJones1]

@sqlblues @babamatwinsand1 @Farida_N Couldn't answer that one so they have to "go away" lol

[ManLikeMrJones @ManLikeMrJones1]

@xavierjdesigns @EastsideGunn_ Na this guy is definitely trolling

[ManLikeMrJones @ManLikeMrJones1]

@garrypickles @AFCJaccy What was your experience of racism?

[Lynn Gedeon, PMP @LynnGedeon]

I will never talk down on Black people. I don’t care where you’re from.

Haiti. Jamaica. Nigeria. America. Brazil. Anywhere.

We have all had to survive systems that were never designed to make life easy for us.

We can disagree. We can correct each other. But I will never tear down another Black community just to make mine look better.

That kind of division does nothing for us.

[ManLikeMrJones @ManLikeMrJones1]

@Sealgair_RB @misanharriman Ya fool

[ManLikeMrJones @ManLikeMrJones1]

@SWDevonRebecca @dr_musgrave Open conversation Rebecca, how can the government ensure that grammar schools become truly diverse?

[ManLikeMrJones @ManLikeMrJones1]

@brozovicbasic @JenCarsonTaylor @KensingtonRoyal @RoyalFamily @barristerlawusa Rent free

[ManLikeMrJones @ManLikeMrJones1]

@helixafc @BramptonManor1 Sharrap

[ManLikeMrJones @ManLikeMrJones1]

@LoinDuTribu Keep stepping on their fkng necks

[ManLikeMrJones @ManLikeMrJones1]

@DoubleEph @Eloka51 Worst take ever

[ManLikeMrJones @ManLikeMrJones1]

@toadmeister This guy has moved on to bus lanes after hounding someone to his death...

[David__Osland @David__Osland]

It's a pity Jason Arday wasn't a rightwing journalist arrested for beating his pregnant girlfriend. The obituaries would have been somewhat more sympathetic then.

[ManLikeMrJones @ManLikeMrJones1]

@adrianoise @SamdGreat01 Man not another one of these Nigerians that bats for the right wing. Dude they hate you too trust me