Dear Editor,
The recent visit by British Prime Minister David Cameron to our island has once again ignited the issue of reparation in certain quarters. The proponents of reparation seem to have as the basic premise of their argument the fact that Britain, through the exploits of slavery and by extension our natural resources, have almost forever set us back as a nation in terms of our own socio-economic development.
Regrettably some of us tend to forget that small matter of our own ancestors from the west coast of Africa facilitating the slave trade by capturing millions of our ancestral brothers, sisters and children in exchange for goods of all sorts from those who we now seek reparation from. Have there been any calls by us for reparation to be made of the existing African States that participated in the slave trade, or indeed other European States such as Portugual, Spain, France and the Netherlands, which were also participants in the proliferation of the slave trade?
Since we are at it, why not also call on our own Maroons to give an account as to the role they played in recapturing those slaves that ran away from the plantation and the handing of them back over to their slave masters?
We should not be hypocritical in our argument, and I make bold to say that the British prime minister may well be justified in telling us to move on. A major malady that affects Third World countries like Jamaica is a fixation on the past and a tendency to play the blame game.
It is indeed even now typical of how our political parties practise their craft. The concentration on seeking to expand and grow our economy in the midst of it all seem irrelevant. Instead, as a nation, some of us seem to be content with the British once again sending our black brothers in shackles back to our shores, but this time instead of construction of plantation houses with appropriate slave quarters, it is the construction of prisons. The more things change, the more they remain the same. Have we no shame?
Peter Champagnie
Attorney-at-Law
peter.champagnie@gmail.com
Too hypocritical on reparation
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The recent visit by British Prime Minister David Cameron to our island has once again ignited the issue of reparation in certain quarters. The proponents of reparation seem to have as the basic premise of their argument the fact that Britain, through the exploits of slavery and by extension our natural resources, have almost forever set us back as a nation in terms of our own socio-economic development.
Regrettably some of us tend to forget that small matter of our own ancestors from the west coast of Africa facilitating the slave trade by capturing millions of our ancestral brothers, sisters and children in exchange for goods of all sorts from those who we now seek reparation from. Have there been any calls by us for reparation to be made of the existing African States that participated in the slave trade, or indeed other European States such as Portugual, Spain, France and the Netherlands, which were also participants in the proliferation of the slave trade?
Since we are at it, why not also call on our own Maroons to give an account as to the role they played in recapturing those slaves that ran away from the plantation and the handing of them back over to their slave masters?
We should not be hypocritical in our argument, and I make bold to say that the British prime minister may well be justified in telling us to move on. A major malady that affects Third World countries like Jamaica is a fixation on the past and a tendency to play the blame game.
It is indeed even now typical of how our political parties practise their craft. The concentration on seeking to expand and grow our economy in the midst of it all seem irrelevant. Instead, as a nation, some of us seem to be content with the British once again sending our black brothers in shackles back to our shores, but this time instead of construction of plantation houses with appropriate slave quarters, it is the construction of prisons. The more things change, the more they remain the same. Have we no shame?
Peter Champagnie
Attorney-at-Law
peter.champagnie@gmail.com
Too hypocritical on reparation
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