“Hurricane Melissa a ‘real-time case study’ of colonialism’s legacies”, writes Natricia Duncan for the Guardian. The subheading is “Destruction in Jamaica shows why climate justice cannot be separated from reparatory justice, campaigners say”.
The article starts with a sympathetic couple of paragraphs about the history of Gurney’s Mount Baptist Church, a church whose roof was ripped off by the hurricane.
The names of past members are still etched into its walls and the “freedom stone”, built into its structure to commemorate the end of slavery on 1 August 1838, is still there.
As church and faith groups play a significant role in Jamaica’s recovery, the loss of the building and parts of the adjacent school are a huge blow to the community, Rev O’Neil Bowen told the Guardian.
I find that sad, and I hope this community gets some help to rebuild after the hurricane. Though I have a low opinion of the long-term efficacy of taxpayer-funded foreign aid, and think it is actively harmful when it encourages a dependency economy, if we must have it, let the money be spent on helping victims of natural disasters like this one. I think a lot of people feel the same way.
But may God preserve Rev. Bowen from some of the people who want to help him.
At the ongoing UN Cop30 climate change conference in Brazil, campaigners say that devastated regions such as Hanover as well as others across Jamaica, Cuba and Haiti, are stark examples of how African descendants are disproportionately affected by centuries of environmental degradation.
Speaking from Cop30, Jamaican economist Mariama Williams said historical injustices must be confronted and addressed.
“The research shows that wherever Afro descendants are located, they are most vulnerable to climate and environmental impact and have been suffering from historical environmental injustice and climate injustice,” she said. “Climate justice cannot be separated from reparatory justice. The same systems that enriched the north created today’s vulnerabilities.”
The Global Afrodescendant Climate Justice Collaborative, where Williams is a senior adviser, is among hundreds of human rights groups and environmentalists that urged Cop30 to put reparations on the agenda.
In their open letter they argue that “global warming began with the Industrial Revolutions that were made possible by the resources provided by imperialism, colonialism and enslavement, [and] that colonialism and enslavement skewed the global economy in favour of the material and financial interests in the global north”.
You know what will happen? The people from governmental, inter-governmental and so-called Third Sector aid organisations that victims of natural disasters in the Caribbean deal with most often talk like Mariama Williams and her white counterparts. They, the victims, will pick up the impression from the Climate Justice people that the way to get financial aid these days is to talk like this:
“We’re not begging these countries. This is a debt that is owed. And I think this needs to be made clear. And this is why there is very deep connection between calls for climate reparations and reparations for slavery, because they’re both connected through these longer histories, these colonial legacies,” he [Arley Gill, a member of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) Reparations Commission] said.
In 2020, two thirds of Britons supported cutting the foreign aid budget. I doubt the British people have warmed to it since then. But if giving taxpayer-funded aid to poor countries is unpopular now, wait till you see how unpopular it will be if it is packaged as punishing ordinary British people for a small fraction of their distant ancestors having owned slaves. I predict that even private donations will become more scarce the more often reparations are mentioned. Oh, and they’ll never get the reparations.
Oh, for FFS! I note the Guardian tags every natural disaster under “Climate Crisis”. The Caribbean is an area prone to hurricanes and has been since “whenever”. The original inhabitants suffered from hurricanes before the first white guys turned up to trade beads or bring slaves. Should Lenny Henry be compensated for growing-up in Dudley and not getting malaria? The reperations thing is utter bollocks. When linked to climate nonsense this is profound bollocks. It’s so far from right it’s not even wrong.
I think that this is the kind of thinking that means that there are some countries that will always be poor. Always having the begging bowl out instead of doing the things required to become prosperous. Trying to justify their begging by whining about climate justice or slavery reparations doesn’t change that.
Just a thought about the concept of —quote— reparations — unquote that can never be sufficient to balance things out.
Granting that I am not really considered to be a kind and compassionate person; but would it not be sensible when faced with an unending debt to instead take whatever steps were possible to wipe out those to whom “debt” is owed? Human nature being what it is [not kind and compassionate] I am sure that eventually that concept will come up.
Subotai Bahadur
Excellent. I suggest the BBC and Grauniad get to maximising these complaints as hard, fast and wide as possible.
Got to get the message out to racists everywhere, dontcha know?
I’m waiting for the citizens in BC, Canada to figure this out. The land claims appear to be extensive, and my first thought was, someone’s going to think “time to re-conquer!”
Grifters
Perhaps, since all these “Afro” people are so O-pressed whenever they are outside mother africa, they should consider moving back there lock, stock and barrel. There, freed from the horrid White interloper and coloniser, they could go on to form societies in peace and brotherhood, like Zimbabwe- Oh, wait ….
It is like a parody article – the pretense that Carbon Dioxide (but only Carbon Dioxide from the West – not from China or India) has made hurricanes more likely, and mixing it all up with race – as an excuse for a Rio Conference (1992 – or now, same con-trick) world “governance” “Social Justice” “redistribution”.
At least Classical Marxism was based on a theory, a false theory (the Labour Theory of Value) – but at least a theory. The sort of modern Marxism the Guardian pushes is based on nothing – it is just excrement.
But excrement that the “educated” class eagerly eats.
The vast majority of ordinary Britons, whose ancestors were farm labourers living in decrepit tied cottages at the squire’s pleasure, or ruining their lungs down mines, or slogging away in the ‘dark satanic mills,’ or half-starved orphans still being stuffed up chimneys decades after black slaves were freed, owe these handout-chasers not one single f##king penny.
Leave it up to the guilt-ridden aristocrats to atone for the perceived sins of their ancestors with their own family fortunes, if they wish to play along with this farce, instead of effectively enslaving the already beleaguered British taxpayer for all eternity*, for stuff done by people who have been dead for centuries to other people who have also been dead for centuries.
(*Seriously, when do you think they’d ever say ‘OK, you’ve done enough. We’re satisfied now and will never mention it again’?)