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Commentaries/Opinions

The Call for Reparations Rises Again

By Commentaries/Opinions

Each seasick night aboard the Zong, the crewmen must have dreamed of being back in England at last, with their purses full of gold. The ship’s two-month voyage had been an arduous one. The supply of drinking water was running dangerously low, and many on board were gravely ill, including Capt. Luke Collingwood.

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Does the Holocaust Discount Jewish White Privilege?

By Commentaries/Opinions, Reparations

The top three most popular articles right now on the online Jewish magazine Tablet all deal, in one way or another, with the question of Jews and privilege. The most interesting of the three, as well as the most viral, is Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s personal essay, “I Probably Won’t Share This Essay on Twitter: Some thoughts on being Jewish in contemporary polite society,” which opens with recent tweet of hers:

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The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks by Randall Robinson

By Commentaries/Opinions, Reparations

I looked straight up and immediately saw the callous irony, wondering if the slaves who had helped to erect the structure might have bristled at it as quickly as I. The monumental fresco covering 4,664 square feet had been painted by Constantino Brumidi in 1864, just as the hideous 246-year-old American institution of slavery was drawing to a close. According to the United States Capitol Historical Society, Brumidi’s Apotheosis of George Washington had been painted in the eye of the Rotunda’s dome to glorify “the character of George Washington and the principles upon which the United States was founded.”

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The Obama/Caricom summit

By Commentaries/Opinions

While Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller presses ahead with arrangements for a state visit to Jamaica by President Barack Obama on April 9, plans are otherwise being finalised on a work agenda for a meeting between the US President and Heads of Government of the 15-member Caribbean Community.

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