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Reparations

Here you will find reparation news, articles and media posts

Hans Sloane collected this specimen of cacao in Jamaica in the 1680s. Sloane often collected on or near slave plantations, taking advantage of slavery’s infrastructure to advance his science.

Historians Expose Early Scientists’ Debt to the Slave Trade

By Editors' Choice, Reparations

By examining scientific papers, correspondence between naturalists, and the records of slaving companies, historians are now seeing new connections between science and slavery and piecing together just how deeply intertwined they were. By Sam Kean, Science Magazine — At the dawn of the 1700s, European science seemed poised to conquer all of nature. Isaac Newton had recently published his monumental theory of gravity. Telescopes were opening up the heavens to…

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Turbulent history … Tamara Lawrance in the BBC adaptation of Andrea Levy’s The Long Song.

‘We’re still living with slavery’

By Reparations

From prize-winners Esi Edugyan and Marlon James to debut novelists such as Sara Collins, a new generation of novelists is exploring a painful past. By Colin Grant, The Guardian — Two hundred years ago, slave narratives seemed one of the few routes to publication for black writers on both sides of the Atlantic. Autobiographical accounts written by former slaves such as Olaudah Equiano, Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass proved enormously popular with readers, who…

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Tamara Lanier is suing Harvard University for ownership of daguerreotypes of slaves who she says are her ancestors.

Who Should Own Photos of Slaves? The Descendants, not Harvard, a Lawsuit Says

By News & Current Affairs, Reparations

By Anemona Hartocollis, The New York Times — NORWICH, Conn. — The two slaves, a father and daughter, were stripped to the waist and positioned for frontal and side views. Then, like subjects in contemporary mug shots, their pictures were taken, as part of a racist study arguing that black people were an inferior race. Almost 170 years later, they are at the center of a dispute over who should…

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Prince Charles and Camilla Duchess of Cornwall with Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados, 19 March 2019.

What if the Caribbean refused royal visits until reparations were paid?

By Commentaries/Opinions, Reparations

Charles and Camilla are the latest to arrive and help whitewash the injustices of slavery and empire. By Nalini Mohabir, The Guardian — Once upon a time monarchs ruled by divine right, then later with charismatic authority. The future king Prince Charles (#NotMyPrince) has neither. Yet Caribbean governments are paying for Prince Charles and Camilla’s royal tour of the Caribbean which began on Sunday and continues for 12 days, to…

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Abraham Lincoln

One Way to Make Reparations Work

By Editors' Choice, Reparations

By Noah Smith, Bloomberg — The issue of reparations for African Americans is, of course, full of more moral and historical issues than one column, even by someone with much greater understanding and deeper knowledge than me, could ever resolve. But since the proposal is now being taken seriously, it’s worth thinking about the economics of how it could and should work. The idea of compensating the descendants of American…

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A detail from a display at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Ala.

The Case for Reparations

By Commentaries/Opinions, Reparations

By David Brooks, The New York Times — I’ve been traveling around the country for the past few years studying America’s divides — urban/rural, red/blue, rich/poor. There’s been a haunting sensation the whole time that is hard to define. It is that the racial divide doesn’t feel like the other divides. There is a dimension of depth to it that the other divides don’t have. It is more central to…

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Gayle King interviews Ralph Northam

Slavery vs Indentured Servitude: Which aids racism?

By Commentaries/Opinions, Reparations

Perhaps the main reason so many people objected to Virginia Governor Ralph Northam calling the first 20 Africans to land in Virginia in 1619 indentured servants, and not slaves, is that they believe the conditions of slavery were so much harsher than those of indentured servitude, that calling these Africans indentured servants amounts to a cover-up of their reality. That is because the popular image that we have been sold…

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