Ewin James (EROYJAMES@aol.com)

Some things are priceless. One such is human dignity; you can’t put a price on it, and to attempt to do so cheapens it and shows your greed more than anything else. Those calling for reparations from Britain for the enslavement of our forebears somehow cheapen the lives of those enslaved, and even the lives of their descendants. The wrongs done to a people and their descendants by uprooting them from their homeland, dragging them to another place, severing their families, and putting them to servitude, are too great to be settled by money. They are incalculable. To put a price on them imply that they are limited, and somehow money rights all wrongs. It is now two hundred years since slavery ended, yet its horrors are still fresh in the minds of the descendants of those enslaved. Will reparations make the memories of the horrors disappear? And who will name the price? How many millions or billions?

Those persons agitating for reparations have not named the price, for they can’t. It’s like naming the price of a young woman’s virtue. The government and the Opposition are agreeing on reparations, but can’t agree on the figure. Similarly others across the Caribbean and North America they can’t. The Observer, reported on Sunday, the 18th of February, that "While the Government has not yet named a figure that would be sufficient compensation to Jamaicans, the Opposition suggested that the $52-billion price tagged to the Education Transformation project would suffice". The paper was reporting the calls of Tourism Minister Ms. Aloun Assamba, and Mr. Andrew Holness in Parliament for reparations.

And legally speaking, does Great Britain owe us for their forebears enslaving ours? Does a son have an obligation to pay a person what his father, long dead, owed or wronged? My father died some eleven years ago; suppose some man arises saying that my father owed him money, or reparations for some wrong done to him in a transaction or encounter, entered into before I was born, do I have any obligation under the law to repay him? Even if that was so under slavery, the stature of limitations would have certainly run out after two hundred years.

There are other questions. As harsh as slavery was, have we learned anything from it? Has it left any legacy that has helped us and is worth preserving? I argue it has. Honestly, had Britain not uprooted our forebears, and bought them to the west, we would be running around like some tribesmen in sub-Saharan Africa, killing off each other. As crude as slavery was, it was a kind of rescue, and more: it brought us into modernity. The advanced civilization we enjoy now arose not in Africa, But in Great Britain, and in Europe. Even Karl Marx, the father of communism and great foe of British imperialism, conceded that Imperialism, British Imperialism, consequent upon slavery benefited the world. He says in his Communist Manifesto, "Imperialism, created more massive and more colossal productive forces than all the preceding generations together.

Subjection of nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization for rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground. That earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of luxury. This legacy of imperialism didn’t arise from an African country. It arose largely from great Britain, which enslaved us, unwittingly bringing us to enjoy great benefits.

But behind all the calls for reparations I see a sinister motive; one that has little if anything to do any understating of the horrors of slavery and what can be done to mitigate their effects to us. It is a financial motive, a desire to cash in on the British. It is the same mendicant mentality many in the third world have, which drive them to demand that other people pay the price of their survival and their success; the audacity to demand that rich countries fund our economies instead of us getting up and producing our way to success! Why do I say so? The Observer report on the calls for reparations, said, "While the Government has not yet named a figure that would be sufficient compensation to Jamaicans, the Opposition suggested that the $52-billion price tagged to the Education Transformation project would suffice." What is this? That reparation is being demanded from Britain, for us to fund our education system. Imagine! What does reparations for wrongs done over two hundred years ago have to do with Britain providing 52 billion dollars to fund a ramshackle education system now? Except that the government wants to fund the system, can’t do so, and figures that it can embarrass the British, into providing the funds?

It goes further. "The task force report says we need $52 billion to finance the transformation. We, as Jamaicans, should say to the British Government, and the case is quite clearly laid out, that our Parliament should make a direct claim on the British Government for them to fund our education system," said Andrew Holness, the Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) spokesman on education". The Observer says. Mama Mia! Mr. Holness is demanding that an independent country, pay for the education of another independent country, not by way of a loan, which is bad enough, but by a handout. So the British government, which like every other government has limited funds, should deprive its own citizens of the services it provides them and take money equivalent to 52 billion Jamaica dollars to help provide education for us, another independent country! I think that when we demanded independence from Britain we were saying we are capable of providing, health, education and whatever else we needed, which they were providing; and that we would do a better job for ourselves, than they had done for us. But apparently we can’t, and from the look of things we may never be able to. Which puts us right back on the plantation, if not in body then in mind, for as the slaves looked to "bucky massa", to provide their sustenance, so we are demanding of their descendants to provide ours.

What we need aren’t reparations but emancipation from the slavery of the mind in wanting others to do for us what we are to do for ourselves. Marcus Garvey was right in calling on us to: "emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds".

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