Reparations have been a huge topic here in the United States between the African-American community and the United States government. This topic has now stemmed outside of the United States into other countries where the descendants of slaves exist, such as the Caribbean islands. The United Kingdom enslaved the individuals of the Caribbean islands. The people of the Caribbean Islands plan on asking the United Kingdom to compensate them with 10 billion dollars in reparations for the enslavement of their ancestors. The exact island in the Caribbean that is filing this reparations lawsuit against the United Kingdom is Jamaica. The lady who is leading this crusade is Jamaica’s minister of culture, youth, and sports. Her name is Olivia Grange. Throughout history, the descendants of Africans who were brought here to North America went through horrible atrocities during slavery, and now the current generation of the slaves want to be compensated for what their ancestors were taken thru.
During the transatlantic slave trade, the ancestors of Great Britain or the United Kingdom inflicted slavery and oppression on the entire Caribbean Islands. Even though this occurred throughout the whole Caribbean Islands Olivia Grange and her country Jamaica is only focused on getting reparations for Jamaica. The people of Jamaica want ten a billion dollars, but they will take any form of reparations that will uplift their country and resolve some of the pass-down trauma that their ancestors experience during the transatlantic slave trade. Here’s something to think about is the country of Jamaica selfish for only trying to obtain the reparations for themselves, or should they try to attain the reparations for the entire Caribbean nation and the surrounding Countries that also have African descendants who went through slavery and oppression during the transatlantic slave trade.
Jamaica and the Caribbean community have come together to try to obtain reparation from multiple European countries back in 2013. The effort, however, failed, but the countries that they tried to get the reparations from were France, the Netherlands, and Great Britain. When the slaves were freed or emancipated in 1834, the country of Great Britain paid British colonizers 200 billion pounds to ensure the freedom of the slaves. Great Britain did not compensate the slaves themselves for the hundreds of years of free labor, inhumane treatment, and unspeakable brutality. The slaves that were enslaved in Jamaica in totality were estimated to be above 600,000. These slaves were responsible for making white people rich or increasing the wealth of white people who are already wealthy by harvesting many different types of crops such as bananas and sugarcane.
The people of Jamaica all agree that reparations to the descendants of slaves are well overdue. If things are indeed changing, Great Britain should have recognized the atrocities that happened to the slaves and compensate their descendants appropriately. Jamaica is also considering possibly demanding reparations from Spain as well. This is because Spain initially colonized the country until Great Britain seized the country in 1655. Christopher Columbus initially colonized the Jamaicans in 1492 and this was when Spain began controlling the land and the slaves. The individual who filed the official request for reparation against Great Britain is a Jamaican lawmaker named Mike Henry. The official demand for preparations against Great Britain has not been served to the country yet because it is still under legal review at this current time.
