JAISAL NOOR: It's April 10th 2015, and a national
and international summit on reparations is
underway here in New York. Participants are
demanding European and American governments
compensate the descendants of African people
for slavery, for forced free labor, and systemic
racism and discrimination within the United
States, in Latin America and the Caribbean,
in Africa, and for all descendants of African
people across the world.
Many are calling the reparations summit historic,
as the 15 Caribbean countries that comprise
CARICOM are finalizing how to extract reparations
from European colonial powers.
JAMES EARLY: It was Marcus Garvey a hundred
years ago who said one day the Caribbean would
raise up, and galvanize these scattered Africans
who had been enslaved and exploited and abused.
NOOR: To date, European countries have failed
to officially respond to CARICOM's request
to begin the process of negotiating these
demands.
DAVID COMMISSIONG: They are demands that center
around developmental programs in the areas
of health, healthcare, public health. Education.
Educational infrastructure. The psychological
damage, the sense around--the need for cultural
institutions.
NOOR: Scholar and activist James Early contrasts
the reparations summit with the simultaneous
U.S.-backed Summit of the Americas.
EARLY: We've had the critical voices like
that of Jesus Chucho Garcia, political rep--,
Afro political representative from Venezuela
who is saying, why are you not talking about
the situation of the 150 million Afro-descendants
in Latin America? So that is another step,
as has been pointed out here, that we do not
yet in this movement have a clear political
strategy. And it seems to me that the insertion
into [realpolitik], not just as participants
but leading voices, is where we could get
the next stage of traction.
NOOR: Also taking part was Mireille Fanon,
chair of the UN Working Group of Experts on
Peoples of African Descent. She's also the
daughter of Frantz Fanon, a Martinique-born
Afro-Caribbean black liberation theoretician
whose works were influential in post-colonial
studies. She says the West needs to do more
than simply acknowledge and apologize for
slavery and colonialism.
MIREILLE FANON: The people of African descent
are racialized, discriminated, marginalized,
ghettoized. But also African countries are.
And suffering still now is suffering of former
colonies. And for the, for the country freed
form colonial enslavement, they are still,
still suffered also for--under the--coming
from this history.
NOOR: The conference also focused on the fight
for reparations for people of African descent
within the United States. Congressman John
Conyers was a keynote speaker and was honored
for his work advancing HR 40 in Congress,
which would establish a commission to research
the history of slavery and its effects on
present-day America.
RAY WINBUSH: And we believe that the residual
effects of the trans-Atlantic slave trade
creates issues of violence. It creates issues
of criminality. And the criminals that, the
criminogenic part of this, was the European
slave trade.
NOOR: Ray Winbush is the director of the Insitute
of Urban Research at Morgan State University.
WINBUSH: Because we never ask why. We'll see
in Baltimore, for example, we'll see Roland
Park and then we'll go to let's say, Sandtown
Winchester. And we'll say, why. We don't say--we
never ask why these communities got the way
they did.
NOOR: According to the National Urban League,
African-Americans continue to lag their white
counterparts significantly when it comes to
household income, poverty rates, and also
critically, home ownership.
WINBUSH: I mean, think about the fact that,
as Ta-Nehisi Coates said in an article over
a year ago, we were shut out of housing. Especially
in places like Baltimore, the so-called redlining
era, which he shows has a direct consequence
on economic stability. The stability of communities.
NOOR: The event was hosted by the Institute
of the Black World 21st Century, a research,
policy and advocacy group that rents space
at The Real News Network headquarters in Baltimore.
DON ROJAS: The ultimate objective is to build
a vibrant, global reparations movement beginning
this year. And taking the momentum of a very
successful conference that we just had in
New York, take that momentum and build on
it.
NOOR: Don Rojas says corporations also need
to be held accountable.
ROJAS: There are many huge multinational corporations
with headquarters in Europe and headquarters
in the United States that were also complicit
in slavery. And so the demands are also going
to be placed before them, in the months ahead.
NOOR: The National African-American Reparations
Commission launched at the conference will
be hosting interactive town hall meetings
across the country to engage the public on
the issue of reparations. The first meeting
will be at The Real News headquarters in Baltimore
in June.
From New York, this is Jaisal Noor.
