There is nothing more revealing about the Caribbean as events, which tell us more about our retrogression and retreat from the most serious issues of our time. Only two Caribbean governments attended the United Nation World conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and related intolerance in Durban, South Africa September 1-6. The two governments attending were Cuba, represented by Dr Fidel Castro himself and Barbados. Obviously, the two most progressive governments in the region.

What is most painful even unforgivable about the failure of the others to attend is that racism is inseparable from slavery in which historical phenomenon, we have our genesis and our continued being. All of us are here in the Caribbean because of slavery and the attendant racism and colonialism, which sprang from it. Not attending this World Conference on Racism, was to let down all of our ancestors, who through the pain of servitude, the suffering of oppression, the indignity of subjugation struggled by various means or by all means necessary, to come out from under the heaviest burden placed on humankind in all of human history. Our current mis-leaders kicked our history of struggle against racial oppression firmly in the bottom. They preferred to please our age-old oppressors the authors and practitioners of racism, by not attending. It is in this shame we now live. But let us explore the phenomenon from which our mis-leaders hid.

When did the modern phenomenon of racism begin? It all began, says the great modern English scholar Basil Davidson in 1441 half a century before Columbus crossed the Atlantic, with a little ship under the command of one Antam Gonçalvez. (Allow me a joke here. This Antam Gonçalvez is in no way related to my dear friend, Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves who is justly proud that he sprang from Portuguese indentured labourers reduced to servitude in St. Vincent.) This Antam Gonçalvez is one ancestor he would not want to claim, not even as a namesake!) Anyway, this Antam Gonçalvez had been asked by Prince Henry of Portugal to prove his worth by shipping a cargo of skins and "oil of sea lions" which had been discovered on the Atlantic Coast of Africa. Antam Gonçalvez sailed as far as Morocco. There, Antam Gonçalvez conceived the idea of winning a reputation by capturing and bringing to his royal master two black inhabitants from along the coast. Later on this same voyage Gonçalvez and another Portuguese fortune hunter, Nuno Tristao, joined together and attacked an African village capturing ten Africans and killing four. (Incidentally, in Africa then an armed conflict involving more than the death of 6-10 people was cause for a truce and a cessation of hostilities.) The reason for this capture, was that Portugal would get inside information from the African captives about gold and how best to extract the "oil from sea lions" – whales – a skill in which Africans were then the world’s acknowledged experts!

When Antam Gonçalvez and Nuno Tristao, returned to Portugal with their twelve African captives, Prince Henry sent a special envoy to the Pope explaining his intention to carry out further raids and conquests. (The Pope then was the universally acknowledged head of Christendom. There was but one Catholic Church to which all Christians belonged. Protestantism was to come much later with the Reformation led by Luther.) The Pope welcomed this new crusade, the unlimited prospect of new riches, and granted to all who would participate in such war complete forgiveness for their future sins, however terrible.

In 1444, another 235 African men, women and children were kidnapped in Africa, transported to Portugal, with other stolen wealth, with the Africans sold as household servants. The subjugation of Africa and Africans by Europe had begun in earnest. Greed prompted it, but greed could not justify it. Racism would.

Now we have to go into the geo-politics of the world in 1440, the better to understand this isolated event in the expeditions of Antam Gonçalvez and Nuno Tristao.

The rapid conquests of Moslem Arabs in Africa in the seventh century AD, created an empire stretching from the Indus River in the east, Spain in the west and Constantinople in the north. The Arabs and Berbers controlled the entire coastline of North Africa, along the Mediterranean. With this geo-political control went the control of the trade in gold with West Africa and spices from India.

The Europeans needed to circumvent, if not to destroy, the Moslem Arab monopoly of these trade routes. This compelling need, in turn, stimulated greed for gold and wealth and, therefore, European exploration of the fifteenth century.

The Renaissance in Europe aroused Europe from its slumber. Contrary to much that is written as propaganda, and then passes for history, the basis of the European Renaissance was knowledge made available from ancient Egypt and African ideas translated first into Arabic, and then into European languages. Armed with the gun, the manufacture of which was made possible from gunpowder used by Chinese exclusively for firecrackers, but turned by Europe into a deadly weapon, the gun, which the Chinese had abjured. Then the Europeans developed ships equipped with lateen sails, astrolabes and nautical compasses, all invented by the Chinese. Motivated by a desire to conquer other people, in the then Unknown world to backward Europe, the Europeans unleashed a systematic, and in some cases, genocidal slaughter (eg. The Amerindians and the Aborigines) against the rest of the world. Murder of other peoples took place in unprecedented proportions. Such unprecedented slaughters were blessed, in advance, by Christendom. In sum, crimes, the worst crimes against humanity, were sanctified by the Church. It is not an accident that the current Pope who apologises for everything, has not uttered a word about an apology for African slavery, which was approved and sanctified by Papal Bull! Criminality against humanity is thus compounded, for the injury, insult is added.

Portugal, as you will recall, initiated this European foray into the rest of the Known and Unknown world by Europe, for Europe. Portugal was granted a Papal Bull in 1455, which authorised Portuguese fortune-hunters to reduce "to servitude all infidel peoples." Incidentally, the use of the world "infidel", like "heathen" or "strange", made all other inferior to Christian but barbarian Europe. Therein lies the root of racism in economic greed and religious zeal.

By 1471 Portuguese ships had reached the Gold Coast; by the early eighties the mouth of the Congo; by 1488 they had rounded the Cape of Good Hope; and by 1498-9, under Vasco da Gama, the Portuguese reached India.

Such ‘success’ provoked envy, or if you prefer, aroused competition among the other European powers. First the Spanish sought to compete with the Portuguese who claimed monopolistic rights over the trade routes, as sanctified by Christendom. Nevertheless the Spanish attempted to reach the spice isles of the East, by going west. Columbus thought when he reached the islands of the Caribbean that he had reached the Indies. The Pope adjusted, to the new Two-Power world of the fifteenth century, as Spanish tribute in wealth flowed to the Vatican. So in 1493 the Pope divided the world, East to Portugal and West to Spain. And slavery, or to use the Pope’s own word, servitude of ‘infidel’ peoples was permitted in either East or West.

The Spanish discovered gold in large amounts as the conquistadores rummaged and pillaged South or Latin America. In the most murderous assault then known in history, Cortez slaughtered Mexico and the Aztecs in particular, while Pizzaro savaged the Incas of Peru. Two great ancient civilisations were destroyed with the utmost barbarity and cruelty. The barbarians, writing history, claimed they were civilised, and inverted history. The Indians they slaughtered were not human, because they had no Christian soul. And, soul-less were sub-human and deserved to be treated as such. The actual savages called their Indian victims, savages. And power made that point of view, that label of savage, stick. Therein, I repeat, lies the origin of racism. The barbarian conquerors you will recall, were forgiven in advance for their crimes against humanity, by European Christendom.

Thus came about, the determination that people other than Europeans were not people, and therefore lawfully could be killed, reduced to servitude and treated as subhuman, ad eternitam.

Racism is not the dislike of one people by another, as each struggles under an oppressive system. That is racialism. As in Guyana or Fiji. Racism is the oppression of one race by another – the subjugation of one race by another, and the exploitation of that race, on grounds of racial inferiority, by the conquering or dominant race. Nothing else is racism.

The anger and resentment that must arise in the hearts and minds of the dominated race is but the prelude to the rejection of racism and the global system of production and exchange, which nurtured itself on racism. The resentment and anger, in whatever fora, is not racism in reverse. There is no such thing as racism in reverse. That is a modern invention of racists to make oppressed races feel guilty at being angry and resentful of their racial oppression and expressing it. The charge of racism in reverse is designed to dampen the anger and resentment of oppressed races and keep us in perpetual apathy – that is, accommodating the racial oppression and accepting our own inferiority. There is and can be no such thing as racism in reverse. For racism is the domination of one race by another, and racial discrimination is but the regular and daily enforcement of racism.

When the plantations of the Caribbean and later of the United States required large masses of labour, at first whites were used as indentured servants. And when such could not supply the need Africans were torn from family, village, culture and country, by force and transported to the Indies – as slaves.

So from 1510 the slave trade began in earnest. The first "consignment" of African slaves going through Spain to Portugal for sale in the West Indies. Thus the traffic in human lives began. Thus too, began the crime against humanity which is slavery – the systematic, ruthless, even at times benevolent, but always using terror to reduce another race to ‘Things’

The first English voyage to West Africa was in 1530, led by William John Hawkins, off whom Antigua and Barbuda named a street! If this were more widely known, it would have been used by European powers and the USA at the World Conference on Racism, in Durban, just completed, to show that the descendants of slaves did not mind being reduced to "things", and catalogued in accounts along with horses, asses and mules, picks, forks and shovels and treated as such. Hawkins who started the English trade in African slaves was directly sponsored by Queen Elizabeth I and others. Hawkins and his royal sponsors reaped a bonanza of wealth from this inhuman traffic in human beings.

By the end of the 18th century Britain had outstripped all her European rivals carrying in British ships "more than half the slaves who crossed the Atlantic" (See Ronald Segal The Race War Penguin Books 1967, p.45)

In three centuries between the 16-18th centuries a total of at least 15 million African slaves landed in the Caribbean and the Americas. The number who died in the stinking holds of the slave ships has been scientifically estimated to exceed 12 million.

Other estimates show that Africa lost between 30 and 40 million people through the slave trade (See Colin Brown "The Making of Africa" p.37) whichever figure is finally settled upon one thing is certain this was the most massive forced movement of people of all time.

To recount the brutalities meted out in the Middle Passage alone, would tell a tale of man’s inhumanity to men and women, like no other known inhuman tale. To recount the horrors inflicted on Africans in the Caribbean would be a vain attempt, in the space of one article, to make the unspeakable, speakable.

However, European powers joined the US in claiming that the slave trade was "legal," as was slavery. Therefore runs their argument no reparations can be paid for lawful horrors however horrible. And such horrors cannot be deemed a crime against humanity, because slavery – the ultimate crime against humanity - was lawful! The Church blessed it and decreed it and Parliament enacted African slavery into Law! European greed for the world’s wealth required they make dehumanisation lawful. Such laws could stand in no court with a human face.

I need only remind that Hitler led a lawfully and duly elected government. Yet all his lawful acts were deemed crimes against humanity. And as late as 1999 Germany had to pay reparations to Jews not for forced labour, but for slave labour! The slavery enforced by Hitler on Jews was but child’s play to African slavery enforced by Europe and America. For starters the one lasted less than a decade, the other lasted for centuries, with all the attendant terror and horror.

The argument at this time in Durban about reparations is not new, but old.

Reparations were in fact paid for slavery. The emancipation legislation in each and every country made provision for reparations to be paid. And reparations were paid. Reparations were paid to the slave owners.

The payment of reparations to the slave owners for their horror and injustice over centuries was said to be compensation for their loss of guess what? Property. Even with abolition the slaves were still considered property. Things. Things with a precise monetary value. The reparations paid to the perpetrators of slavery are, for sure, absolute justification for reparations to be paid now to the descendants of the victims. The precedent set, justice must be done and be seen to be done.

But let us first look at how reparations were paid to the beneficiaries of slavery in the British slave-owning colonies. Remember these reparations were not for the deprivation of liberty but for the expropriation of liberty. It is, in my view, full time for the expropriators of black liberty, be expropriated.

A sum of £20 million, 20 million pounds sterling was paid in 1834 to the slave owners for the loss of their slaves. Here is the record of how the first £15 million pounds were disbursed. Reparations to the slave owners in each island went like this:

It will be noted the slave owners were paid for their perpetration of injustice, their loss of profanity in human beings for their crime against humanity not just to the last penny, but to the last farthing! (4 farthings = 1 penny)

Why is it not possible, in the age of computers, in the information revolution to compute, at the very least, on the same basis as in 1834, using today’s value in terms of money, the reparations which ought to be paid to each slave descendant? Not as individual cash payment. But as development funds to undo the centuries of dehumanisation consequent upon slavery and colonialism.

TO BE CONTINUED