DEFINITION

Reparation implies money or help given for loss or suffering by those who caused it. (Longman dictionaries). Any one, a private person, a group of individuals, an organisation or even the State can seek reparations. The end of slavery of the Africans sounded the clarion for accountability and reparations. In the face of prejudice encountered by people of Africa and African ancestry “Reparations for slavery is the idea that some form of payment should be made to those who have been enslaved or to their descendants. The term is frequently used in reference to the descendants of those enslaved during the Atlantic Slave Trade.” (Wikipedia)

It is worth noting that the movement for reparations is strong in the U.S.A. and is the strongest among the movement of the same in the African Diaspora.

 

LEGITIMACY

​Notice the turn of phrase “the idea that some form” from the aforementioned definition, a giveaway in itself insinuating the invalidation of the claims made by Africans and African descendants to compensation. Considering the failed outcomes of countless lawsuits by organised groups or solitary and brave individuals, the idea to compensate claimants undeniably appears unacceptable.

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The U.S. government's first reparations plan to compensate the newly freed Blacks in the southern states of America for the legacy of slavery was 40 acres and a mule apiece. Yet the dream was short-lived as from the stroke of pen they were and since have been denied to own a piece of America. Conversely, it looked legitimate, even with delays for JapaneseAmericans, following their internment in concentration camps in response to the Pearl Harbour attack in December 1941; JewEuropeans survivors of the camps in Nazi Germany and Native Americans to receive compensation as seen in the comparative table at the end of this document. These encouraging outcomes, unquestionably led several black leaders and reparationists to also seek monetary redress beside social, educational and political compensations.
In the UK, as early as 1996 (March), Lord Gifford QC raised the issue of reparations for slavery in the House of Lords arguing the under-development and poverty, the ghetto conditions are the consequences and legacy the transatlantic slave trade and the institution of slavery and that they constitute a crime against humanity. He saw the very establishment of the State of Israel as a “massive act of reparation for centuries of dispossession and persecution directed against Jews.” In France, author Éric Saugera concurs in his commemorative book marking the 150th anniversary of abolition of the Slave Trade “should the Africans ask and receive compensation, even after such a long time, would only be justice.”
In fact “The reparations movement among Africans is as old as the anti-slavery movement. In the USA this movement has been growing in the past 20 years” with mitigated support as exposed by H. Campbell:

 

RESISTING THE CLAIMS

1. “ Possible tensions within the body of black leaders due to their compromising relationship with the former colonial powers
    

2. Opposition by many European states to the centralisation of reparations within the platform of the African Union. Hence within the pan-African world the main supporters for reparations at the state level have been from the states of Latin America and the Caribbean (Barbados, Brazil, Cuba and Venezuela).

3. Moreover, as the late Pan-Africanist Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem argued in one of his statements on reparations, it is in the interests of the US government to see that there are no strong connections between the reparations movement in the United States and the reparations movement in Africa and in other parts of the pan-African world
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4. After September 11 2001, the US government and its propaganda apparatus used the scare of terrorism to close off debate on the question of reparations.”
    

5. If point 4 can appear questionable, both the USA and the Europeans countries have done their uttermost to shun ‘Mea Culpa’ statements implying their legal responsibility consequential in legal demands for financial reparations.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA'S STANCE

44th U.S.A. African American President Obama was re-elected in November 2012 at the head of the American nation after a 4-year term commenced in January 2009 with the unanimous support of the Black Americans and the Black churches who heard him praised just on time for ‘Juneteenth’ (the commemoration of June 19th) remembrance, the "historic" resolution passed by the Senate apologizing for the "fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery."

A lesser concession considering his earlier position while still a senator and working toward unifying the various ethnic groups of America under the “we can” slogan to the run-up to the presidential election. He declared in front of a packed audience of supporters that yielding to the African-American activist organisations’ demands of reparations would seem to favour one group over another arguing that government should instead combat the legacy of slavery by improving schools, health care and the economy for all. This was then his position in 2008 even 2004.