Slavery and Apartheid: A Call for Reparations as real as the 400 years of HeadStart Gained, and Global Losses from Locked Human Capital

Prologue

This is a very small perspective on a subject which is extremely vast - it does not even scratch the surface of the moral, economic, political, legal angles that should be addressed to complete only the reparations and compensatory element of this topic. The purpose here for me is to bring a viewpoint out there. It is by no means a complete work on the topic it covers.

Introduction

I will not limit my case to scientific data which has already proven that the basis for discrimination against certain ethnicities (the "Discriminated") was baseless. I will use the more fervent argument that was used to justify the discrimination: the will of God.

Though we all know that the will of God has for thousands of years has been used as a sword, for political and economic gain, whereas the true spirit of submitting to the will of God exists for the purpose of humbling us, aligning us, submitting ourselves alone to God, not others to us. Notwithstanding that God's a scapegoat, let's entertain the "will of God" reasoning to restrict a great part of the humankind from participating in the dynamics of this world.

The people (at least the vast majority of them) who caused our world to suffer has certain characteristics that can be for ease and brevity of this article be narrowed to 4: a) pale, porcelain, ivory i.e. a colour of skin that falls on the white spectrum; b) were men; c) of certain power; d) they lived between and around 15th to 19th century. (we will call them "Discriminators")

Has God designed half a sun? Or designed wheat and crops to reach only half the harvest? for water to be only partly salty and partly sweet? for rain to stop half way before reaching earth? On what basis then one would reach a conclusion that God had created or evolved (whichever theory you believe in) only half of the humans to be fully human and the other to be half human (for lack of a more appropriate terminology for this very inappropriate ideology)?

Do I need to state that, was it the part of the human race that was being prevented from assimilating into societies as full humans that was less intelligent and “dumb" or was it the part of human race that was preventing them from assimilating that were the less intelligent, ignorant (and again, I will say it without glossing it up) the “dumb" ones?

Whoever said, it was Confucius I believe that

“if you are the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room”

Well Confucius was not white. Ironic isn’t it.

Looking it from a legal lens

It has been seen throughout the legal profession that some lawyers' sense of justice gets desensitised over time, and some lawyers' sense of justice becomes deeply heightened. I know for sure that I do not fall under the first category, but I cannot say with certainty whether I have began or will start falling into the second category.

Desensitised or not, with experience comes the knowledge of what would constitute a full or closest possible reparation and retribution of different wrongful actions - contractual, tortious, criminal or even full fledged blunders towards the world and humanity.

If I were to pass a judgment on the matter of what would come close to compensation and reparation from a legal standpoint, I would be pulled by two conflicting interests of two right holders 1. the rights of the ethnicities and races that were sidelined from the stage of the world for over 5 centuries, and 2- the right of the earth to have the entire human kind that walks on it play its part on the world stage.

Rights of the Discriminated

I am a pure capitalist right wing person, so I do no say it with dissent or disagreement, but rather as a matter of fact that the law of private property allows the the most limited of this world's resources to be perpetually owned. Land, mines, etc.

Lets speak of business ventures, most mainstream business ventures in the free economic market competition requires not one, but generations of from the same UHNW families to build upon those ventures to turn them into grand and sustainable empires.

The Discriminators have over 5 centuries of head start over the Discriminated.

At the same time, today, even those of us whose rights were not taken away from them for centuries are struggling to keep up with the economic competition, and the changing times, making success tougher and tougher. The growing world population and the impact of climate change is making habitable space on earth smaller.

So combine 500 plus years of head start, that discriminators have gained over the Discriminated in for example the USA, and South Africa, with the market conditions that my generation faces today, and you have only one question - where is the retribution?

How can we for a moment “settle” with the Discriminators having "stopped” discriminating? Will be let a murderer go because he has stopped committing murders? Murder of physical body is a perfect analogy with the murders of self-esteem. This is not to discount that literal bodily murders did not take place.

Who will make up for the lost five plus centuries? The education that they were not permitted to attain? the land they weren’t permitted to own? the economic exploits others enjoyed but the Discriminated could not?

We speak of black people’s rights as if it were something to be “given" and upon being “granted" the world has done them a huge favour. If a murderer stops committing murders, the change is not celebrated, and the spared potential victims are not expected and made to believe that the murderer has granted them the right to continue living. The murderer never had the right to take the lives to begin with, and the rights of the survivors were never for the murderers to “grant”.

This is not what the law, the same law that was created by the Discriminators, has taught me.

For example, until 1994, Africans, Asians and whatever “coloured" meant were prevented from owning real property in South Africa. While the world may describe the current situation as “black people now have the right to own property" I say with absolute conviction that black people always had the right o own property, but the rights were subdued, by violence, wealth and other means. Where is the reparation?

Under common law and civil law, when one party encroaches or breaches the rights of another party, multiple types of compensation are available the most common being “to restore the breached party to the same position in which they would have been had the breach not occurred".

Now if one says that question of what economic and social progress the discriminated would have made had the discriminators not prevented the discriminated from purchasing properties, is too much of a guesswork and thus difficult to ascertain with sufficient certainty - then no I am not buying that answer.

As it was possible for the smart more evolved “Discriminators" to colonise the nation, and exploit and create apartheid, let the Discriminators and the UN scratch its heads as it did after WWII to make reparations to the victims of German Reich and come up with some numbers.

For example, sell properties to the Discriminated at the same prices as they would have paid had they been allowed to purchase properties 30+ years ago.

Let the economist calculate what would have been the true market value of the those properties if the demand included the excluded population, and pay to the government the difference between the true market price that should have been and the price they paid.

CENTURIES OF WASTED HUMAN POTENTIAL

IMAGINE THE CENTURIES OF POTENTIAL HUMAN ADVANCEMENT THAT HAVE BEEN WASTED BY PREVENTING A THIRD OF THE WORLD POPULATION FROM CONTRIBUTING AND ADDING HUMAN CAPITAL VALUE TO THE WORLD - WHETHER IN THE AREA OF SCIENCE, MATHEMATICS, ART, MUSIC, WRITING, SPIRITUAL KNOWLEDGE, MEDICINAL KNOWLEDGE, SPORTS, ATHLETICISM AND SO MUCH MORE.

The institute of integrative nutrition provides 12 types of primary food, i.e. nutrition required for the nourishment of human body, mind and spirit:

* spirituality,

* creativity,

* finances,

* career,

* education,

* health,

* physical activity,

* home cooking (nourishing your body),

* home environment (physical living space),

* relationships,

* social life, and

* joy.

I don’t want to generalise, but there are some obvious types of the 12 primary foods or areas in which the Discriminated could have made great contributions and strides had they not been prevented, and how it could have led to a more nourished humanity today.

This leads me to the second type of compensation that the Discriminators owe to the world.

All colonial countries and those that overstayed even their exploitation ventures, can make some reparations to their ancestors’ victims some by giving some form of financial, educational and practical knowhow the Discriminators enjoyed all for themselves whilst prohibiting others from attaining it.

Closing for today

The fact is, the doers and watchers and enablers have prevented major chunk of the humanity from making its mark. And unless they step aside, and give 5 centuries to the Discriminated to make up for their “head start", the souls they stopped killing were ripped of all opportunities, self-esteem, abilities and other human rights way before they their physical lives were spared.

Kill a man, or leave his bleeding body - have you spared the life? and did you have any right to do either?