Geek-it

Slavery was a terrible thing and it was abolished as soon as some men evolved enough to realize one human race is not better than another, and intelligent enough to understand that no human has the right to treat another as a slave regardless what the colour of his skin or where he was born.  Does the fact that we were once arrogant enough to believe ourselves a superior race mean that we should financially apologise for our past mistakes?  I don’t think so.  If we did, where will it end?

Will we pay financial compensation to
India Where we committed crimes in the name of sovereignty?  

What about all of the atrocities that were (and are still) carried out in the name of religion, the Inquisitions, the witch-hunts, the holy wars where the “in religion” heaped a multitude of inhumane acts upon their fellow man because he happened to be Catholic, or Protestant or whatever religion was not in favour at the time.  Will we be paying some form of financial penance for that?

What about the children we sent out to “populate the Empire”?  Children who were lied to and abused.  British subjects who were used as slave labour in many instances – child slave labour at that.  Are we to financially compensate these victims of their time?

There are atrocities happening all over the world, even today.  We are responsible for some of these, and with others we are responsible for standing aside and letting them happen – that doesn’t mean we should be expected to pay financially in years to come. 

Yes we took part in the slave trade.  Yes we should apologize, just as other nations need to stand up and say “Yes we did that.  It was wrong.  We are sorry!€�  But the acknowledgement should be enough - as Maya Angelou once said, “When we know better, we do better.€�  The slave trade was wrong, but what is worse is that we allow the people in the same country as the slaves come from to starve, suffer from incurable illnesses, and suffer at the hands of cruel and inhumane dictators – that is the crime for which our society will be held accountable in generations to come.  If the Church feels a need to give money, give it for the right reason – because there’s a country in trouble that desperately needs our help and standing by with our hands in our pockets waiting to apologize 200 years from now isn’t good enough!