Jews have received righteous reparations for the Holocaust, but victims of slave trade in the U.S. and Great Britain are still waiting for their piece, according to human rights activist Rhoda Howard-Hassmann.
Howard-Hassmann, research chairwoman in international human rights at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada, tackled this issue of Africa receiving reparations for the slave trade in her book and in Wednesday's lecture, "Why the Jews, Why Not Us? The African Social Movement for Reparations," in O'Brian Hall.
The lecture compared the African post-slavery search for reparations to the reparations paid to Jews after the Holocaust.
Howard-Hassmann said that Jews were represented by the state of Israel in their claims against the German government, and added that the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. was successful in changing segregation laws because they were seeking policy changes from their own government. More than one nation was responsible for the slave trade.
"They don't have access to policy makers," she said. "They are asking for changes in policy from many governments."
She said that Jews were able to successfully seek reparations in part because there were almost no Jews in Germany after WWII. Israel sought money from Germany to pay for all the Jews that were displaced there.
In the 1990s the African Union created the Accra Declaration, in part to seek reparations from the Western world. They sought $777 trillion, which was about 70 or 80 times the U.S. gross national product at the time, according to Howard-Hassmann.
"No respondent... would consider these figures," Howard-Hassmann said.
By 2000, Germany had paid $47.6 billion in reparations over the course of 50 years.
She centered her discussion on the social movement theory, which presents a framework for determining what factors have enabled groups to successfully seek reparations.
Successful claims for reparations have included violations of bodily integrity, equality rights and property rights that were illegal at the time they were committed. In the case of the Jews, there were also clear perpetrators of the atrocities: the Nazis.
Howard-Hassmann used this example of successful Jewish reparations to illuminate problems in giving reparations to Africans for the damages caused by the slave trade.
"There are a few small groups here and there seeking reparations," she said. "It's not yet mobilized in a big social movement."
Social movement theory provides a new way of looking at the issue.
"I've never seen [it addressed] in this framework," said Elaina Rodriguez, a graduate student in the School of Social Work. "It's helpful in looking at the issue."
Howard-Hassmann said there should be more of an emphasis on human rights instead of on money.
"If you go with human rights, you don't have to look at who is responsible for past wrongs," she said.
Seeking reparations from the Western world is tricky because European and American slave traders weren't the only ones responsible, she said. Many Africans traded and owned other Africans as slaves.
"Africans were still going to the Arab world as slaves in the 1960s," she said.
Despite the potential problems in determining who is responsible, it is an issue that needs to be acknowledged, Howard-Hassman said.
"Africans are owed acknowledgement of past wrongs, apologies, monuments and museums and better yet, education of past wrongs... I think you need a day-long apology in Washington by the president," she said. "I think my own government owes an apology to African-Canadians."
Howard-Hassmann has spent much of her career researching issues like human rights and political apologies and reparations. Her book, Reparations to Africa, was published this year. The lecture was based on chapters from her new book.
"I'm not making a moral judgment," Howard-Hassmann said. "I'm making an academic analysis on when things work and when it doesn't."
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
