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this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2026
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Are we condemning modern slave trades or just ones no one living can be held accountable for?
This is about reparations and thats the reason why the countries responsible abstained or voted against it.
Obviously most countries today condemn the modern slave trade. Doesn't mean they'll do anything about it but they do condemn it
I thought Canada was where run-away slaves escaped to. Why abstain in our (Canada's) case?
Oh, duh, we were part of the guilty af UK at the time...
Canada is also still a settler-colony, like the US and Israel.
True.
Why would Israel vote against this though? I don't recall them having slave trades
Just that racist
ah, ofc, it's always racism
They're a US vassal and a white supremacist colony, the indigenous victims are different but it's the same shit as what European settlers did in América
Here's a press release from the resolution. The "Transatlantic Slave Trade" as a proper noun refers to the historical kidnapping and taking of Africans to the New World to be enslaved.
It doesn't enforce reparations, but:
The US objected:
I'll note for thoroughness' sake that it not having been illegal under international law is basically true but 1000% beside the point (obviously). The US Supreme Court actually heard cases in the early 1800s about how slavery was treated under e.g. the Law of Nations, but evidence was scant that it was prohibited, and the court more or less (oversimplifying) had to make shit up. The important point is that you can't say "Oh, well the perpetrarors collectively didn't prohibit it, so there are no grounds for reparations." It's obviously ridiculous.
Damn, that's crazy. Even 200 years after slavery was abolished, the US officially still doesn't think it's wrong. Just that it "lost the case".
Inb4 Roe v. Wae overturning, but for the Emancipation Proclamation. Backwards ass country lol
The problem is that there's a bunch of people who want to hold living people accountable for what was done by the dead.
Settler-colonialism is still ongoing, and the damages from the slave trade still impact those from slave families and the countries they were taken from, and the gains from slavery have been protected. Imagine if one family stole everything from another, causing generational wealth in one family and generational poverty in the other. Should the generations born into wealth that came from theft not pay reparations to the people born into poverty as a direct consequence of said theft? The answer is yes.
So you suggest ignoring how the current status quo is built on the continuous exploitation of racialized and colonized people?
"The status quo is built on the continuous exploitation of people"
*FTFY
I suggest that there's no meaningful benefit to be gained by looking backward rather than forward. If you want to move to a different paradigm, that's fine, but condemnation of the past is performative compared to putting forward laws and resolutions to benefit others. The Bill of Human Rights was forward-looking, this condemnation is backward-looking. Emphasize where we want to go and why we want to be there, rather than where we were and the mistakes we made as a society.
Slavery was evil, so was the destruction of indigenous peoples across the world. But we can't yet change the past. We should reinforce that we will work to eliminate slavery (chattel and indenture), human trafficking, and the abuses related to it. Focus on what we can improve today and how we can improve things.
Is your stance in any way informed by a privilege you hold?
Because there are a lot of people today who are still disadvantaged by the historic slave trade, who would meaningfully benefit from reparations.
So when you say "no meaningful benefit", who exactly are you talking about?
Okay, as long as we also take away all the historical family wealth that goes back generations too.
But that's not how it works, is it? Great great great grandad gets to get rich off having slave plantations and his son gets to get rich off of Jim Crow sharecropping, and his great great great grandson gets to inherit that wealth without any complications.
But benefiting from it is okay?
God I hate white people
I did not benefit from it. Half my family are refugees. I was born into a shitty life. I do not want to be punished on to of that for something i had zero control over.
I'm really interested in what you think reparations even are - do you think they're just going to shake down all white people for money? How are they going to punish you? Why would they punish you?
It sounded like that to me yes. I probably misunderstood. And Why me? I'm white. I'm also poor and a socialist but according to the reaction i got in this thread I'm just an idiot and it is right to hate me.
There's a propaganda effort by white supremacist society to paint all reparations as "evil revenge against white people :<" instead of what it actually is: correcting the injustices of slavery by making whole the descendants of slaves who have been robbed of their heritage and generational wealth.
But you benefit from it, and others are punished from that theft. This is a generational problem.
I did not. I think i replied to a comment that was not directed at me
... How is this comment still disagreeable?
This „punishment“ or rather responsibility would not be something that the average wage earning person has to worry about financially whatsoever. There is however a lot of accumulated wealth, that could be used for much better things than the third luxury Yacht in Monaco. So if this extraordinary luxurious wealth can be traced back to exploitation and slavery, and the government would enforce this money to be used for reparations in forms of community centers, museums, research for those who’s ancestors freedom, cultural heritage and often lives were taken, this would not be a punishment. As a German I think there is good reason to individually act responsibly concerning the crimes of e.g. my great grandfather. It is not my crime, but it’s my responsibility to call it such, to do my best in every day live that something like it will not happen again. Calling that a punishment would be unfair compared to the suffering of the victims and their living relatives.
I see. It sounded like indiscriminate handing out to me. I am fine with actual wealth being redistributed. My personal responsibility measure is political contribution and spreading left leaning reasoning.
When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression
Okay then, we're taking all your stuff. When your kids want it back, we'll say:
"How long must we atone for the mistakes of the past", I exclaim, tears dropping down my face, as I close the door at the family whose house I stole.
Well, duh. Do you think Mother Nature won't "hold" new generations "accountable" once ours destroy the planet with fossil fuels?
That's literally .ml's whole thing.
Communism involves justice and liberation for all, that does include righting past wrongs.
Oh yeah, it's totally a radical Marxist–Leninist thing and not at all something obvious advocated for now by the UN (voted against or abstained from near-exclusively by its minority of perpetrators) and human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch:
If the tankies want to support reparations, then fucking good for them.
Once again driving the point home that the communists are consistently on the right side of history, to the point that when non-communists make the same correct points they get accused of being communists.
You sound like your family owned slaves.
More likely he still does.
Everything I don’t like is tankie.
It is neither our whole thing nor is it wholly our thing. Again, the vote was 123 to 3, with abstentions mostly from imperial core / “always the same map” states. They’re the states that benefited from classical imperialism and are still benefiting from neo-imperialism.
Libs are actually beyond reason sometimes I talked to one the other day who said child slavery in bangladesh was a one time incident