Reparations for slavery

Reparations for slavery is the idea that some form of compensatory payment needs to be made to the descendants of Africans who had been enslaved as part of the Atlantic Slave Trade. The most notable demands for reparations have been made in the United Kingdom and in the United States, where slavery was the most pervasive. In addition, reparation demands have and continue to be made by Caribbean and African states, where slaves were taken from.

Slavery ended in the United States with the end of the American Civil War and the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, which declared that, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction". At this time, there were an estimated four million African Americans that were set free.

Within the political sphere, only one major bill demanding slavery reparations has been proposed. This bill is the "Hr - Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act," which Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) has proposed to the United States Congress every year since 1989, though it has yet to be passed. This bill, as its name suggests, recommends the creation of a commission to study the "impact of slavery on the social, political and economic life of our nation". In January 2017, the bill was updated as, H.R.40 - Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act.

In 2016, prominent American journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates published an article titled "The Case for Reparations", which discussed the continued effects of slavery and Jim Crow laws and made renewed demands for reparations. Coates makes reference to Rep. John Conyers Jr.'s aforementioned H.R.40 Bill, pointing out that Congress's failure to pass this bill expresses a lack of willingness to right their past wrongs.

In September 2016, the United Nations' Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent published a report that concluded the United States needed to take urgent action in terms of slavery reparations. The report noted that there still exists a legacy of racial inequality in the United States, explaining that, "Despite substantial changes since the end of the enforcement of Jim Crow and the fight for civil rights, ideology ensuring the domination of one group over another, continues to negatively impact the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of African Americans today." The report goes on to explain that a "...dangerous ideology of white supremacy inhibits social cohesion among the US population".

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