This New York Times Article, “The Ransom: The Root of Haiti’s Misery: Reparations to Enslavers” starts with some slides:

In 1791, enslaved Haitians did the seemingly impossible. They ousted their French masters and founded a nation.

But France made generations of Haitians pay for their freedom — in cash.

The whole article is important reading, and shocking…

How the United States of America refused to recognize Haiti as a nation because they didn’t want enslaved people in the U.S.A. to be encouraged to rebel.

How the overwhelming French navy, 21 years after Haiti’s independence, threatened Haiti with destruction or ransom… And how generations of Haitians have been impoverished due to a cycle of the country taking on loan after loan to pay off the debt… a debt paid to enslavers!

Horrible.

How the French government won’t acknowledge the financial injustice even today.

How the USA invasion of Haiti in 2004 was in part to stop the demand for restitution from France. “Mr. Aristide’s demand for financial restitution from France was not the principal reason for his removal, Mr. Burkard said, his ouster had an added benefit: It ended Mr. Aristide’s noisy campaign, which had landed with the force of a grenade, threatening to blow up relations with all former colonies.”

The amount of money Haiti paid over the centuries is astonishing, and beyond that number is the much bigger amount — what it cost Haiti in health care, education, infrastructure… because it is a country that was bled dry by the French government, French banks, and USA banks.

It’s infuriating, and I was thinking about how unjust it was… and then realized there aren’t a lot of people talking about reparations here in the USA for the descendants of people who were enslaved.

We need to move forward on that – the article really shows how this kind of injustice travels generations, and we have our own injustice to make amends for, right here.

And while we’re at it, let’s discuss reparations to the Native nations who were so wronged by the colonization of their land that we call the USA.

Let’s start to mend this world.

A small first step is confronting the reality of the injustice that was done. I highly recommend you read the New York Times article, reported by Catherine Porter, Constant Méheut, Matt Apuzzo and Selam Gebrekidan.

And then let’s get be allies in the discussion of reparations.

The light in me recognizes and acknowledges the light in you,
Lee