Why should someone who had no part in slavery make apologies and provide reparations to the descendants of the enslaved? This is a common question in the anti-reparations movement and one that reared its head again in a recent interview with Guyana’s President Irfaan Ali. While as an individual one might have had no part to play, we cannot deny the transgenerational wealth that the period of enslavement provided to the descendants of slaveholders. We cannot deny the immense capital and physical labour that contributed towards the empires of today, while its current and former colonies are caught between several stages of development.
