There’s a lot of talk about slavery in the press at the moment, specifically the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The king of England (Charles III) is visiting the West Indies ATM and there are various people who would like him to do something symbolic on the subject. This ranges from a simple apology for it (i.e. slavery) through to the UK state paying money (£trillions) in reparations for its involvement in the triangular trade.
My own view is that there are some serious logical flaws embedded within the arguments for such positions, especially the reparations tack, flaws which I feel don’t see much light of day in the frenzy of more woke (I don’t use this term in its original “fair play” sense) and easier to consume sound-bites. Let’s take a look at some of these flaws and think about how history, i.e. the past, is intrinsically “unfair”, for everyone involved.
For me, the biggest and most obvious flaw built into these views is the simple logical fallacy of judging the actions of people in the distant past using the ethics of today. This intellectual disjointing precipitates the idea that people today should be liable for the so called “immoral actions” of their ancestors even though the benchmark of morality itself has shifted significantly in the intervening time, i.e. what was considered moral in 1626 is vastly different from what’s considered moral in 2026.
This revisionist viewpoint is perhaps a simplistic and rather conceited view of our ancestors, i.e. we say, “how could they have possibly thought that was ok?” when clearly (from the perspective of our current lives) slavery is definitely not ok, it’s obviously abhorrent to us but clearly wasn’t to people back then. Well, how can we judge them when their lives were not governed by the same intellectual privileges gifted by the enlightenment that we enjoy? On the other hand, if we’re unwilling to defend our ancestors because we don’t fully appreciate or understand their perspective then we also can’t condemn them either, after all, they were just God fearing apes trying to raise their children as best they could according to the ethics, ideas and laws available at the time (not the ones that we’ve since evolved).
Secondly, to form a balanced view, we have to look at their actions in relation to human history up to that point and how that strongly influenced their ethics, which in turn, influenced their actions and so on. Slavery was/is a human universal, what I mean by that is that it’s been with us since we first learned to record history and probably well before that, this statement doesn’t condone it, it simply informs how ancient peoples probably thought about it. If we accept the notion that all white people who live in Scotland today owe money to black people who live in the West Indies because twenty generations ago some of the ancestors of some of those white people mistreated some of the ancestors of those black people then how far does this principal stretch? Could we therefore argue that Italian people living in Rome today owe people in London reparations because of the slavery that the Romans inflicted upon their ancestors? Or, perhaps people in Copenhagen today owe money to people in Newcastle because Vikings sold their ancestors in the slave market in Dublin. As for the Atlantic trade, there were many more fingers in that pie than just us Brits, all the European powers participated in it, although it was the Brits who finally spent blood and treasure to stop it. Also, a sole focus on transatlantic horrors does not account for the many other slave owning cultures in the world, i.e. in South America, Arabia, Asia and Africa (typically as a result of conquest) Of course I could go on and on, the problem with the reparations argument is evident in this thought process, i.e. it has no bounds and everyone can stake a claim and if everyone can then what’s the point?
All this presupposes that slavery is the only form of ill-treatment that needs to be weighed, what about genocide? If West Indian or Black American people are owed money for slavery then why aren’t today’s Jewish people owed money for the holocaust?
Pointing out the problems with these arguments is easy, but how should we proceed?
Well, I believe we have at least part of our answer, forget trying to judge the morality of the past, instead, devote our energy to applying the morality of today to our society now. How about we strive to eradicate modern slavery (of which there is still plenty!) How about we strive to promote equality and fairness in our institutions? How about we’re simply less divisive in our approach to life? As I said previously, we’re all just monkeys with shoes trying to ensure the survival of the next generation, so the sooner we accept and appreciate this fact then perhaps the clearer we will see the opportunities in front of us, i.e. the future is the only thing we can influence and our actions are the only things we should be held accountable for.
