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As yet another Emancipation Day approaches, the issue of reparations remains a hot and contentious topic.

Many countries which were victim to slavery, have pushed for compensation from past colonial powers.

But there is a call for deep reflection amid a belief that once the systems put in place by these powers persist, reparations will not redound to the benefit that should come from it.

Alicia Boucher has the details from the Movement for Social Justice Tuesday Talks.
Transcript
00:00The global movement for reparations for the African community is escalating.
00:05There has been pushback from colonial powers pertaining to payout for crimes against humanity, including the African slave trade.
00:12Sociologist Sophia Edwards says those crimes are being seen within CARICOM as a main cause behind developmental failures within this
00:20hemisphere.
00:21However, Edwards is calling for deeper reflection from CARICOM on what development means for countries that were under colonial rule.
00:31She signals that the agendas, including Western political, economic and cultural formations pushed by those rulers, may in fact be
00:39continuing at present.
00:41When you get reparations in a system that is a white capitalist system, what does that mean in terms of
00:50the long run, quote unquote, development of a country, right?
00:55So pushing to challenge actually the structural underpinnings of the global economy that is driving poverty and wealth accumulation.
01:06Edwards is of the view that some of the very CARICOM countries calling for reparations are doing so while pushing
01:14neoliberal policies simultaneously.
01:16She says without deep reflection, there will be no real change.
01:20And she points a finger at the very education system.
01:24I think we should be reminded that the colonial education system was created to create an elite and create a
01:34laboring class.
01:36And time and time again, we've seen the kind of petty bourgeois class, the educated elites consolidate, consolidate themselves around
01:49getting control of the state and increasing the gap of wealth between them and ordinary people.
01:58Rastafarian leader Glenn Roy Halls, also commonly known as Bongo Greece, is commending the reparations committee of TNT for what
02:06he says is a lot of hard work done to spread awareness in this area.
02:10His community has its own 10-point plan on reparations, as he concurs with Edwards on a need to dismantle
02:18colonial systems, which he says also have a profound psychological impact.
02:23If you do a survey through the Caribbean, you would find that 90 percent of the African youth in the
02:31Caribbean still believe that they cannot achieve nothing by themselves without the help of the oppressors.
02:37It's very sad.
02:39Reparations should spawn healing, he says, empowering these young people through entrepreneurship and other growth-centered systems.
02:46And while stripped identity often comes up when slavery is discussed, Halls interestingly states that the Rastafarian people didn't fall
02:55prey to that.
02:56However, he sees the need for an apology, and not only from colonizers.
03:01Because of Rastafarian lifestyle and maintaining the values and traditions, African values and traditions and culture, Rastafari had suffered a
03:11lot in the Caribbean, had really suffered a lot.
03:14So while we look at a formal apology from our European colonizers, Rastafari also, as part of looking for, as
03:24part of the 10-point plan, is still calling on the Caribbean governments to apologize for their brutal treatment of
03:31the Rastafari community during the 10-year, during the 10-year as independent nations.
03:37Alicia Boucher, TV6 News.
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