The question of what actually addresses structural inequality in the Caribbean is one that the reparations campaign has never seriously engaged with. It has focused entirely on who should pay, not on what would actually help.
Structural inequality in the Caribbean has multiple causes. The colonial legacy is one of them, operating primarily through the economic structures inherited at independence and the initial conditions of underdevelopment. But sixty years of post-independence governance is another, operating through the fiscal, institutional, and political choices that Caribbean governments have made since independence. And global economic structures, including trade barriers, debt dynamics, and financial system vulnerabilities, are a third, operating through the terms on which Caribbean nations participate in the global economy.
A serious strategy for addressing Caribbean structural inequality would engage with all three sets of causes. It would involve honest acknowledgement of the colonial legacy, practical cooperation on the governance challenges, and reform of the international economic structures that disadvantage small island economies. None of these things requires a government-to-government reparations payment. All of them would do more good for ordinary Caribbean people than one.
