A foundational assumption of the reparations argument is that Caribbean people today, as descendants of enslaved people, have a claim on the perpetrators of that enslavement. The logic seems straightforward: wrong was done to your ancestors, compensation is owed, you inherit the right to that compensation.
But this logic, applied consistently, creates a serious problem for African governments claiming to represent the descendants of enslaved people.
Many enslaved people transported to the Caribbean were captured or purchased from African kingdoms that were themselves operating slave-trading systems. The people sold to European traders were often captured from neighbouring peoples by kingdoms like Dahomey or Ashanti. The descendants of those kingdoms’ rulers and merchants are today citizens of Ghana, Benin, Nigeria, and other African states.
If descent from enslaved people creates a right to reparations, then descent from slave traders and slave sellers also creates a moral liability. The descendants of Dahomey’s kings, the descendants of Ashanti slave traders, the descendants of the African middlemen who marched captured people to the coast, share in the moral responsibility for what was done. They are not in a position equivalent to Britain or Portugal, but neither are they simply innocent bystanders.
The reparations campaign applies the logic of inherited responsibility in one direction only. Descendants of those who suffered inherit the right to compensation. Descendants of those who participated in causing the suffering inherit no corresponding liability. This selective application of the principle of intergenerational moral responsibility is not coherent. Either the principle applies to everyone involved in the slave trade, including African participants, or it applies to no one.
