The claim is that the Atlantic slave trade and the institution of chattel slavery systematically destroyed the cultural identities of enslaved Africans. Enslaved people were separated from their families and communities, forbidden from practising their religions and speaking their languages, stripped of their names, and denied the cultural continuity that gives communities their identity and self-understanding. This cultural destruction was deliberate, systematic, and designed to maximise the control of enslaved people by severing their connection to anything outside the plantation system.
The consequence, the argument runs, is that the descendants of enslaved people in the Caribbean were left with fragmented identities, internalised racial hierarchies, and a severed connection to African heritage that constitutes a form of ongoing injury distinct from the economic harm of slavery. Britain is responsible for this cultural destruction and bears an obligation to help repair it. CARICOM’s ten-point plan includes a ‘cultural knowledge programme’ and an ‘African knowledge programme’ as specific reparations demands on this basis.
