Paper Short Abstract:

This paper interrogates recent calls for reparations from those whose descendants profiteered from trans-Atlantic chattel slavery. It questions how and whether it is possible to move from white ignorance toward a politics of responsibility -utilising the framework of an abolitionist anthropology.

Paper Abstract:

The BLM protests of 2020 resulted in what has been termed as the greatest “racial reckoning” since the US civil rights movement. It allowed for a renewed public engagement with imperial and colonial history. In the UK, whiteness was being examined more closely and with it the structures that underpin it. As a result, acknowledgments of complicity in constructing and upholding a racially unequal society became widespread. These were widely criticised by anti-racist activists and academics as merely tokenist performances that can fall into the trap of inaction and thus upholding rather than challenging a white supremacist system. For some of these declarers, however, this acknowledgment of complicity was baring a history of profiteering from transatlantic slavery and those industries that supported it. They all represent elite institutions and families. It is these actors, and their trajectory from an acknowledgement of complicity and white ignorance towards taking responsibility, that this paper is focusing on. And in doing so, it focuses on how to reckon with Empire within the framework of reparative justice.

What are their motivations? And how do these sudden declarations and commitments fit in with longstanding Afro-Caribbean reparatory movements and activism? In exploring these questions with an abolitionist lens, this paper seeks to contribute to a reparatory social science (Bhambra 2022) and move toward a politics of responsibility.