Barbados Says It Is Owed $4.9 Trillion in Reparations For Slavery

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley said Wednesday (Dec. 6) that her country is owed $4.9 trillion in reparations for slavery, the Independent, a British newspaper, reports. “We’re not expecting that the reparatory damages will be paid in a year, or two, or five because the extraction of wealth and the damages took place over centuries. But we are demanding that we be seen and that we are heard,” Mottley said during her lecture at the London School of Economics. On the previous day, Mottley met with British Foreign Minister David Cameron but declined to disclose whether she asked him about a reparations payment to her Caribbean nation. However, Mottley said she expected “the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty.” King Charles III made headlines when he expressed an openness to discuss Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade, saying “time has come” for that conversation. “I cannot describe the depths of my personal sorrow at the suffering of so many, as I continue to deepen my own understanding of slavery’s enduring impact,” the then Prince of Wales said at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in June 2022, CNN reported. The Commonwealth needs to “find new ways...