Niambi Hall-Campbell | Remixing our views on reparation

In November 2024, I had the pleasure of travelling to Ghana to participate in the African Reparations Conference hosted by the African Union Commission and the Government of The Republic of Ghana. It was an inspirational event with people from across the Continent and the African Diaspora merging in one place, at one time, with one mission: reparations and reparations now! As the chair of The Bahamas National Reparations Committee, I was asked to present at the conference under the topic, “Reparations as a catalyst for social change”. Sir Hillary Beckles, chairman of the CARICOM Reparations Commission, has defined reparations as “the process of repairing the consequences of crimes committed, and the attempt to reasonably remove debilitating effects of such crimes upon victims and their descendants”. I wanted to use this topic, therefore, as an opportunity to view change as a remix, a call to invoke the spirit of the Jockeys (DJs) whose ingenuity emerged from the Caribbean to create new genres of music that although birthed within the imaginations of African-descended people are now seen simply as popular music. I wanted to use the DJ’s ability to change the way we hear sounds that may be familiar in a...