Reparations

The subject of reparations has reverberated through the US to the extent that actual votes have been taken by an appointed panel on it in California. The reparations discussed are to be made to descendants of African slaves captured and shipped to North America whose labor enriched their white owners. Details of the California vote are described here.

Most interesting is the fact that the majority of those purchased in Africa and sent by ship to the New World were captured and sold by other Africans, who were willing participants in the process. The centers of this business were on the West African coast. The most powerful tribes used their power to dominate the supply of slaves to Portuguese, Dutch, and British traders. One of those tribes was the Fante, of what was then known as the Gold Coast and is called Ghana today. 

The Fante were then and now the premier tribal power in that area. While no records exist of the day-to-day activities from the Fante perspective, there's no doubt that the Fante controlled the local slave trade just as they controlled other financial activities. Yet the idea of reparations doesn't seem to include the group that actually made the transactions work. In fact, one of the modern Fantes was the celebrated Kofi Annan, appointed Secretary-General of the United Nations in 1996.

If any reparations are to be made to the descendants of Africans captured and sold into North American slavery, the descendants of their captors and sellers should certainly be responsible for a significant portion of those reparations.