Apology, yes. Reparations, no

As the comment dies down on the 200th anniversary on Britain's abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, I thought I'd add a little rejoinder has now absorbed most of the arguments that have gone before.
First off, is the issue of an apology. The government expresses its 'deepest regret' - essentially a non-legally binding apology. Jeremy Paxman doesn't see why he should say sorry for something he didn't do and happened so long ago. Black people (and Indians too) are adamant that an apology is the very least that should be delivered. Well, I think if it soothes ruffled feathers and eases community relations then an apology is definitely worth making. Many white people have indirectly benefitted from the slave trade - essentially the entire population of Bristol is guilty by family association. But the trouble with sweeping generalisations is not everybody who is white today (or then)benefitted from the revenue accrued from the slave trade, just as everyone who is black in Britain did not necessarily have a slave descendant. If we are going to get pernickety, and have apologies 'demanded' then we should identify who needs to apologise for their family's actions and who doesn't. If it is raised that all whites benefitted at least in some minute way, what about the propagation of sweatshops in the Indian subcontinent, which black Britons too patronise with their footwear and clothing as much as their white counterparts. Should we issue an apology to all the poor workers there? Should anyone who buys a diamond apologise to the victims of the 'dimond conflicts' in Sierra Leone and the Congo region, for fueling the civil wars there. Kanye West was very firm on this in his album 'Late Registration' - "people ask me if I'm going to give my chain back/ that'll be the day I give the game back," from the song "Diamonds From Sierra Leone." On the album, he brilliantly skewers the self-pity and victimhood myth-making of certain blacks. Black people do face many unfair advantages but there's no point in promoting the 'poor me' mentality as that leads to defeatism.
And this brings us to reparations. Reparations are nothing new, but are usually applied between states after wars. This chain was broken when Jewish groups sued Swiss Banks for knowingly harbouring Nazi gold taken from Jewish people exterminated in the death camps. The banks hated such a high-profile and to rapidly withdraw from the glare reached a settlement with the Jewish relatives of victims. This set a precedent and in our increasingly litigious age, black groups suddenly heard 'ker-ching', when even ten years previously no-one seriously taked about reparations for the slave trade. Now it's a burning matter for many right-on black people. The thing they can't agree on is the reason why its a burning matter. It's either a salve for the humiliation they suffer from having a slave ancestor or compensation for being torn from the mother continent or its to give back Africa in monetary form what it lost from what it could have earned from the labour and so on. It's all rather nebulous. The Jewish groups had a clearly articulated central plank - the banks deliberately took gold they knew was from murdered Jews. Black groups don't have this and their argument falls through because of it. Maybe all the reasons should be collated as the basis for reparations, but court process doesn't work like that. Our litigious self-absorbed age, aided by ambulance-chasing lawyers, entitles anyone with a grievance to get some pay-back, because it's all someone else's fault, not their own, if they tripped on a paving stone or are poor.
Perhaps if we are going to get into the matter of reparations, what about paying the Royal Navy for trying to stamp out the slave trade. The Royal Navy may have done it for reasons of self-interest (if the British aren't going to benefit from the slave trade, nor is anyone else), but they still did it.
And what about the Arabs? They started taking slaves from sub-Saharan Africa before Europeans began exploring the west coast of Africa. No-one is demanding an apology from the Arabs though, let alone reparations because Arab governments would laugh in their faces and tell them to get stuffed (even though the OPEC countries have oil-money coming out of their ears). No, black groups have followed the money trail that leads to softer, more touchy-feely western governments, becaue they think they'll be more successful there.
Let us not forget the African kings who made a packet out of selling their subjects to the Europeans. Is it the fault of the Europeans that these kings squandered that wealth instaed of building up their territories?
And what about all the slaves of the ancient world? Spartacus didn't want reparations from the Romans, just his freedom, but then he was living in age when freedom was enough (not that the Romans agreed). In post-Roman western Europe, Verdun was the biggest slave market in all Europe. Oh, but the self-righteous black people say, the trans-Atlantic slave trade was done on a far grander scale. But it was still done or doesn't the principle of slavery matter any more, just who suffered the most (an argument without any principles behind it would be struck down in an instant by a court)?
And if we're talking about devastation of Africa - one commission says the developed world owes almost 780 trillion dollars to Africa - what about all the countless devastations by marauding empires done throughout history? Iran calculates that in relative terms it still has not recoevered from the depradations of the Mongol hordes and many central Asian civilisations were wiped out or severely debilitated. Russia and China also suffered terribly. Should Mongolia reparate all these countries for what its ancestors did? On the contrary, they praise Chinggis (Genghis) Khan.
All empires throughout all history have raped, pillaged and occasionally destroyed subject peoples. They have all used slaves to a greater or lesser extent, under one name or the other. To claim preferential treatment reveals the presence of a persecution complex.
To link racism today to what people did two hundred years ago is preposterous. Slavery itself did not finally end in Britain until 1838. It was still in force in parts of the British Empire until 1938. But do racist thugs or bourgeois racists think of the slave trade or slavery when they beat up a person of a different colour or silently disqualify them from a job interview? Prejudice comes from historical roots, but this is usually passed down through families or low-level insidious culture, not derived from what may be read in books.
This is not an adequate basis for reparations. When it is all added up, the quest for reparations by certain black groups seems petty and money-grubbing, do black people no favours whatsoever. 20% of the world's population may control 80% of the world's wealth, but then it said that in the USA 99% of assets are effectively owned by an elite 1%. That affects both black, white, Hispanic and Native Americans. Find that hard to believe? Well, 1% in the USA translates to 3 million people. Aid is not the answer, nor is re-labelling aid 'reparations' because it represents both tokenism and a legal avenue for massively ramping up aid input from black African elites against unwilling democratic populations in the developed world. This just creates dependenct culture. What Africa needs is fair trade deals that allows, at the very least, some wealth redistribution. There never will 100% of the world's wealth owned by 100% of the world's population - total equality is a pipe dream.
Far more damaging for Africa today is global warming with the principle culprits in the western world but also China and India. Technology transfer and payments for the increasingly unfavourable climate will do far more for the people there than black groups nursing a grievance like a badge of honour.