It is time for them to make reparations to the descendants of chattel slavery in the Americas. This is our global truth, the truth we as human beings understand with stark clarity: There can be no atonement if there’s no repair. It is time — it is long past time — for reparations for the transatlantic slave trade and all the devastation that it has wrought, and all the devastation that it continues to reap.

Though there is historical cognition for reparations and it is a term that is fairly well known in the international body politic, the question of reparations for African Americans remains unresolved. And so, just as we've discussed the Holocaust and Japanese internment camps, and to some extent the devastation that the colonists inflicted upon the Indians, we must talk about slavery and its continued effects... Last year the Democratic Party included this issue in the platform it asks that country engage in a discussion at the federal legislative level would send an important signal to the African American community and other people of goodwill.

It is a fact that slavery flourished in the United States and constituted an immoral and inhumane deprivation of African slaves' lives, liberty and cultural heritage. As a result, millions of African Americans today continue to suffer great injustices. But reparation is a national and a global issue, which should be addressed in America and in the world. It is not limited to Black Americans in the US but is an issue for the many countries and villages in Africa, which were pilfered, and the many countries, which participated in the institution of slavery..the concept of reparations is not a foreign idea to either the U.S. government or governments throughout the world.

Reparations are ultimately about respect and reconciliation — and the hope that one day, all Americans can walk together toward a more just future. We owe it to those who were ripped from their homes those many years ago an ocean away; we owe it to the millions of Americans- yes they were Americans – who were born into bondage, knew a life of servitude, and died anonymous deaths, as prisoners of this system. We owe it to the millions of descendants of these slaves, for they are the heirs to a society of inequities and indignities that naturally filled the vacuum after slavery was formally abolished 154 years ago. Today represents the first time in history that the House of Representatives will host a hearing on H.R. 40.

If there is any hesitation in some minds about the paying of reparations, it is worth considering the fact that when slavery was abolished, the slave owners were compensated for the loss of the slave because human beings were labelled as property deemed to be commodities. Surely, this is a matter that the world must confront and can no longer ignore

Would I [support reparations for descendants of black slaves]? Very much so. Not just African Americans. We ourselves didn't own slaves, but we — me — are rich and privileged because of the torture of blacks for centuries. And yes, we owe them reparations. The same with the remnants of Native Americans. Same with countries that we've destroyed. What about Iraq? I mean we've devastated Iraq, killed hundreds of thousands of people, generated millions of refugees, created a sectarian conflict that's destroying the place. Is it our responsibility? Sure. I think the call for reparations is very legitimate. Take Europe and Africa. People are fleeing from Africa to Europe, not the other way around. Is there a reason for that? Yeah, a couple of centuries of murderous, brutal colonialism. So sure, they owe reparations, not just taking in the refugees, but do something about it, create conditions in their own societies in which there won’t be refugees. That’s the real answer to the so-called refugee problem. But it requires those who have been wielding the whip to say "okay, we benefitted from it, it’s our responsibility, we’ll do something about it."

There are people who are looking for answers to a question that needs to be answered through much needed reparations and responsibility from the global north.

I don’t think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago, for whom none of us currently living are responsible, is a good idea. We’ve, you know, tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a civil war, by passing landmark civil rights legislation. We’ve elected an African-American president. I think we’re always a work in progress in this country, but no one currently alive was responsible for that. And I don’t think we should be trying to figure out how to compensate for it. First of all, it would be pretty hard to figure out who to compensate. We’ve had waves of immigrants, as well, who have come to the country and experienced dramatic discrimination of one kind or another. So, no, I don’t think reparations are a good idea.

And so, that is the long history of this country, that doesn’t end, again, conservatively, until 1968. And so, there are people who are very, very much alive who have experienced that, who are suffering the after-effects and effects of that. And that’s what, you know, as far as I’m concerned, the whole movement around reparations is about.

The Arab world doesn’t want to know it, and this comes out clearly today, when we see what’s happening in Libya with the return of the slave trade. This is the dark part of Arab history. Africans know it and remember it perfectly well.

We must never forget that woman was ignored, seen and treated as intellectually inferior, for so long that we can hardly expect the sudden and surprising success of our activities for the time being. The inevitable consequences of a thousand years of slavery cannot be undone at once. Its repercussions are sure to be felt for a long time, felt at any rate more than we should like. Those who expect something different in this regard have failed to grasp the enormity of the problem; the great tragedy of woman has slipped past them without a trace.

It is time to acknowledge openly that much of the European, United States has been from the vast wealth harvested from the sweat, tears, blood and horrors of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the centuries of colonial exploitation

What will they do to make reparations for those who suffered so much in the past?” she says“Because without something being done – both symbolic and real – reconciliation is going to be very difficult.”

What I have proposed is $200 to $500 billion (in reparations) to descendants of slaves/ I think anything less than $100 billion is an insult... We should have a reparations council, board of trustees as it were, selecting this counsel – very, very significant because it has to be a board of trustees ... [that] white America trusts and black America trusts... I don’t think the average American is a racist — actually, I don’t at all, but I do think the average American is vastly undereducated, uninformed