The idea of reparations to African-Americans is something that comes up for discussion from time to time, and things like affirmative action and DEI have the express goal of correcting historic racial discrimination and the effects of colonialism (ie slave trade). There’s also occasionally discussion about Native Americans, which America is often criticized / admonished for, by Americans and Natives, as well as Europeans.
I was wondering if these same discussions happen in Europe in regards to formally colonized areas of the world, particularly Africa and Asia. Obviously this is going to look different depending on a nation’s colonial past, but most of Western Europe can say they had some amount of large-scale colonization going on somewhere, with it’s own set of problems.
I understand that there’s a bit of distinction here; “natives” in Europe are all, well, native. America is product of colonialism. The best we can say we participated in were the Phillipines and Liberia, but we also had a pretty booming slave trade at a time when the slave trade was largely dying out in Europe. However, in the end, the overarching theme is “colonialism.”
Has there been any discussion about reparations, whether for those currently feeling post-colonial effects or for those displaced by colonialism?
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