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My Taxes Paid Off Slave Owners
I want that blood money back
Emancipation Day, or August 1, is to Black Britons what Juneteenth is to African Americans, but the difference is that just five years ago, we finally became “free” after paying off the national debt incurred for the release of our bondage. It wasn’t until 2015 that British citizens, including those descended from enslaved Africans, finished paying off the $25.7 million (an estimated $21.6 billion in 2020 dollars) our government borrowed from the treasury to pay 46,000 British slave owners. They profited from the loss of their human property in 1833, and my direct family and I were taxed to pay for their freedom. We, the descendants of those slaves, received nothing in exchange for centuries of brutalization and discrimination.
I want a refund!
My family already paid with their souls on plantations. I have paid taxes to settle the iniquitous debt to my family’s enslavers. And though I was born British, I do not have the privilege of equality of opportunity.
Many of those British families that made slave fortunes have privileges that still allow them to enjoy the vestiges of financial and political influence. Former British Prime Minister David Cameron’s forbearer received around $5,200 — equivalent to more than $3.8 million today — to compensate him for the loss of…
