World Reparations with David Anderson

Ross Reynolds
01/06/2005 at 12:00 p.m.

Do nations owe a debt to the people they have oppressed? Can the debt be paid with cash reparations? The U.S. government paid reparations to Japanese-Americans interned during World War II. Do African nations deserve reparations for the mistreatment they suffered at the hands of the colonial powers? American prisoners of war sued the Japanese government to recover wages for slave labor wage, plus interest. Jews have sued the German government for slave labor reparations going back to the 1930s. There’s been a long-time movement for reparations to the descendants of American slaves dating back to 1989 when Congressman John Conyers proposed a bill to set up a commission to study remedies for the economic discrimination against African Americans. We’ll hear from British historian David Anderson who is in town to talk about world reparations and his new book about the hidden history of the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya in the 1950s called Histories of the Hanged.

Guests:
David Anderson author and historian