Hilary Beckles

What are the 10 major legacies that European colonization have left behind? Issues of illiteracy. Issues of ill health. Issues of poor infrastructure. Issues of backward agricultural economies. And it goes on.

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The cricket star, like everyone else, should have an intelligent understanding of the crisis of the nation-state and the marginalisation of small communities within the global economy.

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The Caribbean world has changed radically since the 1960s, and postcolonial generations have very different mentalities from those that went before.

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West Indian Test cricketers are among the top world cricketers in terms of pay and remuneration. They are not underpaid. They are easily in the elite of Caribbean skilled workers, earning millions of dollars after, let's say, a five-year period of regional representation.

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Effectively, what we are saying to the governments of Europe is, 'OK, after 300 years, you have left these islands in a pretty bad state. You've left them with terrible developmental challenges, and we believe you have a responsibility to return to the Caribbean and participate in the rebuilding of the Caribbean.'

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West Indian people had made their greatest single cultural investment in cricket.

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You can read Windrush as a morality tale, but it is about the future of black people in the Caribbean. Where next will they want us to labour? Where is the next place they will take us? Why do we not focus on building our own economies and societies? We need to put all hands on deck to get our economies to function at a higher level.

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Reparative justice is not about black people standing on the street corners expecting charities from white folks. This is about building of bridges across lines of moral justice.

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Effectively transcending and conquering the legacies of enchainment, impoverishment and racial denigration continue to elude us. Residual elements of the plantation-based past continue to shape our societies and determine their trajectories.

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The Caribbean calls upon the enslaving governments of Europe and their national institutions, all enriched and empowered by their crimes against humanity, to return to the region in order to participate in cleaning up their colonial mess.

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Pushing ahead with a self-emancipatory agenda is critical, but we must do so fully conscious of this broader context of our development efforts.

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If the British public were shown slavery in their own society seen through the eyes of the enslaved, they would get a much better understanding.

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