TRIGGERnometry - Heated Debate: Slavery, Reparations & Colonialism with Rafe Heydel-Mankoo and Kehinde Andrews

Episode Date: September 29, 2025

Kehinde Andrews and Rafe Heydel-Mankoo debate slavery, reparations and colonialism. Moderated by Konstantin Kisin. | Venice AI: Private, uncensored AI https://venice.ai/triggernometry - use code TRIGGERNOMETRY to get 20% off a pro plan Triggernometry is proudly independent. Thanks to the sponsors below for making that possible: - Augusta Precious Metals: Protect Your Retirement with Physical Gold. Rated #1. Click to learn more: https://bit.ly/triggergold Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Substack! https://triggernometry.substack.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Shop Merch here - https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media: https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry: Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. 00:00 - Introduction 01:45 - Kehinde's Opening Statement 08:00 - Rafe's Opening Statement 14:28 - Is the West Uniquely Guilty of Slavery? 21:03 - What About Modern Slavery Today? 28:19 - Did The British Empire Do Any Good? 35:42 - Should History Be Judged by Today’s Morals? 42:56 - Who Speaks for the Descendants of Slaves? 50:11 - Is Reparations Policy Realistic? 01:03:06 - How Different Groups Think Differently 01:18:30 - The Psychology Of Whiteness 01:28:25 - Closing Remarks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My family from Jamaica, so I have direct heritage here. The harm has never actually been addressed. The problem is there are no victims of British Empire slavery today. You can't have intergenerational trauma for eight generations that's simply absurd. Every single thing that powered enough to revolution was slave labor. The contribution of slavery to the British economy was less than 5%. They said distortions of white historians that can't accept. That's racist. Now that's racist.

No, it's not racist. That's true. The psychosis of whiteness. It's a rosy eye view of the world where you can ignore what's happened historically, ignore the implications which are very clear to date. When Europeans came in 40, they weren't massively more technologically advanced. It's eugenics. It's a eugenics dressed up in something else. Cultural racism.

Can you explain why the poorest part of the world is black and the rich part of the world is white? Relax, relax. This isn't an ad. If you're not a fan of ads but love trigonometry, join the thousands of trigonometry members who get extended. Ended interviews, no ads, early access, and the ability to submit questions for upcoming guests. Sign up now at Triggerpod.com.uk or click the link in the description of this episode. Last night, you spent two hours deciding what to wear to the party. This morning, it'll take you two minutes to list it on Deepop and make your money back. Just grab your phone, snap a few photos, and we'll take care of the rest.

The sheer dress and platform heels you'll never wear again. There's a birthday girl searching for. them right now. Your one-end-done look is about to pay for your next night out, or at least the right home. Your style can make you cash. Start selling on Deepop, where taste recognizes taste. Welcome to Trigonometry Debates. The subject for today is reparations and slavery, should Britain and other Western countries pay them. I'm delighted to be joined by former Trigonometry guest and historian and broadcaster Rafe Hadleman. Welcome. And I will get your name wrong, even though you corrected me and I want to get a right, Kehinde. Kayende.

Yeah, I told you. Kayende. Kenji Andries, who is Britain's first professor of black studies, academic and broadcasters. Well, welcome to you both. Thank you. Really appreciate you coming. I probably don't need to say which side either of you are, for you. You're both well known on these positions. I want both of you to have a chance to set your stall out. So six, seven minutes each, Kande, would you like to go first?

Yeah, so, yeah, thanks for the invitation. I mean, I think the key thing with this, when we think about reparations of slavery is we have the frame that we're using is wrong. And there's so many, because it's wrong, we just get the debate wrong. So if you actually think about reparation for slavery correctly, there really is no argument against, no good argument. All right? The way I'd put it is I'd use my favorite, Malcolm X. He says, if you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, we haven't made any progress. Even if you pull it all the way out, we still haven't made any progress. You actually have to heal the wound. Now what we think of is slavery

something that was long ago, a distant arm that happened and ended. That is clearly nonsensical. Slavery is a knife going into our backs, and then abolition is probably pulling it at three inches. But on abolition, particularly look at Britain, on abolition, the enslaved to Britain, my family is from Jamaica, so I have direct heritage here, the enslaved to work for 300 years on the island with no pay in abject poverty. When slavery was abolished, got zero, nothing. The slave owners got the largest payer in the British government history. 100 billion is actually the number we should have equivalent, 40% of income, 5% of GDP.

at the time was given to the slave owners. So what does that do? That entrenched the wealth and that entrenched the poverty. So after slavery ends, it's not like this is done and finished. Then we have to live in Jamaica on a colony, slave colonies, still living in the same kind of conditions. There's a reason why 1865, 30 years after slavery is abolished in Jamaica, there's a massive uprising because the conditions are still terrible. Even now, go forward 100, 200 years. Because the wealth from slavery is still there and the poverty from slavery is still there, the harm has never actually been addressed. And it's very clear to trace. So we shouldn't think of slavery is something which happened a long time ago and therefore we should be past it because the harm was never addressed

and because it then continued with colonialism, with modern-day racism. Why did my family move here in the first place from Jamaica? It wasn't a voluntary thing. It was because they were in deep poverty and there was no society where they could get jobs. So they had to come here and what did they find when they came to the UK? Racism, segregation, etc., etc., etc. So if you're going to look at the black and white wealth gap, in the UK, in the Caribbean, in the world, it is impossible to not trace that directly to slavery. And actually, when you think about the arguments of reparation of slavery, which have come from Caribbean countries, which have come from American countries, which have come from Africa as

well. Another massive misconception here is that Africa doesn't have benefited from slavery. This is completely ridiculous. Africa was destroyed by slavery. Africa's economy was ruined by slavery, to the point where in 1999 there was a Pacific claim from the African continent for 777 trillion. million dollars to repay the damage in the Caribbean and the damage to Africa. There is no way to explain why black people today are at, you look at most statistics are at the bottom of the economic poll, look at statistics around life expectancy at the bottom of that, look at, and then look at why the richest part of the world is the west where the white people live is the richest.

That's directly down to slavery. So if there is literally no doubt that there is a debt owed, a large debt that is old, And really, reparations usually fall down on how do you do it? Like what's the practicality of paying reparations, which is a different question. But on the principle of should there be reparations, like I said, there's no actual good argument. There's just a lot of obsuscation, what aboutery, and completely misunderstanding the debate. Like I said, the knife is very difficult to argue the knife is more than six inches out of the back of black people's in slavery. If you look at global economy today.

So until it's out and until the wound is healed, reparations have to be due. Since you haven't used all your time, can I just ask one follower before Rayf jumps in, which is about the practicality of this, which is you say it's a separate issue. But do you have some thoughts on how it might actually be done? Because for a lot of people, I think that's actually quite a big question. They might instinctively agree with the idea that clearly something is owed, but without knowing what the rule of doing that is. And that might be the obstacle for them.

Yeah, so I mean, I actually, I think the worst way to do it would be individual reparations, so I don't need slave-slave reparations. Actually, the one bearer I do want my own individual slave reparations would be the British government took this loan out to pay for the slave-owner-owner reparations that were so large it wasn't paid back until 2014, which means myself, my family, all my family descended from the enslaved, actually paid slave-owner compensation. I do want that money back.

I think that should be individual payment. I'll have that money back. But generally speaking, it's about you would set up a fund in the UK and America, America, you would, for the, the fall of support development of black people. If you look at the Caracom countries, they're asking for two nation states rather than two individuals. I'm not always a big fan of the Caribbean nation states and how they manage their money, I'll be honest, but certainly not individual.

It is about how do you set up some kind of fund that can be used to develop black community? Because this is the problem, because of this economic damage that was done and hasn't ever been restored, this is why we're behind in the world. And so you have to have some mechanism, some fund, some tools, some way that we can use the money to address that and to adjust that balance. Rave? Well, thanks for having me and thanks for having this discussion. Just to correct you, but Cahendi, you and your mother or grandmother weren't paying any

money. This is quite an often quoted aspect about payment of reparation that it didn't end until 2014, the repayment of the loan. And it's quite incumbent, it's not your fault, there was a tweet put out by the Treasury, which was extremely ill-advised and mistaken. What happened was that the slave owner's debt was actually repaid somewhere between 1835 and 1927, and the confusion arises because the way in which Britain financed its debt. It was using undated guilt, and before 1927, we don't actually have any idea or any record of when those guilts were redeemed.

So it was probably paid off before 1927. What happened was in 2015, the British government modernised its guilt portfolios and redeemed all of its undated guilt. and so therefore they could confirm categorically, well, it must have been paid by this point because we've covered everything prior to that, but actually it was at least 100 years older, so I'm afraid that reparations check won't be coming. Over to you.

I'm going from my great one, because she definitely pays. But anyway, oh, one, yeah, and you mentioned Malcolm X also and the wound. Well, it reminds me of Nietzsche's genealogy or morality where he spoke about people who claw at a healed wound, and when it bleeds and it's painful, then moan about the pain. And I would argue that slavery is a healed wound in the West, in Britain in the West, and essentially we are clawing as a wound that we don't need to claw at any longer.

And I think the British people understand that. So, for example, all polling shows that the vast majority of the British public are overwhelmingly opposed to the idea of reparations. And they understand, you know, that the abolition of the slave trade happened more than 200 years ago, and Britain was the leading force in the abolition of the slave trade. Reparations is a matter of tort law, and the whole concept of tort law is to put the victim back into the position they were in before the damage was caused. The problem is there are no victims of British Empire slavery today. We're talking about five, between five and eight generations ago.

I would also say that for many people, well, certainly I would hope would understand that for many on the left, this issue isn't actually about slavery. at all. We talk about reparations and slavery, but quite often for the left, this is actually a weapon with which to attack and undermine Britain and America, and it's rooted in the deep hatred of the West more broadly. In terms of Caribbean politicians, I would say two things. Firstly, it's clearly an avaricious cash grab to try to profit and capitalize and exploit naive Western guilt. I would also say that it's an attempt to deflect attention away from the corruption and the catastrophic mismanagement of the economies, of the institutions and the

infrastructures of the Caribbean nations by corrupt and incompetent and substandard Caribbean politicians. Now, I am confident in saying all of that, because if this were really about slavery, then the people who are most vocal about the plights of black people and the plight of slavery would surely be just as vocal, I would say even more. more vocal about the far more pressing issue, which is the plight of modern slaves today. The International Labour Organization says that seven in every 1,000 Africans today is a slave. That's 10 million people today living horrific lives. To put that into context, it took 300 years of the transatlantic slave trade to transport

10 million people, and that's a number that we have today. It seems to me quite clear that what is more important, looking, speaking out and drawing attention to the plight of 10 million slaves, drawing attention to the Arab slave trade, which continues to this day, where Africans are still shipped to the Middle East as slaves, is that more important, or is harking back to historical injustices from 200 years ago? I would say that is the key moral question to which there is only one answer, and yet all the people that I've spoken to and debated on this subject

who have been very vocal and write lots of articles about slavery, not once did they address the issue of modern slavery in the plight of black slaves today, and not once do they speak about historical slavery in the context of the non-white actors. There were more Africans held in bondage by other Africans than were ever transported outside of Africa. So I think those are the crucial ways to look at it, and I think therefore you can say that there is an ulterior motive here, which is politically and ideologically motivated. But to go and look at the history,

of this. A few things to say. Firstly, of course, slavery was an abomination. What happened in 19th century slaves was utterly horrific and reprehensible, and if they were alive, they would be absolutely deserving of reparations. But I cannot see the connection whereby their great, great, great, great, great, great, grandchild is a victim. They're clearly not a victim. On the contrary, the lives of the descendants of slaves today in Britain and the Caribbean is incalculably better than if their ancestors had never left West Africa. Secondly, Britain has more than paid its debt for slavery. You know, slavery was universal, but Britain was the first country to make itself deliberately poorer to pursue a moral good, the abolition of the slave trade, expending vast sums

in men, in money, in resources to enforce and enter the slave trade on the high seas, but also to go into Africa and stop Africans enslaving other Africans. I would also say that actually a form of reparations has already been paid. You know, the black slave descendants are not the indigenous as peoples of the Caribbean islands. Yet with independence, they became the legal owners and the rulers of territory they never previously owned. That's a form of reparations

and also they inherited all the great things that the British Empire created at great expense. Roads, schools, hospitals, power stations and infrastructure, the police, civil service, the army, the judiciary, parliament, democracy and the rule of law,

the English language, all the things that were necessary to make sure that the Caribbean countries could become successful middle-income countries far richer than their African comrades. Anyway, that's my opening piece. Well, I had a lot of sighing from this side. But before you get into, may I just ask one follow-up with you, Rafe as well, which is, can you really say with a straight face that there are no victims of slavery today? I mean, you go to America, you travel around... A British Empire slavery outside. Okay, but that's exactly what I'm saying. So if you go to America and you look at some of the ghettos in the cities in the United States

and the way that people live there, is it really so hard to trace that back to a history of real horrific racism, legislation that prevented black people from living the same way that their white fellow citizens were, and then, of course, being transported there and used a slave labor without being paid? Wouldn't all those things across generations have exactly the sort of impact that we now see on the ground? So two things. Firstly, I'm not talking about the American experience. I think racism is a massive issue in America to a degree we don't know or understand in this country here. Race is a huge divide in the United States, which never was here. I mean, for example,

you know, if you look from the 19th century onwards, black Americans who came to the UK, they were amazed at the warm reception they received. Look at people like Howling Wolf, Great Blues, Otis, Redding and others who were housed by white people. and houses, the experience of black people in this country was wholly different. But they were brought to America by the British Empire. Well, no, it was the Americans who brought them to America, remember. But also, let's select that's one point. But secondly, you know, if you look at the decline and a great deal of the poverty

that's afflicted American black people, it has resulted basically from the destruction of the family post-1960s. That's when you saw a huge massive decline in the security and prosperity. of so many families. You look at the decline of Harlem in the 1920s and all sorts of things on that levels. But I'm not here to debate the American situation. What I will say, if you're going to talk about intergenerational trauma, we're talking about eight generations in this country, right? Two hundred years. The generation is 25 years. That's your great, great, great, great, grandchildren. My own grandparents had experiences not different to slavery.

They were deported to Siberia by Joseph Stalin. They were Poles. They had all their lands confiscated. They ended up going in cattle tracks where they couldn't sit down, going to the gulags in Siberia and Kazakhstan. My great-grandmother, who was blind in her 80s, died there. Others were worked to death. I had the communists murder my family and the Katyn massacre. The Nazis murdered my Polish Catholic family at Auschwitz and elsewhere. That's within the lifetime of my mother. You could argue that my mother had a bad experience about it all.

I'm the grandchild. I don't feel like I'm a victim. I don't experience intergenerational trauma, fundamentally affected my lives, but lost all of our properties and estates in Poland, and I'm living in a very different lifestyle. But I don't feel that I'm a victim anyway, and that's within one generation. That's why I support reparations within one or two generations. I think it was right for the Germans to pay reparations to Poland. I think it was right and to the Jews.

I think it was right for Japan to pay reparations. But not when we're talking about eight generations. There comes a point where you need to stop playing the victim. And unfortunately, that's why I talk about Nietzsche and clawing at a wound that's healed. The more you talk about the fact that we are in this position because of other people, we need to actually depend on other people for handouts and begging, the less you take away your agency and the idea of personal responsibility. And I think a lot of this, the trauma that's being talked about,

has been festered by this constant negativity and focus, whereas you look at places like Singapore, for example, also a backwards colony where they are. essentially turned things around, created a great industry. We talk about India being an oppressed colonized state. They managed to turn things around super well. Poland went to... 150, the poorest country in the world is turn things around.

So we can debate India on another occasion, because we can have an equally long debate about that. So I think the time comes when you have to start looking within your own community. What is it within our community that is stopping us from progressing and succeeding rather than looking elsewhere? Why do we have a youth culture that celebrates violence and misogyny and homophobia and that's openly supported? Why do we have single parent families where the fathers aren't involved? You know, slavery.

Why is why? But look at those reasons and why do African-Colian families not encourage their children enough in education to the same degree that you see with Chinese and Indian, an Indian children? It's not true. So can we not put factual untrue? Well, why don't you address? You were sighing for a long time, so I imagine you have lots of things to say. Right, go for... All right, people, it's trivia time.

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to give reparations in 1838. Yes? Yeah, absolutely. So that didn't happen. And because that didn't happen, there is a consequence that the poverty is still there and the wealth is still there. So how can you possibly withhold the argument in your head that if it was right to do it and you don't do it, then there's no consequences for not doing it? I mean, that's just simple. Take, you're talking about, I don't, race doesn't exist here, I'm sorry.

Jamaica, like, I've heard it very foggy before about this and tends to focus on Jamaica, on Caribbean countries like Barbados and Tigar, small countries, small islands, which have had been able to manage colonism a little bit better, right? Jamaica has a population that is bigger than Barbados. and Tiga, both of the Caribbean put together. There are ghettos in Jamaica. Do it make American ghettos look like literally friendly? None of us would walk through them today. And as you said, we wouldn't even be there. There should be no black people in Jamaica at all. 80% of the population. They live there and mostly in conditions of poverty that we wouldn't accept. So no, the Caribbean isn't this great, wonderful place that people living in and it's all wonderful to be in. Compare the audacity to suggest that because Jamaica is somewhat doing better than the African

countries, therefore, you are lucky to be in Jamaica? Well, that's nonsense. And again, as I said before, one of the biggest misconceptions. Because I don't understand. What worry for saying is, these people are better off. And I'm not saying... I mean, are they relatively better off? Yes, but again, this is the biggest misconception about slavery.

Is that slavery, when we talk about reparations, we're just talking about the descendants of the enslaved. Africa did not benefit from slavery. Africa was devastated by slavery. Slavery utterly destroyed the economy of the African continent. When Europe came into Africa, Europe couldn't colonize. Like it was not possible. Africa was a head of Europe.

It is centuries of slavery drawing out people, changing the economy, that means that Africa becomes diluted, if you like, weakened to the point where in the 19th century, European countries can take over. There's a reason why most African countries colonized for less than 100 years. Europe just wasn't able to do it. Slavery completely destroyed the continent, which is why there was a claim in 1999 for $777 trillion. So if I was going to explain why is Nigeria, why is the life expectancy in Nigeria 54, why is the poorest part of the world by GDP per capita so-called sub-Saharan Africa?

It's not coincidental that is the place the slaves were taken from. That is the reason for it. So yes, we might be slightly better off into Caribbean than they are in Africa, but both of those things are about slavery and there's both a harm that needs to be repaired. The other thing, I'll send you my book, New Age of Empire. I am someone who talked deeply about the Islamic slave trade. Of course, the Islamic slave trade. In fact, without the Islamic slave trade,

there probably is no European slave trade. Europe doesn't really have new ideas. I just tend to copy other ideas. So the Islamic slave trade was horrendous, had a massive impact. But the key difference, and this is why the reparations claim is so important, is in the Arab slave trade, it was predominantly about servants.

So it was mostly women, it was mostly about servants. It wasn't wealth producing. The money in the Arab slave trade was the traders. There's actually stories of Arab slave traders who have so much money, and they have nowhere to spend it. So what claim can I make to a system that didn't produce money? The difference and the different, no, but didn't produce well for the traders, but it didn't produce society. The difference between, the major difference between, well, there's two major

differences, why again, we should never, never, ever think that modern day so-called slavery is the same as Seattle slavery. It is not. Shato slavery is a reduction of someone to a horse, a cow, And in English law, by the way, not American law, and for 150 years, the people, it was the British Empire taking people to America. But there's no comparison of modern-day slavery. It's a bad thing. Don't get me wrong. We shouldn't even call it slavery. The difference between the Arab slave trade and the... I'm not sure modern-day slaves would feel the same way about you. No, words matter. Trivializing the horrors of the meat of down to them.

For one, modern-day slavery is illegal. It's a crime. Slavery was not. It was the thing that we all did. Only in 1980, more a tenure of bothered slavery. You can't compare it to you. You're not Chateau. You're not, you're not literally legally defined as non-human, which is what my ancestors were legally defined as a horse and a cow by the English courts, which is why America then carried on slavery, by the way.

Anyway, my point is, the difference between the Arab slave trade, which didn't build Arabic society was mostly, I said mostly servants, it's terrible, I'm not saying Arab slave trade was great, it was horrendous. But European slavery, it turned us into commodities. and it powered the Industrial Revolution. Now, I've heard you argue before this isn't true. Every single thing that powers the Industrial Revolution, first it's gold, then it's silver,

then it's tobacco, then it's indigo, then it's cotton. Every single thing that powered the Industrial Revolution was slave labor. Which one of those things did not come from Atlantic? Which one of those things did not come from Atlantic? We're doing very long answers, which are making, you know, they're about six different points.

Which one of those five founding things did not come from slave labor? Answer the question. The Industrial Revolution, If you look at the top five, so the arguments that have been made by you and by Professor Beckles are that the Industrial Revolution was caused by profits from the slave trade, that it was caused by profits from the sugar industry, and that it's underinvestment and underdevelopment by Britain and the empire. Cotton was not a British Caribbean commodity. That was from America. Who produced a cotton? Yeah, but that's not part of the reparations argument. It should be. No, it should be. It's a bad argument. Let him answer.

What gets me is people on the left always look for a bad reason behind any excellence on the part of the West. It couldn't be because of British genius or because of situations and circumstances in this country that we've got the Industrial Revolution. There has to be a nefarious cause of any great Western achievement. The Industrial Revolution happened because, firstly, you had the agricultural revolution in the 17th century, which led to a surplus of labour, which meant you had an excess labour force that was then available. to go into industry. You had abundant natural resources where you could literally pick up coal off the ground

and you had iron resources. You had innovation and technology which was far in excess of what else happened elsewhere. And the reason you had such engineering innovation technology, if you read Professor Joseph Heinrich from Harvard University's book, which we discussed on your show on the weirdest minds in the world,

the weirdest people in the world, the Western mind by the 80th and 19th century was fundamentally different in how it viewed the world to the Occidental mind. Actually, just do racism. We're actually just going to say racism. Our mind is better. Why is that racist?

It's different. You said, come on. Come on. Let's not play. Fountifully different, I said. But different and then it leads to great world. That means you're saying better. That's our racist idea.

It's fundamentally different. We should get a program, racing ideas. We can have a list of all the scientific and medicine discoveries that came out of Europe versus the rest of the world, if you'd like. We can take as long as you want. Let me finish the points here. We also had in Britain, we had institutional stability. which you didn't have elsewhere, especially in Europe at this time as well.

So we had political stability. We had the environment that was able to become conducive to the industrial revolution. We also had the financial markets which were unparalleled elsewhere. We had the structures through the stock market where you could actually create these sorts of situations. And yes, of course we had trade routes and we had access to raw materials. But you cannot deny. Well, if you look, from 1719.

You've got to let them finish. 18902 was the five-year period which saw the most slave ships, all right? During, if you look at 7, if you look at 1792, for example, the peak year for slavery, there were 204 slave ships. British total vessels were 14,000. Slavery accounted for 1.5% of the total British fleet, 3% of tonnage. The contribution of, say, of slavery to the British economy was less than 5%. It made certain people very rich.

That's why you get some great country houses. It made places like Bristol and Liverpool very rich, but the amount of money we're talking about is so small that it didn't have any consequential effect on the British nation as a whole. If you look at the sugar industry, which is claimed it was fundamental for the Industrial Revolution, that amounted to 2.5% of net British national income.

Coal, sheep farming, wood and industry, iron, were all much higher than that. In 1770, which was the peak year for capital formation for sugar, it only comes to 3% of capital formation. If sugar was such a hot commodity, such a great investment, you would have had money pouring into it from all other industries, you didn't get that. In fact, if you look at flax and linen

from Scotland and Ireland, they became much more of a revenue generated for the British economy, far higher than sugar. Nobody has said that without flax and linen, you wouldn't have had the Industrial Revolution. In fact, the contribution of sugar to the British economy was the same as barley and hops from which you make beer. And I don't recall anyone saying that beer was something

fundamental for the Industrial Revolution. Now, let me, let's stick on, let's stick on. Let's stick on the topic that we're on. Again, this is what is, there's a quote. This is a distortions of white historians that just can't accept. That's racist. Now, that's racist. No, no, no.

You're implying that a white historian is incapable of approaching the subject from an impartial perspective. Look at the history. Which means that you must have an equally biased perspective. There's a black historian. Look at the history of white historians, which you're parroting right now. And it will tell you the truth. It's not me looking at it and going, well,

I remember I was in A-level history. I did this. I did Industrial Revolution at A-level history. Got an A because I wrote a paper that said, White people are great. That's basically the argument that you just made. And when I asked my teacher, I said, what about slavery?

Which at the time, I didn't really know much about it. I was like, who knows? What happened at the same time? Is it a coincidence? His response was, that's not in the textbook. There's never talk about it again. And this is the classic nonsense you get from historians like this.

How could you possibly say, No, let me finish. Let me finish. Let me finish. You talk about the, we had financial stability. took about the stock market, gold and silver, the first two things which are so important to European development. Where do gold and silver come from? I don't remember there being any gold and silver just lying around Europe. No historian worth their salt would say that what they tend to whitewises is they call it the Atlantic system.

Going over to the West, finding the Americas, no historian worth their salt would not say that that is the fundamental turning point of Western development. It would be impossible not to. Unless you're just going to close your eyes and go, nah, no, nah, nah, nah, da, da. I said it's just things in Europe. Like I said, the key commodities is not just sugar. I didn't just list sugar. I told you. Gold, silver, tobacco, indigo, sugar, and cotton. And no, you can't forget cottons because it's American slave produced.

Well, no, no, wait, it's important. Because it's not just Bristol and Liverpool, whole cities that really wouldn't exist. Manchester doesn't exist unless there's a canal that goes from Liverpool to Manchester. It brings all this slave-produced cotton. Birmingham, where I'm from, the guns for slavery, the chains for slavery. The whole economy is underpinned by this. You can't just take off the Atlantic system and say, it doesn't matter because there weren't that many slave ships.

That's, again, no good arguments. All we're getting is, well, this discount, just forget about it. Let's not. And if what you're saying is true, why would the British government give the biggest bailout it's ever given? Because the only comparable bailout is to the banks, but that was apparently alone, right? We got that back.

There's no comparison to the 100 billion, 40% of 40% of the government's, 40% of the governments. There are so many errors in what you're saying. No, it's not because, no, no, no. You asked a question, so now you let them ask. You said, why would they do that? Why would they do that? 40%, you know that's the truth,

40% government income to bail that slave owners if it wasn't a big deal. So, firstly, it wasn't the biggest loan ever given. There was much more money. No, it wasn't a loan at all. Hold on. You're right, it wasn't, it wasn't the biggest payment ever given.

It was far more done in a single year of the Napoleonic War than it was done. It's not a payment of industry. Not war. Same with the Crimean War. The other point to make is, of course, this is an issue of Realpolitik. Right, gee, we don't live in an idealist world.

We have to deal with realelist world. on the ground. The House of Commons was not the full functioning democracy it is today. If there was any hope of securing freedom for the slaves, it had to be done through payments. There was no other means for the British state to get it through Parliament. Why not? If it was a moral issue. If it was a moral issue. If it was a moral issue.

If it was a moral issue, it was a brother. Yes, sometimes you have abolitionists, but you still have, unfortunately, corruption in the 18th and 19th century, you still had a degree of corruption in the British Parliament, still far less than anywhere else, but it was still enough there that you had to essentially ensure that people were paid for it. It's not pleasant, but that was the only way. So what would you rather done? No money would have been paid, and the slaves would have remained in bondage for the foreseeable future until enough of the abolitionist movement was strong enough to actually convictivate everybody.

That needed to be done. But your other arguments are so nonsensical. Let me address them. For example, by your argument, Portugal and Spain should have been the first countries to industrialize. Spain was getting all of the gold. Portugal had double the number of slaves of Great Britain, yet they became economic backwaters. Why was that?

France had seven times the amount of coffee. It had 17 times the amount of sugar exported and of indigo exported. So indigo, cotton, sugar, far more than Britain got from the Caribbean slaves. They weren't the first to industrialize. It was Britain that was the first to industrialize. And as a share of the Portuguese economy, the Brazilian Portuguese slave trade was far more lucrative for the Portuguese economy from the British economy. They didn't industrialize. Look at the United States of America.

The deep south, which were the slave-owning states, they didn't industrialize. It was the emancipated north of the country that was the first to industrialize. Now, look at all those examples. And don't get sidetracked here. We're talking about Spain, France, Portugal, all of this. How come those countries didn't become the first to industrial? when I've clearly given you the real reasons of the Agrarian Revolution, the political stability, and the glorious institutions of Britain.

So, for one, look, unlike you, I won't say that there aren't other things which are important. So I'm not saying there are other things. Like I said, I did A-level history. I could give you a list of other things which are important. But it is impossible to discount how much that slavery meant. And the fact that Portugal and Spain don't, they do, A, they do develop, they don't develop at the same pace. So if you're going to compare, it's interesting, now you don't want to compare. Compare Portugal's and France's economy.

Africa and the Caribbean's economy, you'd say there's a massive difference. So, yes, I'm not saying, look, just slavery is the only reason why Britain became, Britain had the largest empire in the world. Britain had naval supremacy. There's lots of reasons why Britain developed, which, but the point is you can't discount slavery and the massive impact that it had, and you also can't discount the wealth that very clearly is traceable and exist today from there, and the poverty that is very clearly and traceable today. And so reparation is simply saying, look, there's a debt that was owed then, which you actually accept in your argument, and was never paid, hence it should be paid.

Is it like I said? No good number. But we're in agreement because I'm not discounting the contribution of slavery. What I'm saying is it's not massive as you were making out. You are saying that it was a massive involvement. It was a precursor. It was a precondition.

It was a precondition. It was not a major contribution. It was, as I said, 3% of the national income akin to Harley and Hobbs. That's my point. It is not. And the people that I have seen you quote before, Beckles and so forth, they predicate the entire thing on the value of the slave trade and on the value of sugar as being essential.

And I'm saying, those are Marxist interpretations and later historians, David Elton, Stanley Egerton have all have all to disproved it. We're at the risk of losing the entire audience with our dissent into academia, interesting as it is from both of you, and I really appreciate it. But just coming back to sort of the more practical level. One question I always had, and this is a genuine question, right? So if I'm totally wrong, please correct me. As far as I understand, it was so dangerous for European purchases of slaves in Africa to go ashore that almost the entirety of the slaves who were bought in Africa was sold by Africans. And that's always to those people who are aware of that, which is actually not that many people.

That's always kind of to me, well, even if we were to pay, like who should be, well, shouldn't be the people who sold and captured those slaves to be paying reparations? Do you see what I'm getting that? No, I don't. This is again a terrible, terrible argument. I'm just, I'm just genuinely asking. Because there were Jewish collaborators in the Holocaust, does that mean that we should blame Jewish people? Like, it's a silly argument.

No, hold on. It's a hundred percent to say. We're going to say, no, we should go away from the Jewish people. But that's not a fair comparison. If the Holocaust had been conducted by the Jews, that would be a very different conversation. But slavery wasn't conducted by Africa. Well, they sold all the slaves, so it was.

They capsules of people. Well, no, A, again, there's a huge difference between. SLO-Slavery. No, it's not, no, no, no. I think if we have definitions is really, really important. What Europe did was a new thing. It was not. Yes, it was.

Seattle slavery. I'm sorry. In the Islamic slave tree, they were involved in mining, in agriculture, in irrigation. They were on plantations in Africa. In the Islamic slave trade, they also had rights. You're lying to the public, though. They were on royal plantations. Below, the person who does the first call for prayer in the, in the Karat is an enslaved

African African. They had rights. You could become free. And in African slavery, in terms of you're talking about, What I was actually just said was African, you African slavery was much more like serfdom, where you were part of the family who had freedom at a certain time. It's actually much more comparable to serfdom than it is to chateau slavery. Shadow slavery is dehumanizing.

It is literally the taking away of every single right. And it's quite likely that the people who sold who didn't actually know what they were doing. Because remember, Africa slavery doesn't actually take place mostly on the continent. They'd go far away. You're ignoring all the slaves who died being kidnapped and transported to the coast. Again, the point here is, of course there is. And there was huge rebellions. So, yes, there were some Africans 100% who were complicit.

There were whole kingdoms that essentially grew out of the idea of we walk trade and slave people. But this was because of the conditions that were imposed, right? I'm not saying they're not blameless. You're not hearing me say they're blameless. But again, if you look at the calculations for reparations, they are based largely not on harm. They are based largely on paid labor and the wealth gap, which is there. And there's nobody in Africa who benefited in. just so your argument

is actually the reparations are owed because the slaves that were taken from Africa by European nations they were used to produce things and therefore their descendants are owed effectively a chunk of that wealth that was produced using their labor that's your argument and plus

again and I want to stress here Africa overall yes you can find the minimum I mean there were very like in terms of the population of Africa how many were involved in trading people that is a minuscule number that is not that is a minuscule number So the actual impact of slavery in Africa was to impoverish Africa. So I'm saying that the basis of reparations claims are, one, the unpaid labor, which is just very, very simple.

There's hundreds of years of labor. Two, the wealth that has accumulated and the damage that was done economically, which is still there. You can still see today, which is why you don't go to the Arab slave trade, you don't go to the few Africans you read. All right. So, Ray, on that, is that not a fair point? If we could find some way, I know it's probably the practicalities of this are difficult, admittedly, but if we could find some way to go, well, look, Your great, great, great grandfather, wasn't slave, taken from Africa, used as a laborer,

that labor produced X amount of wealth, and we are now, you know, we've developed this magical system to trace that back and to be able to give you X percent of his labor. Would that not be a good thing to do? No, not at all, because you're talking about sums that are far smaller than what you're discussing here. But also, of course, there is no, you know, it doesn't have such a rosy-colored picture of what it was like in Africa for slaves. You know, just in the kingdom of Dahomey, you had annual sacrifices where you had up to 4,000 slaves murdered in human sacrifice rituals that were done there.

What about is all the world? You know, it's not a thought. You talk about the Islamics, no, but you're trying to paint this picture that somehow slavery, there are different gradations of slavery. In the Islamic slave trade, you had millions of young boys were captured. 60% of those millions of young boys died because they were castrated brutally, without anesthetical, of course, and died from that. This idea that somehow, were walking about drinking mint chulips or whatever. Yes, you did actually. I said it was different. I didn't say it was good. So let's be clear what I said. That is what you said. That is what you said. But if you're going to create your formula, then who's going to pay for this? Out of a population

of millions of people, there were only a few thousand slave owners. The majority of British people in this country descend from people who lived lives of abject poverty akin to serfdom. Why should their tax money go to paying reparations? You know, over 16% of this country is now foreign-born? Why should somebody who was born in Malaysia or Korea pay reparations? What about Jamaicans living here now? Why should they pay tax money to people in Trinidad for reparations? I mean, the whole idea is absurd. As I say, you can't have intergenerational trauma for eight generations. It's simply absurd. You need to take responsibility. And, of course, look to the great success stories of Africa in the past. Look, for example, there are reasons

for Africa's poverty right now. And it's corruption. It's a failure to manage the economy world. There are only two countries in Africa which are success stories that rank in the top tier of the Human Development Index. That's Mauritius and the Seychelles. Why is that? Because they've got good government, good democracy. They have institutions that are respected and well supported, and they've allowed immigration into the country. So there are lots of Indians in the economy who are helping the economy. Contrast that to what happened to South Africa. Contrast that to happen, what happened with Zimbabwe? So what is it ever going? With Zimbabwe. Look at the economy as soon as you as soon as you tear out one group of it.

Oh so we need non-black people in Africa is a solution. Like the actual racist ideas coming out. Racist ideas. Are you denied that Zimbabwe's GDP is not Ford. What happened to Uganda after the Asian Indians of the Asians were kicked out? What happened to South Africa in recent years?

What's happened to Zimbabwe? Hey, South Africa, again, just be listed, let's not lie. South Africa is not kicking people out. That's not what's happening at all. Africa is actually still under the control of most of the same Afrikaners. It's not a lie. The corruption. I'm talking about the corruption.

Where is the corruption in the Congo? I'm sorry. And you talk about Africa. For example, you know, that life expectancy in Africa, you said is 60. It doubled because of the arrival of the Europeans in the country. A life expectancy for thousands of years have been 24 to 35 up to 18, up to the 1850s. It was the same in 1850 as in 1550 as in 1450. This was the same in 1850.

Since Europeans arrived, because of medicine, vaccinations, antibiotics, clean water, sanitation, life expectancy doubled. And the Caribbean was a beneficiary of far more of that. Life expectancy in the Caribbean is up to 15 years longer than in West Africa. The GDP is over 10 times higher. That's because of the inheritance that they got from the British Empire. But that is, I mean, kind of just be really, really clear on this. I think one of the things which gets lost also with reparation for slavery campaigns is the good ones are not just. about slavery. It actually says, so America, for example, has a whole slavery

reparation campaign, which recognizes slavery, recognizes Jim Crow, recognizes everything else. As I said, the knife wasn't pulled out. So when you're looking at someone like Africa, slavery happens, then colonialism happens. So Africa is literally underdeveloped by Europe. So anything you say about, whether life and picture was bad, it was underdeveloped. Can I just get... Hold on the... Hold on a hundred. I want to let you talk for a long time. There's just a definition I'd love to get from you, because it's a word we hear a lot now, colonialism.

What does that mean? What is colonism? So colonialism is when one country, entity controls another one for its own benefit. And so Jamaica is a colony of Britain, from what, 655, everything that happens in Jamaica is, you could still argue today because we have neo-colonialism. But colonelism, everything happens in Jamaica,

everything happens in Nigeria when it's colonized, is to the benefit of Britain. And so therefore, places are underdeveloped. So the truth is, we have no idea what would happen. If Europe hadn't come into Africa, did the slave trade, a colonialism, we have no idea what happened. Raffazan not a fair point. No, we do know.

We do. We have Ethiopia and we have Liberia. No, no, no, because... Ethiopia and Liberia were never colonized. They were independent... They were independent... They were independent nations. And I'm sorry, but Ethiopia and Liberia still remain in the lowest tier of developed countries

in Africa. It's my mistake. I shouldn't have brought Rayfin. I apologize. You carry on. Liberia is actually made up by America. So let's not pretend that Liberia has its long history. Ethiopia is the perfect example of being a country surrounded by other colonial countries.

So Ethiopia may well not have been, may well have been independent, but a country can't by itself develop. If it's surrounded by, it's basically a colony. And actually Ethiopia is, in terms of what we call neo-colonialism there, which is after formal colonialism ends, yes, you have governments, but they are puppet governments. In fact, many times installed by the West, and that's where the corruption actually comes from, not us, from public governments, and you cannot. That would be just a lie to pretend that's not the case. For example, in the Congo, Chelsea's Mobutu is literally installed by the CIA and Poppits,

and then literally destroys the country, and it comes to England, comes to America, flies around on private jets and steals billions upon billions with the consent of both the USA and the United Kingdom and Europe, etc. So the neo-colonial colonelism is when we have that it continues. So I'd argue actually Ethiopia is one of the worst countries, the neo-colonialism, because it was surrounded wherever else. So the point is, don't just look at slavery as separate, look at that history, and tell me anywhere on this line, from slavery to colonialism, to neo-colonilism or racism,

where has this debt that you say and acknowledge should, have been paid, where has it been paid? Not only has it not been paid, more things have been piled onto it. Third world debt, for example, piled onto it. All of these things piled onto it. So we actually have a position where it's far worse than just slavery, it's slavery, colonialism, and where we are today. Because it just piles up, piles up, piles up, piles up, piles up, and to pretend that it doesn't, that's what I call psychosis, the psychosis of whiteness. This is a rosy-eyed view of the world where you can ignore what's happened historically, ignore the implications which are very clear today. And I know, I've got a question of very, so,

My argument is very clear. White supremacy is what defines the global economy. Has done since this very clear argument. If you look at a map of global inequality today, GDP per capita, it will show you that the poorest part of the world is where black people live, so-called sub-throaring African, the richest part of the world is where white people live, the West, and there's a hierarchy in between. So we literally have an economy in the mold of white supremacy,

which is how I understand the world. Tell me how that can be true. Before you do, can I just jump in. Please don't because I like to move. Can I just explore this thing? Because you say the psychosis of white. And look, I think you've made some interesting points about, you know, slavery and what's owed. And, you know, I actually said to you before we started that I think there's some really strong arguments on that point that I agree with to some extent.

When you start talking about whiteness, are you not including a hell of a lot of people who really had nothing to do with any of this? Like my ancestors are Russian. That's where I'm from. I happen to live in this country, but when you say psychosis of whiteness, now I'm part of this somehow. Do you see what I'm saying? Is it not a little bit too broad? If you're someone who values free inquiry and independent thinking, which let's be honest, is why you're probably watching trigonometry, then our sponsor, Venice AI, is the tool for you.

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Best Network based on Route Metrics, Best Overall Mobile Network Performing the U.S. Second Half 2025, all rights reserved. It must provide a recent consumer mobile bill in the name of the person, regained me the deal. Additional terms, conditions, and restrictions apply. Whiteness is a bad idea and not people. So there's not really bad people. So I'm not, I didn't say psychosis of white people. I said whiteness.

Whiteness is a way of viewing the world, which is completely irrational, deluded, and distorted, and leads to arguments like on the other side of the table, which all are black people, Asian people, are just as likely to do engage as anybody else. It's not about you individually. Wait, so whiteness has nothing to do with skin color. Well, it's white suprudeness,

comes from a system of white supremacy. As I said, the world today, is it, can you explain why the poorest part of the world is black and the richest part of the world is white and there's an hierarchy in between? Isn't a bad race? Isn't about colonialism? Maybe right for himself. The poorest part of the world was African long before Europeans arrived.

How do you explain that? Africa was ahead of Europe before. Africa was a head of Iran. Look, you had in the Middle Ages, you had the Mali Empire and Timbuktu and all of that. Ahead of Europe. Yeah, but they didn't develop beyond that. Why is that? Why was sub-sabary?

No, I'm sorry, if you're having sake. We're talking about West African slavery. That didn't go into Central Africa. Let him answer now, yeah? Can we answer with the truth? Well, I'm sorry. And this is the key points, right? Africa is thousands of years old.

Europeans didn't arrive there to settle and colonize until the scramble for Africa was when it really took place in 1885. As late as 1841, you had a few trading outposts on the coast. Yes, there was a slave trade, but we're talking about when Europeans went inland, because people inland in Africa didn't have any knowledge or experience

of what was happening on the coast of the slave markets. Right? Africa is huge. They got their slaves from West Africa. They weren't getting their slaves from Central Africa. Congo, where's Congo? I'm talking about the 1600s. With Congo? I am giving you plenty of time. I know you're both passionate and I love it and it's great. Just Ray, for one say. I'm glad we're having this debate. I think it's great. I wanted to be informative for the audience as well. So it's better if you don't talk over each other.

You will get all the time you need both of you, all right? In 1871, only 10% of Europe of Africa had been colonised. So why in 1870, Africa had had thousands of years, why was there no equivalent of the cities of, you know, this is a landmass larger than Europe, larger than India and China combined. Why wasn't there the economic development?

Why was life expectancy still as it was? Why didn't you have any of the scientific advancement and elsewhere? Africa had been left to its own devices. It didn't come up with that. The huge leap forwards in for Africa, in terms of life expectancy, in terms of the economy,

in terms of science and medicine, happened when the Europeans were there. And the Europeans were not there for very long. I think people often think that this is centuries of involvement in Africa. We're talking about a period of around 150 years ago, was when colonization started. And for most countries, colonization was less than a century. You know, it was from the 1880s up to the 1950s or 1970s,

such a short period of time. But during that period, what growth and development happened in Africa, for example? Now, this is really going to annoy a Hindi, but nothing has done more to lift the world out of poverty. than capitalism and colonialism. Those have been the two greatest forces for life expectancy, for living standards, as Stephen Pinker from Harvard University

has said that the life in pre-state societies was incalculably more brutal and harsh than life today. I mean, we're talking about cannibalism, awful rituals taking place, and you needed structured societies to achieve that. That's been achieved. If you look at the successful states that achieved that,

they were ones that usually had a British imperial her So wherever you go in the world, of all the empires, those that had a British imperial heritage, came out the best of the whole situation. And you talk about Jamaica, for example, Jamaicans disagree with you. And, you know, a few years ago, there was a poll of Jamaican. 60% of Jamaican said that they wished the British had never left. They said British rule was far better. It was far less corrupt.

Things worked better, and they would prefer the British to be in power. And if you look, and you were asking about, you said, I can't say any examples. If you look at the independent countries in the Caribbean, yes, a lot of them aren't doing very well economically. The countries in the Caribbean that are doing very well are those which are dependencies of France, of Britain and of the United States. Puerto Rico, Guadalupe, Martinique, around the same size as Puerto Rico as Barbados, much more profitable. Why? Because they haven't been victims of the corruption and of the incompetent leadership, the substandard and unsurious politicians that you have there who are often beating the drum and looking for handouts rather than dealing with the country's problems as they should be dealt with.

You got all the time you want. I literally just explained this, which is why to buy something like psychosis, because you give the argument. Come on, you've got to stop throwing insults and just make the argument. I want to be clear, it's not an insult. I'm not an insult. I tell you, our audience is very nuanced, and they're open to be persuaded, but you've got to make the argument.

But I want to stress, this is part of the argument, because part of what I'm trying to tell you is it doesn't matter what we say, and we talk about debate, and if you want to come to a, it's not going to happen, right? Because we're just, we're talking to the language. You two are never going to agree. That's why you are here. But hold on, hold on, you're coming at this from two very different perspectives,

but the reason I brought you together is not because I thought you and Rafe would sit down around the table and eventually agree, that's never going to happen. The reason I brought you together is there's a million and a half people watching potentially, right? And a lot of them haven't made their mind up about this issue at all. They don't know, as I don't know, what they think. So you have an opportunity to persuade them. So the reason I say the word insult, maybe you don't mean it that way.

But if you say to the person watching this, well, you've got psychosis, it's not that persuasive. Do you know what I mean? I'm just making it plain. Like, I know how else to tell you, but to make it plain. Persuade me. Explain it to me. But look, as I said, the idea that, so, Rave starts off with this point, which I already mentioned, right, colonialism, the reason that Europe doesn't colonize Africa is it can't. Not because it doesn't want to.

It's not possible. It doesn't have the capability. But his argument is Africa was poor before the Europeans got there. And this is where it's not, simply not true. When Europe comes to Africa, Africa is ahead. There are more books in Timbuktu, one library in Timbuktu, than there are in the whole of Europe. This is one of the biggest lies of history. Africa is not behind.

Europe can't actually colonize Africa because it doesn't have the capability to do it. It's not possible. Is that just one example? Are you saying the whole continent is more developed? I mean, not every part of the continent. But if you're going to say Africa as a whole is more developed. We're quite ignorant about African history, I would say. So can you tell us more about that?

Generally, you're talking about the Mali Empire. What do you mean? Technologically, in terms of reading, it's just a head. Technologically. Technologically. Like what technology is? So the Moors go into Europe from North Africa and bring in things like, bringing in many things, toilet paper, bringing things like hygiene, bringing things like dinner plates. You can talk, and you know this is true, right, I'm not making this up.

There's a whole influence on European culture from the Moors. When the Moors are defeated in 1491, 492, that opens up Europe and coming to Africa. But Africa as a whole, they're not able to colonize. Are the Moors, I'm not a historian, so I don't know. So again, educate me. Are the Moors North Africans, or are they coming from sub-Saharan Africa? This is North Africa, this is the North African. You also have Mali.

You mentioned the Empire of Mali. You have Zimbabwe has development. Overall, Africa is not behind. The Moors are part of the Islamic world, right? The North Africans part of it. They also include Africa as well, right? We agree on this? It's not just a sub-Saharan Africa, because Africa is too big.

It's why I'm asking. We're talking about the slave trade. So I think what people hear, or at least what I hear, I may be wrong, when you say Africa was more advanced, I'm trying to think which part of it? I mean, I'm not just talking about the Moors. The Moors are one part. Okay. So let's send the Moly.

Mali is not the Moors, Mali and Empire. Zimbabwe, the Yorba. There's many, there's, you can go through it. The continent is not like some backwood. We're not doing anything on the continent. So when you say they're more advanced, you talked about, you know, the Moors brought certain things, which by the way, like a lot of people don't know, I actually studied Islamic history as university.

at university. So I know a lot of the things that they brought and preserved sometimes from the ancient world, etc. But in terms of the sub-Saharan Africa, what would you say were their key scientific developments and other things that we would say, well, that was more advanced than the Europeans at that point in time. Well, it's actually interesting that when there's actually reports that when Columbus was sailing to America, they were African-sailing back. Not Moors, West African. There's actually a lot of evidence that West Africans made it to America's long before, thousand years before. The Olmec heads, there was a person who did research. I can't remember

a name. New Age of Empires, the book where I did the research on this. But she actually found that there were drugs in some of the West African, sorry, there were drugs in the Latin American tombs, which came from West Africa, thousand, thousand years ago. So it's just simply not. So they had sailing technology. They could sail, they had the wheel, they could do, there was, there was technology, there was iron, etc. This, remember, who in the dark ages in Europe? Like, Europe isn't particularly advanced at all at this point. So the reason, By Rafe is correct, 40s, like Europe goes to Africa really 14, 92, 15th century, 16th century Europe.

The reason they're not colonizing isn't because they don't want to colonize, because they can't. You mentioned it earlier. Why was it that there was Africans who did the actual capture? Because Europeans couldn't get in. I thought that's because it was a disease. It was a disease. It wasn't just disease.

It was revolt. It was rebellion. It was the fact that they had to, they had the disease does not explain why. You have these massive castles where you have heavily fortified. And even like Almena Castle in God, was in Ghana, they even abandoned those and have to go at some point. They start just having boats where the boats are offshore because there's so much resistance. They just start putting people on the boats. So there's a reason why Europe was in class.

They didn't need to. The slave markets were there on the coast. I'm not making it stop. New Age of Edinburgh. I said, I did the research. So, let me, let me explain. So slavery, once Europeans start to comment into enslave, and a big part of this whole thing as well, when we say Africans, that is a European idea at the time. At the time, Africans did not see themselves as Africans.

There was not the case. There was different ethnicities. And what Europe did very well was they played off these different ethnicities against each other. So it wasn't the case that the Yoruba were selling the Yoruba. The Yorba might have a war with the Igbo. And then when they captured the Igbo, it'd sell them. So the idea that Africans are selling other Africans. Again, it's not really true.

This is different groups. Hold on. Hold on. That's one group of Africans selling another group of Africa. We now think of Africans and they now think of Africans. And they now think of African identity. But at the time, if there was a real African identity, slavery probably doesn't happen.

because again, Europe's not powerful enough. So what happens is slavery starts, it becomes lucrative, it slowly starts to become the dominant. It is the dominant force on the African continent. And yes, the enslaved are taken from the interior. There are marches. Congo is one of the main places where enslaved go to Brazil. That's firmly in the middle.

So the whole continent starts to change, which is why you have the rise of the Ashanti, the Dahomey, who you mentioned, the groups that say, actually know, we will do this, we'll do the trading on behalf of, we'll work, and they have the English flag, some of these. You're saying demand creates supply.

Yes. They sold because it was lucrative, right? And so there were people who took advantage and this completely, and if you look at all of the ethnic groups have become dominant, those are the ones that are enslaving. And they're doing it oftentimes, the English flag, literally four even English flag enslaving people. So there's a whole period from, let's say 1500 up to colonization where Africa is being drained of resources, slavery, destroying things. People are moving away from, they're trying to get away from the coast. The whole economy gets shaped, completely differently shaped. So we have no idea what happens because slavery becomes a dominant thing on the continent. which is why there's no development.

Slavery literally stops African development, to the point at which, then in the 19th century, places like Nigeria are able to, they can be colonized. And again, just the idea that places with British heritage are the ones who do the best, Nigeria is essentially a failed state.

Explain that. Because Nigeria had British, the British, British, British, it's still very British education system, and it's essentially a failed state today. So it's really not the case, that having British heritage makes it the world. Most reasons of the world, cases with the British heritage are better.

South Africa was the golden knight. golden jewel in Africa. Kenya was the great... I know. I'm sorry, I'm talking about when independence came, not talking about what's happened. You can't blame us now for the bad corruption and bad government of those places.

But if you compare African states that were British to those that were French or elsewhere, but let's get back to your point. Look, I've already said that the Malian Empire, the Songai Empire were great. But don't make it out as if there was the great Wakanda in Africa at this time. I'm sorry. These are few and far between places. The history of...

More developed than Europe. And the reason for their decline was because of internal issues that they had. They were warring with each other. They were incompetently led. That's why you had the collapse of Timbuktu and of the Mali Emperor, for example. And why was it? I mean, you know, the fact is Africa was not developed. Why did Africa not have something equivalent to the Enlightenment that we saw and to the Reformation that we saw in the 13th to the 17th century in Italy and Europe, the great cultural awakening of the Reformation? Why didn't they have an equivalent to the Gupta Empire in India? We saw a great flourishing of arts and culture and science. Why was there no equivalent to the Tang Dynasty in China, the great period there?

This was a time when there was no European entry into Africa. This was a time when Africa was on its own, able to do whatever it wanted to. It had the opportunity to develop its own culture. 80% of African languages don't have a written alphabet. It's very difficult, therefore, to create a civilized society when you don't have those necessary precursors for civilizations. Those are the things, of course, which you don't want. to address. And you know, it's very easy to just suggest that Africa was somehow more

more developed. I'm sorry. The point was, you know, well, he did say. The history of the history of, the history of Europe. Asia, India, China, the Middle East were much more advanced than Europe in the dark ages and elsewhere. Absolutely what happened, the great genius of the West is what happened from the 1600s onwards when he'd adopted the scientific method. And when, as I said, the Western mind fundamentally views the world differently. For example, you know, outside of the West, outside of the West, they're much better at facial recognition because they use both hemispheres of the brain. The Western mind only uses the right hemisphere for facial recognition. There are very fundamentally

different ways in which these things happen. It's just new genies. They're not genuine. Because you now find it in places like China. Listen to what you're saying, not the West. This listen to place West with White because that's what you actually mean. There's me real. Why? Why don't? Function differently. Who lives in West? Western educated, industrialized, rich and democratic societies. These like these were born in the West. These were born in Europe, but they've now been processed in China, in Japan, and other industrialized parts of the world. The origin of it was white, I'm correct.

Oh, you're very happy to celebrate the African origins of things. Somehow Europe can't celebrate or acknowledge any of its own achievements and accomplishments. You can celebrate the achievements, but don't pretend the Western mind is different than white mind. There's a clearly racist idea. You clearly haven't done any risk. There's not true. There's huge amounts of psychological evidence. There's long of eugenic evidence that told you to see.

No, hold on. But come on. There's nothing to do with you, James. Yes. There are different groups of white people, right? The only reason I'm jumping in is because you're talking about something that I personally can weigh in on. So I would say, having come from Eastern Europe, there's a massive difference between the

way Eastern Europeans think and the way Western Europeans think or the way Americans think. In fact, it's actually, as I've now discovered, I used to think like Americans and British people basically the same, speak the same language. As you just come back from America, you know that's not true, right? Like they think about things very differently. So if cultures can be different within, you know, you're focused on ethnicity, okay, let's just take that. White people can have different cultures. Wouldn't it be therefore very logical to say people in Western Europe will have a different way of thinking about things than people in another continent, whether that's in China or in Africa?

Isn't that a fair point? Why do you say that's eugenics? It seems like excessive to me. You can certainly make the case that there's different cultural outlooks. Of course, African beliefs tend to have completely different views about death, etc. But that is a different state that. The Western mind is different. Our minds are the same.

Our cultures may be different, but our minds are not different. And actually, I really want to stress this. They are fundamentally. That is Western et cetera. When you start to put it in, the whole thing of eugenics, craniometry, there's a different kind of sight. You can measure the head. You can say which is the right brain.

He didn't say brain. This is not biological. So why is it? So, let's explain. Let's explain why. We explain why. You're saying, this is your, not me. The Western mind has a different hemisphere when,

why? Let him explain. Let him explain. Spatial awareness, visual reasoning, there's all noticeable differences. So, for example, right corners, we are less good at looking at round corners than Africans because they don't have the right angle. So if you look in places now that were built, when you grow up in houses, which are square, the eye naturally sees right angles when they see a flat surface.

They don't see that. That's because of how we develop and grow up. This is about cultural anthropology. It's not about biology. This is about the situation and the dynamics. I'm sorry. We're addressing up, eugenics. And as the West developed and as you had colonialism

and you exported the Western concepts around the world, you saw the development of these same attributes elsewhere, which is why, of course, you had in Japan and China, there are very few differences now with the originally European mind, which is why it's called the Western mind. This is not something that's controversial. This is accepted by behavioral psychologists and cultural psychologists and anthropologists,

and anthropologist. It's very well known. This is the science. I have a degree of psychology so I can tell you it did not genuinely exempt. Actually, there's a lot of evidence. But the point is it was that moment. And this all goes back to the church's ban on cousin marriage a thousand years ago. This is where it all develops from. The Catholic Church, it was then called the Western Church, ban marriage between certain degrees of consanguinity. That got rid of the kinship clans, which were prevalent all around the world. To this day, the majority of cultures in the world

have large kinship-based families with about 40-50 members, whether you're a first, second, third, fourth cousin, you're treated equally as brothers and sisters. That was done away within Europe. And so suddenly you had the birth of the nuclear family. And still, nuclear families are a small minority of global families. And what you had then was you had family units had to rely on other people for support.

You got the birth of social trust. Social trust did not exist outside of the West at this time to anywhere near the same degree. When you had social trust, of course, you then were able to enter into contracts, and you began to have rival organizations to families developing. You had charter towns, towns that you would sign an oath to help develop. You had universities. You had guilds.

You had confraternities. These were uniquely European things that began to develop in the last thousand years. And then when you had these independent organizations, you then began to have cross-pollination of ideas. They would talk and discuss. They would have the birth of competition. and that's what led to innovation. And social trust and competition are fundamental to innovation.

And it's at this point that you see the development of a very different worldview, a very different outlook, and you can see it in all sorts of ways. So, for example, if you look at ways that we identify ourselves, for the Western people, and that includes now modern places in Asia,

if I said, Constantine, Who Are You? You'd say, I'm a very, very handsome, stand-up comedian. You're trying to get on. on my side. I've got snazzy jackets and I collect milk bottle tops or whatever, right? But if you were to ask somebody in a tribe in rural Africa, they

would say, well, I'm X, I'm the son of Y, I'm the brother of so and so, and so, I'm the father and so and so. It's family and kinship that defines who you are as opposed to what happens in the West, because in the West you had the birth of individualism. And that was the key difference. The notion of the individual is a Western, primarily

anglospheric concept, which also Protestant helped to create, and it was that notion of the individual and self-improvement, and the reliance on other people, that you had innovation in individualism and competition, that led to the uniqueness of the Western mind, which wasn't replicated anywhere else till you had an exporting of colonialism.

See, the reason I'm getting, I don't even know, now I'm just starting to be like, this is actually dangerous. Like, these are a set of dangerous ideas. So if you think about what justified slavery in the first place, first you had, it was a religious certification. It was very much the Pope, Christian, if you're not Christian, if you're a heathen,

you can do what you're like. After that, it becomes the, if you like the Enlightenment definition, the scientific definition. Actually, what is not human beings, right? What is actually like, more like, I'm more like an ape than I'm a human, therefore you can do X, Y, Z. Again, I would point out, this Enlightenment we're so proud of, it was actually brought in that idea that I'm not a human being. So maybe there's some very bad ideas in the Enlightenment. Anyway, it becomes that scientific justification. That's where you get, phrenology, from eugenics, which I'm saying why this is eugenic idea.

What happens after the Second World War is eugenics becomes a bad thing. We can't do eugenics more. What do we do? cultural racism. So you're explaining the world because you're saying that the West essentially has a better culture and Africa has a backwards culture and this is why Africa's poor. That is a clear, that is it, you go from church, you go church, science, culture, it's the same line. So when I'm saying it's eugenics, it's eugenics dressed up in something else, which you can do with some fancy tests and which are not, and I promise you, these things are not widely accepted in psychology,

have a degree in psychology, I know it's literature, it's deeply controversial. And it, you, and I would ask your audience to think which, look, this is a comforting idea to think that the poverty that we have, a world that kills a child every 10 seconds because they haven't got access to food and water, most of those children, probably all of those children are black and brown, racial capitalism. It's comforting to think is because we have this great culture, isn't it wonderful, et cetera, et cetera. But I'm giving you the actual alternative reality to this. There is a reason why Africa's development stops when slavery starts. Because slavery stops the development, there is a reason why under colonialism, where the whole economy is dictated.

to and to draw out resources. So when African countries get independence, the book I'd recommend everybody read is Africa Mushay Night by Kwame and Krumah, the first president of Ghana, who's, Ghana is actually one of the first countries, 1960 to get independence, says, now I run this country, but there's no hospitals, there's no schools, there's no roads, there's no factories. In fact, the whole of this economy is built, are taking all of our resources and process them in Europe and sending them back to us. That is still the case in somewhere like Ghana, where chocolate companies take the resources, produce it outside, etc, etc. So when you have this independence happens, their countries, they can't, how could a country

that has no hospitals, no roads, no factories ever succeed? It can't. So what does it do? It falls into poverty, gets these loans, has more poverty, etc., etc. On top of that, one of the key features of neo-colonialism is to install public governments, places like Congo, even in Nigeria, even in Krumor is arrested, etc. And so when you're looking at African countries can't succeed, of course they couldn't succeed. There's no possible way that they could have succeeded, which is why they're still poor today. And again, reparations is not just about slavery, about that whole history. So I'm telling you, the reason that you have this inequality today is very clearly, largely down to Europe exploiting, the West exploiting, the underdeveloped world,

and continuing to do so. And you have a fairy tale and frankly racist idea over there. Pause both of you. Pause both of you. Is it possible that there's some truth in what you're both saying? Because, like, I think it's undeniable that Western slavery and colonialism would have had a negative impact on Africa. But that doesn't mean that. that the cultures were necessarily the same. So could it be that you're both right? I mean, Ray, surely you wouldn't deny that colonialism and slavery was bad for Africa, would you?

Well, for people at live at the time, it was bad. Absolutely. That's my point. Slavery and colonists were horrendous for people at the time. But now, generation on, I'm sorry, the benefits of colonialism have helped to lift the world out of poverty, have increased life, have doubled life expectancy. Same thing in Australia. Life expectancy of Aborigines was 40 years for 1,000,

thousands of years. Now it's almost doubled, right? So those are the advantages. So yes, slavery was horrendous for slaves, but for the descendants of slaves today living in Britain and the Caribbean, slavery, they're not victims of slavery. They've actually benefited from the terrible hardship that their ancestors went through. But do you not think being occupied, having a foreign government that sought to use your country exclusively for its own benefit, which it did? I'm not saying they didn't do certain things. I'm sure they brought schools in and whatever. But nonetheless, they did that so they had a more educated population to do the things that they will need have done, right? Don't you think that, you know, a hundred years of that

would leave a legacy that was detrimental? Determent in what way? Yes, look, the point was the pre-state societies were far more brutal. So yes, I'm not saying that these were wonderful places necessary to live, but, you know, racism was abhorrent at that time. Look, Britain is now the world's third least racist country. But back in the 19th century, of course, everyone did believe in racial hierarchies, Britain was very racist in the start of the 20th century as well. No one is denying that. No one is denying the atrocities. My father

was born in Kenya, along with all his family. What happened to the the Maoma was terrible and everything else, and the Kikuyu and so forth. But the point was terrible compared to what? The conditions that were there before, when you had terrible violence, of course, between

rival tribes, you had warfare, you had malnutrition, you had poor water, you had disease, people was life expectancies were so short. You compare that to what happened afterwards. Clearly a huge improvement with the benefit of industrialization and development. And of course, once independence came,

they were given an inheritance. They had the necessary conditions to thrive. I mean, it's not true. In the 1950s and 60s was, for example, in the Caribbean, that was a key era for the development of the Caribbean. In Barbados, there's only one main hospital that was built by the British. One main university, that was built by the British.

Things haven't developed beyond that in Barbados because, of course, there's been economic mismanagement and corruption. And as I've said to you before, the countries in the Caribbean that are still crown dependencies are the ones that are thriving. 60% of Jamaicans understand that and they would prefer Britain never to have left. Because they know, let me answer that specifically. As I said, this is what we call neo-colonimism. So when Jamaica becomes independent, and actually Jamaica, the reason Jamaica becomes independent is to stop Jamaicans migrating to Britain. That is why they made Jamaica independent. not because of some great moral thing,

is they want to stop people coming and it largely works. But after Jamaica becomes independent, this is the problem with independence. It's independence in theory, but the economics of Jamaica stay the same. So the same people who owned everything in Jamaica still own it now. So the money is still being taken out,

still being withdrawn, which is why obviously it can't succeed. Jamaica's economy is really collapsing and doesn't really show any sides of getting much better. And so, yes, if you ask you average Jamaica, was it better under the British? They might go, yeah, it was a bit better. But that's because they're presenting

with this neoclonism, which is even worse. But the cause of it is still the same. You're so I have to address it. So, for example, no, in Jamaica, I know Jamaica, I'm from Jamaica. Tourism is the main industry, right? 70% of the money from tourism goes straight out.

The North Shore, with my family live in Jamaica, most of it, literally there's like no public beaches, or a little slither of public beaches because most of it's owned by foreign companies. So the thing that's supposed to help us, doesn't help us. Just drains the money straight out. That's the problem with something like Jamaica,

it's not actually independent. It's theoretically independent, but economically, Jamaica's economy is still completely being rinsed by the West and now it's not just actually Europe's also China, India's getting involved, et cetera, et cetera. So Jamaica's economy can't work and so the people there might say, oh yeah, we want it, it was better then. That's not proof.

You're acting as if the Jamaican government has no agency in any of this. Oh, that was terrible. It's the same thing. But this is the problem here that you have. That's why people preferred things when they were run by the British. In Barbados, the auditor general in Barbados has said that he can't actually get proper accounts for state-owned industries and enterprises. Can you imagine that? The order to general cannot get accounts on state industries in Barbados. That's the level of corruption and dysfunction

that is created by having people in power who simply don't deserve to be there. And you can't keep blaming everything on what happened post-independence. It's now been 50, 60, 70 years of independence. That's long enough to source your own house out. Can I answer this question? Because the problem that you stated, what was one of the key things that Britain needed was financial stability. And the former colonies simply don't have it because they can't have it. Because no, Britain did not leave the colonies in a state where they could govern. They did not.

They did not. They left the colonies in states with roads that went to the airport, with one, maybe one hospital, maybe a couple of schools. They did not leave them in places where they could succeed, which is why most of the former colony, almost all of them fall into what we call third world debt, IMF, etc., etc., which is just a new form of colonialism. That's the truth. That's a fundamentally the truth.

No country did more to prepare its colonies for independence than Britain did. And up to 2009, you had British investment. The civil service was present, military structures, parliament, courts, the judiciary, the rule of law. I'm talking about roads, infrastructure, hospitals. No, they didn't. Because the evidence is clear on this. Of course, they look at the number of schools and, I mean, for example, even in after emancipation. So after slavery was abolished in 1833, enforced in 1844, for the next 10 years from 1835 to 1844, with no obligation,

gave grants to the Caribbean for schools, for churches, and for hospitals and so forth, some equivalent to a billion pounds today, right? Sorry, can we say no obligation? This is, again, a massive problem we think about Britain. The Jamaica was a colony of Britain. It had an obligation. When my dad came from in 1960 to here, he came in a passport. Wait a second.

No, no, they came with a passport. They said, Jamaica. It had every obligation because it owned the place. Yeah, I did. It wasn't. I think you've got your wise to say. I think what we're right for saying is the money was given. and there was no requirement to repay or to do anything.

No, no, my point is it was part of the nation, so of course it was. There's no difference between Britain funding education in Jamaica and Britain funding education in Birmingham. And the Caribbean still benefits. Because it's a member of the Commonwealth, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK, given an inordinate amount of its foreign aid to perform a British colonies in the Commonwealth, right?

So, you know, as I said, 2 billion up to 2009. Currently is £430 million of British money, is earmarked for development there. And that's because, of course, of the tax. All right, all right, we're back in the territory. I want to wrap it up a little bit with, but kind of, can I ask you one thing before we wrap up? Because you talked a lot about this kind of psychology of whiteness and whatever. Do you think there was something very particular about Western Europeans that made them do the slave trade,

that made them behave in the ways that they did? That's a cool question. I mean, talking about different minds, yeah. Maybe, maybe they're desperate. Do you have a theory of what that? I would have been a different mind. I would not say different words. No, but I'm asking you, why do you think it happened that way?

Because I guess the argument that I'm thinking about is, I mean, I personally have to say, I don't know enough about it to really make a judgment, but I'm surprised to hear you say Africa was more developed. I'd always assumed that the reason the Europeans did what they did probably wasn't because they had some different special mind in that way. But actually it was because they just had the technology, they were more powerful, they were wealthier, so they could do this. in a way that actually everyone would have done if they were in a position to.

So I guess what I'm getting at is, would Africans have colonized Western Europe if the shoe was on the other foot? Or do you think there's something special about white Europeans that made them behave in that way? I'm so tempted to give a different answer to this question, but I'm really not. I'm going to play nice. Okay. I think that when you look at it, this is why the West is, when I say the West, when I say the West, it really doesn't mean going to the West, Europe going to the West and finding

the Americas. The Americas are such an... It unlocks so many things. There's not a coincidence that America is the richest part of the world. It's like, that's the key that unlocks everything else. Okay. And I think you have to be honest to say, well, who's the ambassador to the first, the guy Columbus, which is the Columbus, who goes over there is one of the most violent insidious people in the history of human life, right? Who, from, and this is midpoint estimates, and this is all estimates, but the midpoint estimate of when he goes to his what's Hispaniola, what's now Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

The midpoint estimate is he goes there and is 8 million people. And this is the midpoint. It might be lower, it might be higher. I don't know, but the middle estimate. And that's 492. When he eventually leaves in 1512, it's estimated that there are 20,000 people left. There's a huge decimation of life. When Europeans go to, because in large age disease, but it's not just disease,

it's many in dogs, it's working people to death. The genocide in the Americas generally is the largest genocide in human histories, up to 65 million people. And this is, I've read this and I was shut. But apparently, the world actually cools because so many people died, they were producing less greenhouse gas emissions and actually reduced the temperature of the Earth. So if you think about the founding, the founding place for the West is the Americas, and the founding, the way of the West took over the Americas was the largest genocide in human

history, like violence and disregard for life. And then where did they go to find the labor after they worked to death the natives? They go, oh, you've got this African slaves. Let's go and enslave Africans, just turn them into non-humans. Those are things, so if you used to say, yep, that barbarity, that anti-blackness, that racism, white supremacy, that's the difference. Okay. And that's what allows everything else to build up. So what I'm asking, though, is do you think that if West Africans, let's say, they had the ships, they had the muskets, they had the gunpowder, they had various different types of technology that enabled Western Europeans to go over to the Americas and do what you're talking about, right?

Do you think that if the West African tribes, perhaps some of those. more aggressive ones that enslaved other Africans. If they had all that technology and they went over to the Americas, do you think they would have behaved differently because of their different culture and background, or do you think they would have done the same thing? I think evidence says they did behave differently. Like I said, there's evidence that the Africans were in the Americas, at least a thousand years before European. So I think certainly the case would be that, yes, there is a different. Why do you think that is? Look, I'm not going to sit here and speculate because there's something better about Africans, African-Aver superior morality.

I don't, look, there's... But it's just like, I mean, it's just the way that when you talk about whiteness, it's implied the way that white people think or white... So, I want to be clear here that I am not... See, very easy, very easy to be to see here. Who's my favorite person, back or makes, right? Say, look, this is the devilish nature of the white man, it just shows, and people say that all the time, right? I'm actually saying that whiteness is not a bad... You don't agree with that?

No, I don't think all white people are the devils are having... No, I don't... Right. I think that we can debate what could have happened, what may have happened, why it was... But the reality is that it was that carnage, that racial expectation that was necessary to create the society we have. And so that's why we have whites.

I'm not challenged you. I don't know. I can't tell you why, but I can tell you that is... But what I'm asking you to think about for the purposes of this guy, I think it's really important to this discussion, right, is you talk about whiteness. It's kind of hard to extricate that from white people. It's difficult for most people, at least listen to this, right?

And it's sort of implied within that that the way whiteness operates is worse than the way other things operate, right? And what I'm asking you is, do you think if Africans had the same ability to dominate the native population of the Americas, would they have behaved the same or different? All right, so, yeah, I'll be clear on this. No, I think when I say whiteness is an idea. And that is an idea that has come from Western Europe. That is an idea that has used to dominate the world. That was a necessary feature of doing it. Because Africans went to the new world and didn't do this.

So yes, there is something specific. But they didn't have the same technology. They have muskets and etc. When Europeans came in 40, they weren't massively more technologically advanced. There's a reason why the Portuguese don't have slave plantations in Africa. They can't. They literally can't do it. So it's not the case that Europe's first impact, Europe first just comes into Africa able to control.

It's not the case. It takes a couple, it takes a long time to develop. The jury is out on that. But let me come back. If they had the technology, of course they would have been the same. I mean, this idea that you didn't have terrible bloodshed happening in and prejudice and the same sort of issues of racism happening within Africa. I mean, of course you did. If you know, if you look in the central Africa, you had the, the Bantu were persecuting the people.

and killing them. If you look in Ethiopia, you had the bantus themselves with the victims and being persecuted. In Somalia, the Abyssinians were murdering and hunting the Shankella, who are Nylotic Valley people. And this is not about white supremacy. I mean, when African slaves were taken to Islam, to the Arab world, they were regarded as the lower social specials because the prejudice is there. Same thing with the Chinese and the Tang dynasty, who of course regarded African slaves as the Kunun, and were frightened by them. The idea that something is unique to the West and unique to white people is simply not true. What is interesting, of course, is the exploration ethic of Europeans, which you don't find.

Again, China had a massive fleet. Its ships were far better than European ships. It never discovered the Americas. You don't see the exploration that you saw within Europe, again, because of the distinction of the Western mine. And that whole concept of exploring and developing was very much fundamentally a European concept. You know, it's amazing, for example. It also goes down to individuality and the Anglosphere. So the first person to walk the length of the Nile was an Englishman,

and that happened about 10 years ago. Imagine that. After all the thousands of years, the first person to walk the length of the Nile was an Englishman. First person to walk the length of the Amazon was an Englishman. One second, one second. How do you know this? What?

In recorded history. So you don't know. Well, I'm sorry. We do have records. We do have records. Yes. But you actually don't know. Well, nobody who was African or South American has done it

at least within the last 300 years of recorded history. And the first person to walk the length of the Yangtze was a Welshman, again around 10 years ago. Now that's in China with an ancient civilization. Why did no one from China think about walking the length of the Yangtze? First person to walk around the world and run around the world, American and English. Same thing with Everest and so forth. There is a uniqueness to the West in the idea of exploring and discovering, which you don't see elsewhere, and that's part of the reason why you develop empires.

Your point is the British lover walk, I get it. I do want to come back because I actually do. There is something specific about European rationality, which is the problem. Tell me. So there is, when, and I think, and again, you don't believe it here, but you can't really separate whiteness from this. And so Descartes, I think, therefore I am, is really, I'm white, and therefore I am. In fact, you've given this argument a bit today.

There's something different about Europe that we're not the natives, we're not Africans, we're not this. And that allows this separation of mind from body, which you actually don't see around most part of the world. So African tends to be, like, I mean, the Chinese think they're different. The Japanese think they're very different. Even with the Chinese, if you think about the relationship to the earth, you think about, there's something about European rationality, the distancing of it that allows,

not just with people, but with the world, with the earth, with the, look at, look at the actual world is going to be destroyed by Europe, like literally going to be destroyed by science. The Chinese thought they were superior to the whole rest of the world. They stopped developing because they thought they had reached peak civilization. I'm not saying Chinese, this is not about superiority, Japanese thought of this period. Right. I'm talking about this, the separation of mind from body. You don't see that in Chinese culture.

There's a much more holistic version of what the person is. When you separate mind from body in that way, you can then distance yourself from certain atrocities in the same. In the way that we do, like today, people, like nine million people die from hunger today because of the West. And we're going to go, okay, the exploitation of the Earth in a way that is actually going to literally destroy the Earth. There is, I agree. There's something unique about that in Western rationality, which is deeply problematic, which allows us to kill to Maine, to destroy the world. And actually going to end the world. You know what?

We were so close to a point of agreement there because you were both agree. And actually, maybe, maybe, I actually, there is something to what you're saying in the sense that everything has a trade-off, right? So it's possible that a particularly slightly more rationalistic way of thinking about it has some negative trade-offs and a lot of positive things about it. It actually could be very possible that in some ways you're both right on this. And on that bombshell. And on that bombshell, we've actually managed to get the TV to agree. No, gentlemen, I actually have to say, I really appreciate you both coming.

I thought we had a very informative discussion. These debates often descend into stuff. I thought we strayed away from that as much as we could. We'll wrap up in the second, but perhaps you'd like both to take a couple of minutes just to sum up based on this conversation where just the core of your argument once again for people as we wrap this up.

I mean, I'll finish where I started. There are no good arguments against reparated. It's been an interesting conversation, but the fact of this is clear, the knife in the back, it wasn't taken out. And if you can acknowledge that there should have been reparatory justice in 1838 or whatever, and that didn't take place, I just don't see how you can hold the argument that it should take place. There are clear economic consequences which still reverberate around the world from slavery,

but not just slavery, colonialism, neol colonialism, etc., etc., etc., there's this huge gap in wealth and experience, and life expectancy, not just life expectancy, but just life experience in general, that needs to be addressed. And if we're serious about racial justice, the only way to do it is to want to acknowledge it, and then to address it, and that is going to need reparatory justice. It is time the Caribbean nations and other communities look on, look inwards and see what is it about our culture and our community? We need to change. Stop this victimhood.

Learn about personal responsibility. Take agency, improve your lot in life. We in Britain should be celebrating the fact that we were the first power to deliberately make itself poorer to advance a moral good. There are no living victims of British Empire slavery. And I think we need to move on from this chapter and understand that at its core, This is all about undermining Britain, America and the West more broadly. This is not about slavery. If it was, people would be talking about modern slavery today in Africa with 10 million slaves.

That's never spoken about. And surely the lives of people today are far more important. And the fact that that issue isn't even spoken about once in any article on this subject, I think speaks volumes about the true motivations behind a lot of those who are calling for reparations. All right. Well, I appreciate you both coming. Thank you for watching and listening. I hope you enjoyed it.

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