Sep 9, 2006 1:25:00 PM cite

Abbas Beydoun: I would like to answer the next question which is: can one choose where to live, because I anticipated it. I would say that theoretically one has the right to choose freely where to live, but that is not happening practically. People are born in a country where they learn the language, grow up there and feel somehow that they are connected with this country. Language is main and essential thing in the culture of people, so it is not objective to talk about language being simple and changeable. That can be found out be reading poems and literature of the language. Another example is human being that has no belonging and does not own private thing. Is that good? Globalization tries to spread that, does not it? Some people believe that we should defend our names, culture and belonging because this is the essence of the diversity and without it we can not achieve the equality between the people.

by Abbas Beydoun

Sep 9, 2006 1:25:00 PM cite

Alvaro Restrepo: This question is difficult to answer as we do not know what would have happened. But possibly we would have permitted - the whole mankind would have allowed the different African cultures to prosper and thereby find their own ways of development. But somehow and for any reason which by now we have not been able to understand, Africa in some way has turned out to be a kind of penalized continent. I think that humanity is hugely and pricelessly indebted to Africa. The discrimination the black race has suffered from is one of the worst dishonours mankind has ever committed. I think that the countries that enslaved Africa have not cleared their debts yet and they never will. The circumstances we are nowadays witnessing in Spain with the arrival of all those immigrants who risk their lives in these fragile vessels in order to reach paradise, and searching for welfare and opportunities, is a proof that the misdeed committed on Africa was enormous. All the efforts done by the western world should be executed in order to help Africa to find its own way, a way of dignity and of development and thereby giving the western countries the opportunity to clear their debts, which are unaffordable in my opinion.

by Alvaro Restrepo

Sep 9, 2006 1:25:00 PM cite

Ana Lucy Bengochea: One of the human rights has to be the choice of the place where we live. To have liberty where we live. We like to live in the protected areas. We like to live in the habitat with a biodiversity but some powers want to influence us and they want to drive us out of the places where we lived mainly. They want to injure one of our rights of a functional habitat. The convention decree of 169 of the ILO(International Labour Organisation) that is about the right of the native people and their ancestral territories and this is being violated. ... to drive out the native people of their habitat to built big projects that are insulting. We should not allow this and we will fight for the claim of our ancestral rights.

by Ana Lucy Bengochea

Sep 9, 2006 1:25:00 PM cite

Andries Botha: Quite clear to me the world would be different. Perhaps America would be poorer. Perhaps I know America would be different. I know Africans would be different. Having slavery, genocide, [inaudible], whatever it is. If these things were never committed the world would be different. But this is academic. My question is rather, how could the world be better today despite the fact that the Africans were brought over to the Americas. Firstly, I think, race is the subtext of your question. About African-Americans, or Africans living in America, it’s quite clear to me that they feel that their lives have been lost somewhere, and they still - America has not really provided them with a labyrinth that embraces them. I think slavery - the world would have been in a far better shape. Psychically, emotionally, spiritually, if somehow we as a global world agreed that no human being can be in bondage. Certainly not in the manner in which Africans were brought over to the Americas to be used as economic units of labor. So the world would be in far better shape. Certainly America would be in better shape. And certainly Africa would be in better shape.

by Andries Botha

Sep 9, 2006 1:25:00 PM cite

Angaangaq Lyberth: I feel that the beauty would never have been seen for a long time. As bad as it was to enslave people the African people in North America brought joy to the eye of the spirits of many. I’m a Native and I knew long ago the arrival of the black ones, I just did not realize that they were going to be enslaved as I knew that the yellow rays would be arriving into my land. And I knew that the white man would be arriving and all the colors of the races would be coming together. I knew the hardship it would bring us through my stories I just did not know how bad it was until I lived it. So I cannot even try to imagine what would have happened if the black ones had not been enslaved and brought to the continent of the red man. No, I cannot imagine it. I do know the hardships. I can see it, I can feel it, I lived it for a long time. But imagine how boring it would have been to live in a country with no diversity. I pray to the Great One that he has enabled us to live together despite the hardships we have caused one another but seen the beauty within each of the races who now live together. For that I am grateful. I pray that tomorrow I will be better so that no hardship befall anyone of any race on Mother Earth. Did I answer your question? Let me know. Thank you.

by Angaangaq Lyberth

Sep 9, 2006 1:25:00 PM cite

Anthony Arnove: This is a tremendously important question because the reality is the US role in the world today is built on the foundation of slavery, is built on the foundation of exploitation and enslavement, and also of course is based on the dispossession and genocide of the native peoples of the Americas, who were conquered, as the United States was settled and as the United States was formed to the westward expansion, and of course also the expansion of the American empire through colonial conquest of its island possessions as well. The role of the United States as a world economic power today is inseparable from the economic gains that were made on the back of slave labor in the United States, which allowed the United States eventually to control its greatest economic power to suppress, to surpass and to exceed the powers of the previous great countries in the world economic system, leading countries in the world economic system, themselves of course benefited from exploitation and slavery, but not to the extent that the United States ultimately was able to adopt. And so, it really raises a very important counterfactual to the history of empire dispossession of slavery, to begin to think of this question and to think of the kind of political development that could have occurred in Africa and also the kind of development that would have occurred in the Americas, had slavery not taken place. The question of course also has to be generalized to the other countries that economically, materially benefited from slavery, and the list of course unfortunately is very, very long. So, a reckoning of that and accounting of that desperately needs to be done. And yet, we have never even begun to truly explore the reparations that would need to be paid, to truly explore the economic consequences, the political consequences of slavery in the world today and begin to try to address the outrageous wrongs that were committed that allowed new wrongs to be carried out on the basis of the power and wealth that was accumulated.

by Anthony Arnove

Sep 9, 2006 1:25:00 PM cite

Anuradha Koirala:

by Anuradha Koirala

Sep 9, 2006 1:25:00 PM cite

Anuradha Mittal: Well, I think the way we know slavery would have been very different if the Africans were not enslaved and brought to the Americas. But more important I would say the history of Africa would be very very different where families, communities would not have been torn apart. A continent would not have been ravished if this phenomenon of slavery had not happened in Africa. But at the same time, I would say that the way we know resistance also, we would not have known the way we know it today. We would not -- yeah, we would have a very very different world.

by Anuradha Mittal