Stranger Than Fiction
Doctor Strange actor is hit up for reparations.
Benedict Cumberbatch starred in Doctor Strange, which is appropriate, considering what is now being asked of him is strange indeed.
The actor is being asked to pay money because his great, great, great, great, great, great, great-grandad, Abraham Cumberbatch, owned slaves.
The actor’s seventh great-grandad ran a plantation with 250 slaves in Barbados back in the 1700s and now descendants of those slaves want compensation.
Slavery was abolished in the 1830s.
Raking Up the Past
The Herald Sun quoted David Denny, who leads the fight for compensation, saying:
“Any descendants of white plantation owners who’ve benefited from the slave trade should be asked to pay reparations, including the Cumberbatch family.”
This is surely a dangerous precedent. Imagine if everyone worldwide begins claiming compensation for wrongs to their ancestors.
Which reminds me, a Viking attacked my great-aunt — twice removed on my stepmother’s adopted sister’s side — with an axe back in the 9th Century. I’m hoping David Denny can assist.
Injustice
Maybe Cumberbatch should pay compensation… but only to surviving slaves.
Otherwise, this is a case of someone who has not committed any wrong, paying reparations to people who have not suffered any wrong.
Then again, since when have the social justice warriors made sense? I’m still laughing at Black Lives Matter protesters pulling down a statue of Abraham Lincoln!
If those wanting compensation for slavery are serious, then they should trace their cha-ching claims back to the source. After all, African slaves didn’t appear on African beaches ready to be shipped across the world all by themselves.
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Originally published at The James Macpherson Report.
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Photo: Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons
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