Ta-Nehisi Coates, Macarthur-winning author of the outstanding Between the World and Me, was widely criticized when he condemned Bernie Sanders for saying that reparations for slavery were not a practical political goal (Coates won many prizes and gained much recognition for a superb essay called The Case for Reparations). Read the rest

Members of Jamaica's Parliament are threatening to turn their backs on David Cameron during an official visit unless he agrees to discuss reparations for slavery during the meeting. Read the rest

The British government paid out £20 million to compensate 3,000 slave-owning families for the loss of their "property" when slave ownership was abolished in Britain's colonies in 1833. At the time, that sum amounted to 40% of the UK's annual spending budget; today, one could calculate the total value of the 19th-century payouts to be around £16.5 billion (=USD $25 billion; the actual sum can vary, depending on how you calculate).

In The Independent, an article digging in to the data, which will be released this week in the form of a publicly accessible database. Read the rest