What If Healing Is The Real Reparations with Daniel G. Harvell (USA/Mexico)

A UN vote on the transatlantic slave trade sounds like distant diplomacy until you look at the scoreboard and ask what it reveals about conscience, power, and denial. We sit down with Daniel G. Harvell, a lifelong traveller and researcher originally from Detroit, to break down what happened at the United Nations, why the resolution matters even without legal teeth, and why the pattern of yes votes, no votes, and abstentions still lands like a message to the African diaspora.

From there, we go deeper than headlines. We talk about what made chattel slavery in the United States and the Caribbean distinct, how race and identity were engineered into law, and why the legacy cannot be waved away with “slavery existed everywhere”. We also revisit the long-running reparations debate through a concrete historical flashpoint: the promise of 40 acres and a mule, the political reversal that followed, and how that broken commitment echoes in today’s racial wealth gap and unequal access to opportunity.

Daniel’s strongest claim is also the most challenging: cash reparations on a massive scale are unlikely to happen. Instead, he argues for reparations designed as repair, including free or subsidised mental health care and meaningful access to education. We connect that to intergenerational trauma, epigenetic pain, and the feeling many people describe as searching for “home” after a rupture that was never chosen. If this conversation sparks something in you, subscribe, share it with a friend, leave a review, and tell us: what would “repair” look like in real life for you?

Music, lyrics, guitar and singing by Dr Ariel Rosita King

Teach me to live one day at a time
with courage love and a sense of pride.
Giving me the ability to love and accept myself
so I can go and give it to someone else.
Teach me to live one day at a time.....

Transcript

Welcome And A Life Of Travel

Dr Ariel R King 0:51

Hello and welcome to another episode of The Business of Life with Dr. King. Today we have a very special guest, Mr. Daniel G. Harvell. Welcome, sir.

Daniel G. Harvell 1:01

Thank you. It's good to be here.

Dr Ariel R King 1:04

It's wonderful to have you. Would you please introduce yourself to our guests?

Daniel G. Harvell 1:09

Yes, I'm a 61-year-old brown guy, Daniel Garvey Harvell, retired, traveling every country, and happy about the ability to do so.

Dr Ariel R King 1:23

That's fantastic. Would you please tell our audience? We have an international audience. What country are you from? And tell us more about life and also perhaps some of your traveling.

Daniel G. Harvell 1:35

Yeah, uh life is the best experience of I can imagine. I am from Detroit, Michigan, USA. I am now in Monterey, Mexico, central Mexico, near the Texas border. I spent last year in South America, first Argentina, then Paraguay, then Brazil, then Colombia. And then I came back to US and met some people that I talked to online and professors mainly. And I'm constantly trying to learn and research uh different cultures and and situations in each city society, just so I can appreciate what they're doing and why, and try to correlate it with something else I've learned in the past.

Dr Ariel R King 2:29

I love that. So, you know, people talk about lifelong learners. You're actually doing it lifelong traveler and lifelong learner. Learning by doing and learning by experiencing.

Daniel G. Harvell 2:41

I encourage it.

The UN Vote Explained

Dr Ariel R King 2:43

That's wonderful. Okay, so let's talk about what is our topic going to be for today.

Daniel G. Harvell 2:49

I'd like to talk about what happened recently at the United Nations with the vote on slavery and its impacts on uh humanity. And I wanted to put forth the concept that reprobations will never happen in cash. And that uh I believe in reprobations in a different, more creative way.

Dr Ariel R King 3:14

Some of the things that we're saying, that's so interesting. Pardon me, that's so interesting. For our for our listeners that really don't know a lot about what's going on in the United Nations. I mean, I do, and I know that you do. Um, they also don't understand about perhaps votes or things. Could you give us um just a a small introduction so people will understand this conversation that we're going to have?

Daniel G. Harvell 3:35

Yeah. A few days ago there was um a long series of years of culminated work that resulted in a United Nations resolution, a vote on the idea that the transatlantic slave trade was a crime against humanity, yes or no, or abstain from the vote. All the nations of the world, except a few, I noticed, didn't weren't present. In that vote, only three countries voted no. Transatlantic slave trade to them was not a crime against humanity. Those three countries were mine: the United States, Argentina, where I was last year, and Israel, where some of my family lives.

Dr Ariel R King 4:29

Pardon me, and was there any uh abstinence or abstained votes?

Daniel G. Harvell 4:32

Yes. There were over 50, almost 60 uh abstains. And those were almost exclusively the European Union and Britain.

Why US Slavery Was Unique

Dr Ariel R King 4:43

60. Has to be more than that. Okay, because the European Union only has 28. All right, so we have 60 abstains, and we have four notes. That's good to know. Okay, not exactly 60, but just on the people that don't know about this, many people don't know about slavery in the United States, and they don't understand the issue about quote unquote reparations. Could we please start with that for this? So then they can follow this very, very important uh information that you have.

Daniel G. Harvell 5:21

Well, uh slavery in the United States was a different kind of slavery than most people would understand it as. The world always had slavery, but not like the kind the United States had and the Caribbean nations. It was different. It was a kind that was attached to identity, it was attached to heritage, it was attached to skin color, it was attached to Africanness and all the things that you know identified as African. That had never happened in the history of the world. The Bible talks about slavery. It wasn't that kind of slavery. In the Bible, you have slaves who were able to rise up and become kings. In the United States, that was impossible for a slave to actually rise to any uh uh uh high level during those years of slave of the transatlantic slave trade when it was legal and after when it was illegal. But the argument about slavery is usually associated with the historical slavery, and saying, you know, we always had everybody had no, it wasn't like that. United States was different, it was brutal, it was permanent, it was a yoke around your neck. It just you could never let it go. It was always identified with Africanness, with blackness, with skin color, with with black features, with anything. 125th black blood meant you were a slave. It was it was just you know different. Nobody did that. Nobody else did that before you know those years.

Dr Ariel R King 7:03

So a very unique form of and how many years did that slavery, for people that don't know, how many years did that slavery last? And and I'm not just talking about after legally it was supposed to stop, I mean when it actually did stop.

What Reparations Have Meant Historically

Daniel G. Harvell 7:20

Yeah. Well, we have a a beginning that I've recently identified starting with Spain, this particular transatlantic type of slavery. One of the Jesuit missionaries named Bartholomew, in about the year 1630, 1531, he had a conference in Spain where he decided the Native Americans around here in Mexico were being decimated to the point where there would be none left, nobody left alive. It was genocide. So he decided to ask, since he had a preference for the people here, this Jesuit Spanish missionary, he asked the government of Spain to make a decision. They wanted to continue slavery because it was so profitable. He said, Well, I have a proposal for you, 1531 the year. Why not, when you go past Africa, pick up African peoples and enslave them instead of enslaving the Native Americans here? And they say, Okay. So from the from the 1530s on, that became a practice. It finally ended in the United States, for example, my country, at the end of a large war. A civil war, the great calamity in 1865. So from the 1530s, just say 1535 until 1865, this went on pretty much non-stop. Nobody knows how many people were involved. Estimates are 12 million, but it's probably a lot more than that. That's just one country, by the way, United States. Many went to Brazil, more. Many went to Peru, many went to Mexico for the silver mines, many went elsewhere in the Americas, many went to Jamaica, many went to what we call Haiti today. Uh that was brutal. So, you know, tens of millions of Africans for all those those sanctuaries.

Dr Ariel R King 9:52

Thank you. And can you tell us more about the movement for quote unquote reparations and what most people are asking for?

Daniel G. Harvell 9:59

Yes. Every since 1865, here there's been discussions and talk that compensation is due for all of those years of all of that mess. And every since 1860s denied or just denounced as unnecessary. Because Africans had slaves, yeah. Africans sold slaves, yeah, but not like the United States did.

Dr Ariel R King 10:46

May I ask you this? I know I know that some people want reparations because, as I understand, at the end of slavery, there was a promise made for reparations that were economic. Can you talk more about that for people that wouldn't know about that? That's a very important piece. The promise that was made and what they were supposed to get.

Daniel G. Harvell 11:04

Oh, yeah. Yeah, we have a very accomplished, just a little tidbit on the side to explain the what actually was what actually was promised. We have an accomplished screenwriter. His name is Spike Lee, New York. He has a production company called 40 Acres and a Mule. The reason why he chose that name was because back in the 1860s, the promise was to all the freed slaves, at least most of them, that they could have as compensation the land that was they formerly worked, that the slave masters had occupied, and other frontier lands that were not yet occupied by Europeans, uh immigrants. And that promise was 40 acres of land and a mule to work the land. And when President Andrew Johnson came in after after Lincoln, he said, no, forget that. So, you know, that just didn't work out too well.

Dr Ariel R King 12:29

Pardon me, was that done legally or was that done just as a political move?

Daniel G. Harvell 12:35

It was a political move. So no part of that was ever legally done.

Dr Ariel R King 12:41

Was 40 acres and the mule put in writing on in some kind of promise? So how how does that come about? Even I don't know that. Where did that come from then?

Daniel G. Harvell 12:53

Basically the same way that things are going on in the United States right now, by decree of the president. You know, so so presidential order.

Dr Ariel R King 13:04

So then you're saying that he made a presidential order then that has a stamp and a date and so on and so forth, saying that we renegle this 40 acres of the mule. Is that correct?

Daniel G. Harvell 13:13

That was Lincoln's administration.

Dr Ariel R King 13:16

That's what I'm asking and the department of war, as far as I remember.

Daniel G. Harvell 13:20

Don't hold me to all the little details, but you know, the department of war was a big influence. Well, I forgot the name of that department that was established just to protect the free slaves. But there was a particular department that was established just to protect the free slaves and ensure that they had some education, some provisions. And you know, that department was disbanded by President President Andrew Johnson by 1877, I believe.

Why Cash Reparations Fail Politically

Dr Ariel R King 13:49

That's so informative. So let me understand. Now today, in 2026, there is still a question and a push for quote unquote reparations. And so why don't we get to that and talk about the vote and your ideas about reparations? Because I think that it's going to be so important. Thank you, sir.

Daniel G. Harvell 14:09

Yeah, well. The vote was telling. I mean, it just displayed, you know, exactly why reparations who have never been, you know, never been actualized. It's just a promise once, once before the 18 late 1870s.

Dr Ariel R King 14:29

Pardon me. I just want to focus I just want to focus on my apology. What was the actual vote? How many yeses, how many no's, and did it pass or not? And then what's your view about how people can get repirations? Thank you.

Daniel G. Harvell 14:42

I don't I don't have the actual numbers in front of me, but there was at least 150 countries who voted yes. The transatlantic slave trade was a crime against humanity. And because there was such a vast majority, it did pass. It's a resolution without any teeth. Yes.

Dr Ariel R King 15:01

Yeah, but resolutions are very important because it shows you the direction that people want to go. Yes, wonderful. So tell me, you were saying that you think that reparations of 40 acres and a mule is not going to happen per se. And what is your idea of how to make that happen? This is what's so important is for me to hear from you about that, because I think you have some very good ideas about this.

Daniel G. Harvell 15:26

Yeah, I I really am quite sure it will never be a cash dispersal of any kind, any kind of uh monetary dispersal. Because uh, well, it would break some countries. That's just a fact.

Dr Ariel R King 15:40

What do you see happening then? Tell us what you think is going to happen or what you think should happen.

Daniel G. Harvell 15:45

The very best option that uh African nations and African diaspora would ever have is to address the problems that currently exist. And that is a lot of mental health issues and education and the price of acquiring it. So two things I think would be practical and possible to actually implement. One is free or subsidized mental health care for all African and African diaspora around the world, with the people who actually do that particular thing selected by them, those nations and a diaspora by an actual vote. Who would qualify to actually do that work? And later, education for anyone under a certain age, like 25, free, or again, subsidized for those who have more means. Just because no other monetary form of payment would ever be achieved, because it would actually cripple a lot of countries.

Dr Ariel R King 17:01

Can I ask you when we're talking about 40 acres at a mule and we're talking about slavery was done in America like no other country in the world? I think that can we safe to say that we're really focused right now on America rather than all the countries of the world? Because Yeah.

Daniel G. Harvell 17:17

I mean, because that's what I know. I could talk about that.

Mental Health As A Practical Repair

Dr Ariel R King 17:20

America, for one, mental health, which is so important. And two, I love that idea. Mental health is so important. And then two, the ability to access education, including higher education. Can you tell us more about that? I let's break that down. Let's talk about the reason why mental health, why you think that mental health needs to be covered and what's going on with people of African descent, including in the diaspora, and with within the states, that that this should some be something that's covered?

Daniel G. Harvell 17:49

That is a deep question. A short answer would be that living in the United States, and I've lived in about 14 states working, paying taxes in 40 years. I just noticed something. Some of my worst experiences were with people who look like me. And I often, even family, and I often ask myself the question, where is this coming from? In some cases, they didn't know me. In other cases, my worst experiences with other races were equal or lesser than my worst experiences with my own people. African Americans, I consider myself. So, you know, I had to ask myself why. And I'm looking and I'm talking, I'm asking questions of these people, you know, everybody. I ask questions, I'm nosy. I ask questions, I like to learn. So many of the replies were what was said and what wasn't said were very informative. And what I actually picked up after half a century of trying was we're sick. In general, most of us are just sick. Not because we don't know we are, not because we don't think about it or don't feel what the ancestors and the parents and brothers and sisters and uncles and nephews, what they went through, what they going through, it's just that we don't want to address it directly because it hurts.

Dr Ariel R King 19:38

So do you think there's generational pain that's left over that goes from one generation to another because it hasn't been actively looked at, spoken about, and accessed?

Daniel G. Harvell 19:51

You describe it well. Exactly. An epigenetic generational pain.

Dr Ariel R King 19:59

Yeah. You know, that makes sense to me. You you know, it's really interesting, but you can have whole populations who either have post-traumatic stress disorder or literally don't remember a particular event that happened in history. There there really is a group dynamic.

Daniel G. Harvell 20:19

So it's real. Uh without any physical connection to the event. Uh it's real.

Dr Ariel R King 20:28

Uh yeah, it's energy. So that of course it's real. That makes sense to me. I mean, I'm just saying, of course, and energy cannot be created or nor destroyed, it's only transformed. And I'm understanding there are some places I've gone to, for example, in Liberia, where they've had war. And it was two generations after the war, but I was working with children who were still feeling the effects of the war and and their behavior and also their the orientation. And they were still four generations later. I was quite surprised, just right, two generations later. I'm sure there's more for us, but it was it was like that. So do I understand you're saying that, or you believe that people of African descent in general, that the difficulty that we have and the pain that we have and the mental health issues that we have come from slavery, come from the lack and just basically being treated as a non-human with no humanity, and that that has carried on to all these generations later, since 1865?

Daniel G. Harvell 21:37

At least since then, yes. I mean it it just hasn't been addressed in any way, shape, or form. And it continues more now since the population is greater than ever.

Dr Ariel R King 21:53

That's a very that's really interesting. Do you know how South Africa had the Truth and Reconciliation Commission?

Daniel G. Harvell 22:00

Yes. Bishop Tessman Tutu, yes.

Dr Ariel R King 22:03

Right. Do you think that perhaps that is, and even if it's ancestors of those who have experienced that, that is a way for America to go forward or for those places that have done that to go forward? How do how do we go forward then with mental health for such a large population?

The Search For Home In Africa

Daniel G. Harvell 22:24

Yeah. America's not that forgiving. Yeah, it just by nature. Uh we're we're not, you know, of the Ubuntu or African, you know, nature. We're just not that forgiving. You know, uh Africans and Africa, African diaspora, we're known to be forgiving people. I mean, that's why we're still here. You know, so that just doesn't work in a country with, you know, more guns than people. It just doesn't work that way. Uh so, like you said, the actual process, I don't think it's possible. I don't think it's possible for non-African, non-black, non you know, affected people to actually heal. I just don't think it's possible on a wholesale way. Just, you know, we can might focus on the majority of African Americans, or in this case, and African African Brazilians, other cases, and others, you know, but and Liberians and Nigerians and South Africa, we can focus on each of them, but we have to separate that because I don't think others will come along very much.

Dr Ariel R King 23:41

May I ask, do you think that there's there are people who are moving back to Africa as a result of dealing with some of the detachment or some of the I fluid disattachment, but some of the mental health issues that you're talking about, that there are people that are now moving back to Africa in order to address basically their lifestyles. Uh, do you think that's connected in any way?

Daniel G. Harvell 24:07

Well, yes, but not often in a very informed way. Let me explain. There are many, for example, Africans in the Americas who are more and more every year, actually, in the in the recent in this century, moving back to Africa, or I can't say back if they'd ever lived there before, moving to Africa to in some minds that I've talked to, to find home, so to speak, to put it, you know, spiritually, to find home. But the one thing that's often not studied or contemplated too much is the fact that we are black Americans in our in our and and and in the case of me and and and those I know I'm talking about right now, we are black Americans. We're not Liberians or Ghananians or Nigerians or any other of the 54 African nationalities, and so they treat us that way as foreigners, and we have to appreciate and respect any country that we go to and accept the people for who they are, no matter how they treat us, because we are foreigners in a foreign country because we're born and raised under a system of that's such a good that's a such a good point.

Dr Ariel R King 25:49

Do you know what you said? You said something so interesting to me. What you said was they go to find home. Now, we know that in nature, animals, bugs, birds, whoever it is, even young people going to college, going away, going to get a new job, there's something about quote unquote going back home. Now, what's interesting to me also is that tells me, and we've been talking about one of the mental health issues that I think that needs to be addressed, perhaps, is the fact that many people don't feel like they are at home, don't feel as if they've been accepted to be home, and spend literally their lifetime looking for home, which means you said almost a foreigner, which means and almost like a refugee, someone moving from place to place looking for where I belong.

Daniel G. Harvell 26:45

Refugee. That's what we are.

Dr Ariel R King 26:51

We literally have understanding, without understanding our angst, and it's generational.

Daniel G. Harvell 26:57

Yes.

Dr Ariel R King 27:00

Do you think some of that actually comes from you know, many immigrants move, but it is by choice. Do you think some of this comes from the DNA and generationally being taken? And then from that being taken, not saying, you know, well, my great-great-great-great grandfather or grandmother came here and this is what they did, and this is how they settled, and so on and so forth. But instead, the story is, well, you know, my great-great-great-grandmother was taken, and you know, was a slave, and that's how I wound up here. Do you think there's a difference in that?

Rupture, Tear, And Finding The Gold

Daniel G. Harvell 27:40

I think the difference is very little understood in how great it really is. To quote a different topic and the correct word from the uh Canadian prime minister, it was a rupture. It was a rupture in the uh the spiritual, psychological, and every other kind of humanity.

Dr Ariel R King 28:13

I like the being of the African. Can I tell you it's not a rupture, it's a tear. When I think of rupture, I did something sort of what I think it I'm gonna say the word tear because tear actually allows you to see and understand what happened to be torn away from your motherland, to be torn away from your family, from your culture, from your language. And then make sure that well, I think it's it's it's accurate. It's I think it's you know, a rupture is something that can also possibly be fixed. But when you're torn, right to fix something that's torn, you know, the Japanese have this concept that when you break something, the only way to fix it to make it more valuable is to put the pieces back together and to add gold to it.

Daniel G. Harvell 29:01

Yes. I'm aware.

Dr Ariel R King 29:03

So I'm I'm wondering whether or not what we're looking at is the pieces not being together, feeling as if there's a tear, there's a breakage, there's a breakage from what we know, from what we know in DNA. Every animal you can think of always goes back home.

Daniel G. Harvell 29:20

Yes.

Dr Ariel R King 29:21

Even when they have, you know, when when they procreate or have their own, they go back home. Wherever, wherever they're born, they go back. That's just an look at Thanksgiving. We have holidays in America that people will fly from anywhere in the world to get back home. Right? Yeah. So so maybe, maybe that's what we're talking about is is part of the mental health issue, is that, but do you think, since we have this as broken, that if we figure out what our gold is, and actually instead of instead of trying to make it new again, using what we already have within our culture, within our experiences, and to add whatever that gold is, whatever that is, in order to make us whole again, as not just as a people, but as individuals, as a culture for many African nations with many languages and many different um cultures. And perhaps that's the way to do it because we to be African American is still African. And many African Americans are also different. They're we're not all the same. We don't come from the same uh countries, the same languages, and the and and the same orientations. What do you think about that?

Final Reflections And How To Connect

Daniel G. Harvell 30:31

Finding whatever that gold is and trying to put the pieces back together that is one of the best analogies I've ever heard. Yes. I don't know the answer. But I can I know one thing about my people. We're very creative. And you know, there's some and resilience. That's why we're still here, you know. So I know there is if if we just focus on what that goal might be to put those pieces together and make it a unique, a unique new thing than it was before it was broken, torn. I think we could figure it out. Because well, I don't think we have an option. Either we figure this out, or we kind of be raised.

Dr Ariel R King 31:35

No, we we will figure it out. We will figure it out.

Daniel G. Harvell 31:38

Yeah.

Dr Ariel R King 31:39

And can I say um I'm I'm sorry to say that our we have one minute left. Would you like to say something to our audience in that one minute or even two minutes? And also please tell people how to get in touch with you if you'd like that, which is very important to us, sir. Thank you.

Daniel G. Harvell 31:55

Okay. I really appreciate what you're doing here. And I just I'm glad I'm in contact with you because this is important. It's important to make these kinds of discussions, it's important to uh present this to the world, it's important to just try to make a difference, whatever. You know, we're talking about being human, we're talking about humanity or you know, whatever you're doing, you're adding to it. So thank you. Also, it's for me, I'm on LinkedIn, you know, same thing. I'm on LinkedIn all the time. So the way to get in touch with me is through LinkedIn, uh, that particular application. I'm there routinely just because I try to find people who are really smart and can help me learn. And and as I travel, you know, it helped me in that. So, you know, I just that's it.

Dr Ariel R King 33:00

I want to thank you. This was an incredibly enlightening conversation. And I look forward to possibly having another time to do another podcast with you because I think this is something that I would love to explore. So, to our audience, I want to thank you to Mr. Daniel Garvey Harveld. Thank you so much, sir, for being with us. And remember, if I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, then when? That was said by the great philosopher Hillel. And I've added if not me, then who? Thank you so much for joining us.

Daniel G. Harvell 33:37

Thank you for having me.