Benedict Cumberbatch, a famous actor from Hollywood, is in hot water because Barbados intends to demand reparations from him and his family for their involvement in slavery. This has connections to a Barbados sugar plantation.
According to a story in The Guardian, Barbados’ National Task Force on Reparations, a component of the Caricom Reparations Commission (Caricom), formerly concentrated on requesting reparations from colonial governments and affluent institutions that generated significant profits from slavery. Moving away from large organizations, it is now concentrating on specific families. The first of them is Richard Drax (British MP), who is being scrutinized since his family owns a sizable sugar plantation in the island country.
According to David Comissiong, the state’s task force’s vice chairman and the ambassador for Barbados to Caricom, “The Barbados administration is now debating this issue. At the highest level, it is being handled.”
The family of Benedict Cumberbatch is next in line. When requesting compensation from the family, he claimed, “This is at the earliest stages. We are just beginning. A lot of this history is only really now coming to light.”
This is in light of the fact that, according to reports, Benedict Cumberbatch’s family is one of the white plantation owners who benefited from the slave trade. Abraham Cumberbatch, Benedict Cumberbatch’s great-great-grandfather, purchased the Cleland plantation in the 18th century.
Up until slavery was outlawed in 1834, the property housed about 250 slaves, according to multiple newspaper accounts. The family got a payout of £6,000 from the British government following the abolition of slavery; in 2022 dollars, that amount would be equivalent to $1 million.
Benedict in 2018 stated, without denying the same, “We have our past, you don’t have to look far to see the slave-owning past. We were part of the whole sugar industry, which is a shocker.”
By way of background, Benedict previously portrayed a slave owner in the Oscar-winning 2013 film “12 Years a Slave.” Additionally, he played William Pitt the Younger in the Amazing Grace (2006) film, which was about the struggle to end slavery in Great Britain.
