King Charles III can't escape Britain's role in slavery as he tours the Caribbean

LONDON -- For Britain’s royal family, slavery is the issue that won’t go away.As King Charles III tours the Bahamas, Guyana and Antigua and Barbuda over the next nine days, he will be repeatedly reminded that he is the inheritor of a throne that presided over the enslavement of millions of Africans who were shipped to the Caribbean and North America, where they worked for the profit of their owners and, ultimately, the British Empire.Facing demands that Britain apologize and pay reparations, palace officials say Charles will reiterate previous comments that slavery was an “atrocity that forever stains our history,” while stopping short of an apology.“It is only right that we should acknowledge the great suffering and injustices of the past,” the king said Tuesday at a youth rally in Nassau, the Bahamian capital.But the language suggested by the palace won’t silence the monarchy’s critics, said Brooke Newman, the author of “The Crown’s Silence: The Hidden History of the British Monarchy and Slavery in the Americas.”“That is hollow,” Newman said, referring to Charles’ expected comments. “It doesn’t create dialogue. It doesn’t allow for any kind of conversation with descendants, and i...