Again, not that these market forces absolve the sellers of a moral responsibility, but there is an argument occasionally deployed that slaves would have been slaves anyway. H istorian and broadcaster David Olusoga has been the face of a decolonial turn in British broadcasting that, in recent years, with series including the Bafta-winning Britain's Forgotten Slave. Im not even saying thats a convincing argument, it has some very serious weak points, just that I reckon its a stronger one than a general appeal about current inequality. It was the first of the slave narratives that I'd ever read and I found it astonishing.". White communities suffer huge losses from Black crime. Guess wed have to print it. Needless to say, the national mood changed. West Indians fought with the Allies more than a hundred were decorated. MBE, do not entertain these people, not for one second. "The small minority whose history had been airbrushed out of the national story recovered that history with the help of their allies and then broadcast it, spread it into our national conversation and they did that within the space of half a century. My first reaction, years and years ago, was thats awful. Surely the US has already spent much more than that on black Americans. The reason why Equiano is not a national name is because slavery is not a part of the history that we teach when it should be because I don't think you can understand the 18th century in particular but also the 19th century without reference to slavery.". Sugar was king: originally a luxury, it became one of the main sources of calories for the British poor. Britain should be proud of helping to stop (African to America) slavery, like the Republican Party and unlike the Democrats. There are probably a thousand organisations, charities and assorted grifters who would happily cash your cheque. It could not have happened at all unless African traders and kings had offered slaves to the Europeans. Should black history be taught all year round? In 1861, the Economist stated that nearly four million people in Britain depended directly and indirectly on the cotton industry; a fifth of the entire population. Their demands should simply be refused. He writes to inflame white guilt, so that you will ACCEPT destruction of your culture. He was a prominent figure in the campaign to abolish slavery. The book accompanying. Both groups today, especially the former, could reasonably claim historic persecution has reduced their present income and wealth. He was born in Nigeria but arrived in the . As would Beyonce. I have done nothing. Prof Olusoga says statues, such as those of slave traders . Maybe heard of Saint Balthild, seventh-century English lass sold into slavery, exported to the Continent, served in a palace and ended up marrying the Frankish King?). Once insignificant villages, great cities such as Liverpool, Bristol and Glasgow sprang up on the profits of slavery. The details of difference are fairly minor. It isnt happening now. Giles Terera, the Olivier award-winning British performer who starred in the popular theatre production Hamilton, has recently staged a play called the Meaning of Zong about the massacre of 132 enslaved Africans aboard the slave ship Zong in 1781 and the impact it had on Equiano. People seem pretty much agreed on what is right and what is wrong. By a Senegalese author: The veiled genocide = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jxc5ENT8ajg, MyBurningEars August 30, 2020 at 11:52 am Slavery within West African societies being different again I dont think the places with very high rates of local slavery were anything like the sugar plantations. Now they do. Some other buyer would have taken them if they werent shipped out, and Western (or Arab) traders were just changing the ownership and location, the sins of the slave-raiders being theirs alone to bear. Anybody can do this. Ive always agreed that the Africans should pay reparations to the rest of us for dumping all those people they wanted to get rid of on us. If you are wracked with guilt, ashamed of your forebears, do it! What do you think their stongest argument is? I think a case could be made. David Olusoga His black half can get the half-payment direct from his white half. They are pretty much airbrushed from history, whereas the transatlantic slave trade seems to be wall-to-wall on our TV screens and in our school textbooks. Video, 1894 shipwreck confirms tale of treacherous lifeboat, BBC Radio 3 - Drama on 3: The Meaning of Zong, BBC Bitesize: The Zong 1781-1783 - The triangular trade, during a debate on Black History and Cultural Diversity in the Curriculum, Harry and Meghan told to 'vacate' Frogmore Cottage, Explosive found in check-in luggage at US airport, Fungus case forces Jack Daniels to halt construction, Rare Jurassic-era bug found at Arkansas Walmart, China and Belarus call for peace in Ukraine, Fire knocks out half of Argentina's power grid, Havana Syndrome unlikely to have hostile cause - US, Starbucks illegally fired workers over union - judge. And they will go looking for parts of the past that aren't on the curriculum, and they evidently do. Olusoga unloads all sorts of characterizations. Olusoga is of half Nigerian descent. When I met her, ~1995, I started asking her questions about the war, as I thought she was a fabulous resource of information. "I don't know why this generation has a different relationship with the past, goes to the past, expecting and looking for different things to earlier generations, but that's really is my observation about them," he says adding the internet has played a huge part. I agree BIS. The masses who once supported black freedom now campaigned for the Deep South. He adds: "The reason Equiano's story, Equiano's voice, is not as well known as it should be, is because we have a long habit in this country of not wanting to talk about slavery. And tolerance is not a given. That needs to change, The autonomous future is nearly here with Wejo, The need to grow Londons EV infrastructure at speed and scale, From royal trumpeter to chief diver, Miranda Kaufmann uncovers the Africans of Tudor Britain, The big consultancy con, with Mariana Mazzucato, The rise and fall of Nicola Sturgeon Audio Long Reads, Facility / Grounds Management and Maintenance, HR, Training and Organisational Development, Information and Communications Technology, Information Services, Statistics, Records, Archives, Infrastructure Management - Transport, Utilities, Science and Technical Research and Development. It's possibly a deeper change than some people realise because I don't think what we're living through is a series of political events; I think we're living through a generational shift," he says. Slavery didnt last much longer for various reasons, fizzled out in a century or so, but we have the records to show it was still part of the system after twenty years of Norman rule: https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/domesday/world-of-domesday/order.htm. Their cities, as well as their comfort, will rapidly decay. arguments are pretty weak since relying on a doctrine of virtues of the fathers risks implicitly accepting sins of the fathers.. Pretty much everybody in the West is against slavery. In 1860, cotton goods accounted for 40 per cent of all British exports. Then a young teenager, he was driven out of his council home, together with his grandmother, mother, two sisters and younger brother, by a sustained campaign of nightly stoning of their windows. It may have made sense for the SS to starve labourers to death. But oddly enough, people like Olusoga havent given me the cash yet. But slaves were more valuable, so the British fought the Spanish for a share in the trade and eventually came to dominate it. Maybe Europeans did increase demand. What has Nigeria ever done for him? Within the EU the two most common ages of consent are 14 and 15 (if Ive done my counting correctly), though in some but not all cases thats with additional restrictions on permissible age gaps. Might, in this case, being 100% of the debating point. I know there are posters on here who see stepping into their opponents perspective as a dangerous and pointless endeavour that gives undue worth to a viewpoint they despise, but purely as a mental exercise theres usually something to be said for examining your opponents strongest argument instead of their weakest. If you had spare cash or could borrow, investment in slavery was a sure winner, never mind slave rebellions or hurricanes that destroyed cane fields. Not to say it was nice.. Do I feel like I had anything to do it? He saw how enslaved people who had risen up were burnt to death, castrated or mutilated, punishments he regarded as merited. It has been reissued by publishing house Hodder and Prof Olusoga has written the foreword. Mans a loon. I hadnt gotten far when she stopped me cold, pointing out that her best friend, a 15 year old girl knitting beside a window in her house, was machine gunned by an American P-51 pilot. Your email address will not be published. It is a form of self-loathing. He is the undisputed King of the Internet Pedants and Lord of the Unnecessary Snark. And I dont think this is what reparations campaigners are calling for either, as I understand it their argument includes systematic legacy issues not just the period of slavery itself, so the harm relates more directly to them not just their ancestors. The exception is Tim Worstall, who is truly the Ron Jeremy of blogging. Nevertheless, we live in a society that generally regards slavery as an absolute and eternal wrong, and a grave one at that, yet which has historically (at least certain people and places, and including the state itself) benefited from imposing slavery on others.. Used to be on a long-dead and much missed forum where the topics of debate ranged far wider than they do here (as did the viewpoints I think it would be useful if us right-wing brexity mob didnt chase off the sensible non-right-wing non-brexity types so much). Olusoga has written stand-alone history books as well as those accompanying his television series. There is no reason to think one system was more or less brutal than the other. Nevertheless, we live in a society that generally regards slavery as an absolute and eternal wrong, and a grave one at that, yet which has historically (at least certain people and places, and including the state itself) benefited from imposing slavery on others. The government has said the "flexibility within the history curriculum means that there is the opportunity for teachers to teach about BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) history across a spectrum of themes and eras" so it did "not believe it was necessary to change the curriculum". The South Sea bubble, the greatest financial crash of the 18th century, was intimately connected to Britains dealings with Africa, though this is rarely acknowledged by historians. Olusoga is just getting even because he was attacked by the right when he was a teenager. But Muslims were enslaving white Europeans into Africa long before the Atlantic route, usually castrating the males. No other race / culture was willing and able to do that. Or they may discover how little black lives do matter. people like Olusoga would have to pay their share of the greatly increased taxes How would Nigeria treat a foreigner like him? That assumes an increase in demand. Thousands of petitions were presented to parliament. Although the bottom line is that no Black person remembers slavery. Probably few other societies had as much chance of buying freedom. I cant see the point of denying it was all pretty awful. The vast majority of Americans are not guilty. Get back to us when your sin/privilege is expunged. Quite possibly slave-raiding Gaels before that. The system he witnessed and wrote about was one in which human beings were worked to death. So wherever the wealth came from, it wasnt just slavery (or even mainly), Olusogas an alright presenter but a class A race hustler, Edward Lud August 30, 2020 at 9:12 am We could just cut to the chase, and impose a reparations tax on anyone who is descended from from anyone who did something, er, wrong.. Olusogas stated purpose is to argue that black British history is not about migration and settlement, whether of black servants in the 18th century or black workers in the Windrush era. The Barbados slave code of 1661 stripped Africans of all human rights, and set out ways in which they were to be punished, to exert control over their labour (mutilation of the face, slitting of nostrils, castration, execution). In the USA? Olusoga, who presents the BBC documentary series A House Through Time, told presenter Lauren Laverne that racism was "just the background hum of life" when he was growing up. It was an apt university to experiment with such developments, since Lord Scarman, who reported on the Brixton riots of 1981, was its chancellor. In that moment, his interest in history overlapped. The thing we British are ancestrally responsible for is beginning and continuing to pursue the extinction of the sordid business of slavery. Flyover Americans arent going to take it. After all, adult males were all but worthless and demand for women might have been enough to drive the trade anyway. Indeed, third-century York may have been more ethnically and racially diverse than present-day York. Not many remember anything about segregation either. They all get it from White people inciting violence. Re putting the argument for paedophilia they actually gave Gide the Nobel prize for literature didnt they? It happened. The point about slave descendants in Georgia being better off than descendants of slave sellers from West Africa is reasonably strong (though look back in everyones ancestry and youre likely to find, far back enough, a mix of slaves, owners and probably traders too). Sloane witnessed and later became part of a system ruled by terror. It died out with the Romans leaving, and its non-legality repeatedly reaffirmed from the reign of the early Normans onwards.. And so many hundreds of thousands of British workers were directly dependent on slavery (from sailors to those who built, rigged and repaired ships) that it was easy to turn a blind eye to the inhumanity. 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