The Russians do not have these problems because they are not ashamed. As for the future, the University of Manchester professor says younger generations give him hope. Not sure how sick this makes me. A newsletter showcasing the finest writing from the ideas section, covering political ideas, philosophy, criticism and intellectual history - sent every Wednesday. Sure. Dr Peter Olusoga is a senior psychology lecturer at Sheffield Hallam university. Whitey bad, give me cash? We aint paying no goddam reparations & no-ones gonna make us. But its still awful, even on a historical scale. MBE, do not entertain these people, not for one second. I am not so sure about that although it is another argument. Dont know if I would rule it out entirely because the demographics are different but it might need a change in the voting dynamics. Back in the heyday of blogging, perhaps ten years ago or so, there was a blogger calling him/herself The Heresiarch who enjoyed running against received opinions. 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. They may not be happy about Dresden or Hiroshima but their lives are much better. The UK, Norway, Benelux, Spain, Malta and Switzerland are, I believe, the only western European countries to set it at 16. Their cities, as well as their comfort, will rapidly decay. Viking Dublin was a major slave-trading centre (English, Irish, Scots, anyone else they could get their hands on). Looking at what happened in Haiti or Jamaica or chunks of Latin America, I dont find either well, could have been much worse or what do you expect, Early Modern West Europeans, how could they have known better? to be particularly convincing responses. Re putting the argument for paedophilia they actually gave Gide the Nobel prize for literature didnt they? So this race baiter can try his guilt trip on someone else. 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. What do you think their stongest argument is? Or they may discover how little black lives do matter. Prof Olusoga is not the only person who has been drawn to Equiano's story. But its still awful, even on a historical scale.. 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. This ignorant fellow should study historical facts, rather than believing and repeating lies and half-truths. Not to say it was nice. Will Britain change? But any planter who deliberately starved his slaves to death would quickly go bust. It happened. Britain should be proud of helping to stop (African to America) slavery, like the Republican Party and unlike the Democrats. Wrong ?!?! 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. There are probably a thousand organisations, charities and assorted grifters who would happily cash your cheque. But Muslims were enslaving white Europeans into Africa long before the Atlantic route, usually castrating the males. The Royal African Company, established by Charles II in 1672, eventually enslaved and transported more Africans than any other company in British history. My family did nothing. Pretty much everybody in the West is against slavery. Should black history be taught all year round? BurningEars August 30, 2020 at 3:07 pm Theres a flaw in arguments of the form frankly you should be glad I murdered your sister. Would, say, Huguenot-descended South Africans suing France over the 1572 St. Bartholomews Day massacre, or Cornish people suing HMG for the suppression of the 1497 Rebellion, deserve compensation?. MBE: The problem with the UK paying reparations is that people like Olusoga would have to pay their share of the greatly increased taxes. Young people - such as Lavinya Stennett who founded the Black Curriculum campaign group - have been calling for change. My great, great, grandfather was one. Presumably there were normal times when food was cheap that you fed your workers and didnt seek to replace them in the way Olusoga means. Prof David Olusoga has presented numerous documentaries including A House Through Time and Black and Black and British: A Forgotten History, Olaudah Equiano played a role in Britain's abolishment of slavery, Performer Giles Terera has written a play featuring Equiano, Prof Olusoga said when it was published, people did not believe the book was by an African as it was deemed so well written, Bernardine Evaristo (second left) has launched a series called Black Britain: Writing Back which features novels by black British authors that have been overlooked, Should black history be taught all year round? Definitely didnt die out with the Romans. Jamaicans and Nigerians used to hate each other. If someone from Portugal or France wants to explain why their country has done a better job of getting the balance right, Im open to hearing it. Pope Nicholas V gave his blessing, so long as the Vatican benefited. This year, return to Neverland. The Benin Dialogue Group announced it had brokered an agreement that will see "some of the most iconic" of the bronzes returned to Benin City, Nigeria, where they will be housed in the soon-to-be-built Benin Royal Museum. The rest apart from Ireland (17, partly due to influence of aforementioned Patrick) set it younger. Even did something positive. He also studied at the University of Liverpool and so benefits from slavery as much as anyone else. 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. Good point, I wonder how he squares the obviously comfortable living he has writing, opining and broadcasting about slavery with his principles. But there have been other societies with slavery where slaves had more autonomy and a greater chance of buying their freedom. I doubt that they are now firmly united in a common cause. 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.. 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. 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. I imagine few do. It is a good deed that must not go unpunished. White communities suffer huge losses from Black crime. "I first read it as a student and it struck me as something that was very different to other things I was reading about the Atlantic slave trade. The following decades were taken up with popular and political rhetoric about immigration and parliamentary acts to limit blacks coming to Britain. 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. After all, adult males were all but worthless and demand for women might have been enough to drive the trade anyway. Olusoga is making an appeal to white guilt. There is no reason to think one system was more or less brutal than the other. The system he witnessed and wrote about was one in which human beings were worked to death. 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). (I suppose it makes a point about blame not being distributed homogeneously, or that a certain group of people shouldnt be guilted just because they share the same colour of skin with another bunch of people you do think are guilty. Supported by African authors of slave narratives such as Olaudah Equiano and Ottabah Cugoano, they held meetings all over the country, attracting huge crowds. It's against this backdrop that Black British History Month was created. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jxc5ENT8ajg, https://www.history.co.uk/shows/the-real-vikings/articles/eyewitness-to-the-vikings, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestmannaeyjar, https://www.historytoday.com/archive/normans-and-slavery-breaking-bonds, https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/domesday/world-of-domesday/order.htm, Apparently Essay Mills Must Be Made Illegal, Why Oxfam Can Go Boil Their Heads Over Vaccine Patents, The real point about climate change is how cheap the solution is, The excellent Tim Worstall- The Register, Tim Worstall is a darn good economist- Don Boudreaux, Tim Worstall, you pendant- Polly Toynbee, .more sensible than most right wing nutjob bloggersBob Piper. Over 1000 years in Britain. Black history: Should it be part of the wider curriculum? That was at the least unusual, particularly from a West European perspective bearing in mind the practice of slavery had pretty much fizzled out there. No doubt life expectancy of a slave was shorter than that for a free man. As he states, The oral history of 20th-century racial violence has never been collected or collated, but it is thereand it is shocking.. His autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, details how he was sold into slavery aged 11, his experience of travelling the world as slave to a Royal Navy officer - who renamed him Gustavus Vassa - and how he bought his freedom from his final master, an English merchant in Montserrat. "He was the voice of somebody who wasn't speaking about the past as a historian, but was living it. Rather the constitution banned the slave trade and so it become economically worth it to make sure slaves lived longer. Now sixteen sounds about okay to me if youre going to stick a limit somewhere, but then being British I suppose Im more likely to think the system Im accustomed to is normal and reasonable. I do not see what is different between a plantation in Africa and a plantation in Virginia. It built slave forts on the African coast, some such as Bunce Island in Sierra Leone furnished with a rape house. You may concede a point here, a point there. Like Fryers book, Olusogas will inspire and will come to be seen as a major effort to address one of the greatest silences in British historiography. (and white people was pretty much the British). Would also apply even if down a different family line there had been beneficiaries of the slave trade. Everyone was. Grew up in Quedlinburg. She had no interest in esoteric discussions of the war. Oblong, Theres an argument about judging people by the standard of their times, though even in the 1500s moral and religious objections to the slave trade had been made and the rationale of crimes against humanity is that some things are so abhorrent they could never truly be legal no matter what moral code the perpetrators justified themselves with. I assume he is not very bright and Race Hustling is very lucrative. Separated from home and family and landed in the West Indies (countless numbers dying of suffocation during the journey, given that the people traffickers were packing the holds to maximise profits), the Africans had no recourse to the law, much less the conscience of their captors. Very little sugar on the mainland. 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. The good news is that Black Lives Matter may be that trigger. Societies have had a long history of treating minorities harshly. And the third, fourth, fifth, and so on. It was such a brilliantly organised programme of mass protest that slavery was declared abolished in 1833: 46,000 slave owners were given 20m in compensation (17bn in todays money), the largest payout in British history and 40 per cent of all government spending that year. That hes able to write this article is because hes living in what is, by historical standards, a remarkably tolerant society. Kyle Rittenhouse, unlike the rest of their sorry asses, did something. That is a strawman argument at its best. Olusoga was born in Lagos to a White mother and a Nigerian father - who, I hate to say nautrally, did a runner. He saw how enslaved people who had risen up were burnt to death, castrated or mutilated, punishments he regarded as merited. One sporting event that has captured your imagination I was fortunate enough to get tickets to see some of the basketball at the London 2012 Olympics, so my brother and I went to watch the GB vs. Spain game. Anyway, I digress, we did have at some point, a gang of pedos turn up and put their case, reasonably, and were tolerated and conversed with. Video1894 shipwreck confirms tale of treacherous lifeboat, How 10% of Nigerian registered voters delivered victory, Sake brewers toast big rise in global sales, The Indian-American CEO who wants to be US president, Blackpink lead top stars back on the road in Asia, Exploring the rigging claims in Nigeria's elections, 'Wales is in England' gaffe sparks TikToker's trip. Olusogas ancestors will have participated in the capture of sale of slaves in Nigeria. * the legal institution and pretty much the practice I brought up paedophilia to demonstrate that there are things not worth my time. He seems to be an interesting social historian and his TV series on the occupants of a single house over the centuries is very good, although I suspect a lot of the research is done by others, I look forward to an even handed expose of the entire slave trade from birth to capture, imprisonment, sale, transportation, arrival, sale, treatment and life while enslaved as well as the UKs role in stopping it, But it wont be on the BBC, and he wont be writing it I fear, @smfs (As the first person to mention the Sokoto Caliphate ahh, forget it.). His current research focuses on stress, burnout, and wellbeing in sports, with a particular interest in high-performance environments and elite coaching. Well the universe has a law of gravity but it doesnt have a law of should there be reparations. But it is Olusoga who keeps insisting that its the Brits who are uniquely responsible.. Olusoga was born in Lagos to a White mother and a Nigerian father who, I hate to say nautrally, did a runner. Latin America for instance. It could not have happened at all unless African traders and kings had offered slaves to the Europeans. In 1860, cotton goods accounted for 40 per cent of all British exports. That was when the Democrats were still Americans. not at all to disparage your ancestors GC. My first reaction, years and years ago, was thats awful. Just as how in the 16th century the anti-slavery voices in Europe were overwhelmed, and in the 19th century the abolitionists won out. Should almost go without saying except of course that it doesnt, since clearly not every culture has the same moral gut reaction to it that I do. Well whats the point of pretending it doesnt also induce moral disgust in me, just in case someone mistakes it for guilt, or an admission of liability? The enslaved Africans had to wait another five years for their freedom and were not given a penny. 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. "We are on a journey in this country and other countries are on similar journeys to try and reconnect to parts of our history that had traditionally been edited out," adds Prof Olusoga. Long after he had published Corydon, his defence of pederasty. It died out with the Romans leaving, and its non-legality repeatedly reaffirmed from the reign of the early Normans onwards. One issue about Westerners buying slaves via a chain of commerce that often ultimately involved Africans selling other Africans at traditional slave-trading locations (there was some slave-raiding by Europeans directly, but rarer) is that the extra demand distorted the market, led directly to more armed slave-raiding expeditions against rival tribes and so on. He also studied at the University of Liverpool and so benefits from slavery as much as anyone else. The many African-American abolitionists, such as Frederick Douglass, who visited Britain from the 1840s onwards, were well received and, again, thousands of people greeted them and raised money to support their cause. Because it isnt about who you are, its about who your ancestors were. If slavery really mattered theyd be campaigning for reparations from the blacks and arabs/moslems who were doing it long before the white man arrived in Africa and was far more devastating. Welsh slave-raids into England continued until early Norman times. The book accompanying. Fair point. Get back to us when your sin/privilege is expunged. I havent said anything about my personal sense of guilt or responsibility. The rest of this looks like the usual white washing (so to speak) of African slavery. Now Im trying to imagine just what the strongest case for reparations might be, but even in this thought experiment its hard to see what the eligibility criteria for receiving payment should be, what sum should be due, how much proof is required of eligibility not everyone will have a good set of family records etc. That star stuff wont last. Sugar plantations were bad. Intellectually more convincing anyway for practical and political purposes, demolishing a straw-man often makes a better video or audio clip while simultaneously making your opponents position sound stupid. There is the Push argument and the Pull argument. Video, 00:02:30Should black history be taught all year round? "They were barely known even to historians. Societies have what morals suit them. The problem with slavery is that it left us with their descendents and weak minded White populations. Shipwrecked off the coast of Africa, he, and other survivors, were taken by an African tribe as captives. He writes to inflame white guilt, so that you will ACCEPT destruction of your culture. Even discussing it gives your opponents arguments merit. And, of course, being half white, he is only entitled to half the reparation payment. Certainly they killed them casually often for religious reasons. It isnt going to happen anyway. The strongest argument I can see for reparations is not that white people bear some kind of ancestral blame. Yet American slave-produced raw cotton continued to feed the 4,500 mills of Lancashire. Pretty sure if you could, implausibly, trace my family tree through various not-very-literate eras youd pass through at least one Anglo-Saxon who owned a bunch of Britons. Roman writers such as Pliny who chronicled or rather fabricated African life shaped perceptions of a continent populated by anthropophagi and other fantastic creatures, half-human, half-animal. A House Through Time returned to BBC Two in May for its third season, and once again is fronted by historian extraordinaire David Olusoga. Probably few other societies had as much chance of buying freedom. In 1986 I came across the book Staying Power by the British journalist Peter Fryer. In dealing with the black contribution to the First World War, for example, he cites popular gratitude and admiration for black Britons among them Walter Tull, who fought on the Western Front. They did not pay for them and were going to kill a lot of them anyway. 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. David will . Should black history be taught all year round? Its been banned for two centuries in Britain. How could Britain, a civilised and Christian nation, indulge in rape, torture, killing and the forced labour of Africans over two centuries? If there were African states with legal continuity to those political entities which established and encouraged the African slave markets, they would be on the hook too, but theres a discontinuity due to colonialism and besides, everyone knows to sue the rich guy not the poor guy. Giles Terera, the Olivier award-winning British performer who starred in the popular theatre production Hamilton, has . 7 years was the average working lifespan so it is said. . By David Dabydeen (Photo By Alamy) Nineteen eighty-four was a transformative year for David Olusoga. The Celtic version of slavery (which ran to quite a different model) was still going on in the places the Romans didnt reach. Your email address will not be published. There is an alternative argument that it is their ancestors who were wronged hence deserve compensation and as descendants theyre entitled to an inherited share (so their portion depends on how many slaves at what position in the family tree) plus interest, regardless of how well theyre doing now. Make sure it doesnt happen in the least costly way. And the transatlantic slave trade? In the USA? How does it benefit anyone to make an issue about particular events? All in all your typical West African is far more likely to have ancestral connections to the slave trade than your typical Brit. MyBurningEars August 30, 2020 at 3:31 pm Deliberately shipping that many people that far in order to participate in a newly-created society whose economic system was designed, pretty much from the ground up, around slave labour?, True that unlike certain other examples of slavery, you werent likely to be killed as part of a religious sacrifice or as part of your owners funeral., But there have been other societies with slavery where slaves had more autonomy and a greater chance of buying their freedom.. Tim says there might be some truth to them for the Caribbean. You can be redeemed, you worthless pasty people. (Im just presenting the case here in reality there are obviously some big questions about the logic of Nuremberg etc, just as there are questions about how judges in Common Law occasionally summon up things as if they had always and forever been a part of the Law, albeit previously unrecorded, rather than something the judge just made up.). And Britain worked for the whole of the 19th century to put down slavery in Africa. I am of Ulster Scot heritage, who were originally John Knoxs Cumberland Presbyterians, VERY MUCH against slavery. Not to say it was nice.. He talks about slavery because YOU care. There is no reason to think that slavery was nicer in Africa. Prof Darity and Ms Mullen outline that to eliminate the existing Black-White wealth gap an allocation of between $10 trillion and $12 trillion, or about $800,000 per black household, should be paid. Which of those societies does Olusogas ancestry come from? Prof Olusoga says statues, such as those of slave traders . Whoever has the upper-hand in power political, cultural, economic, military or whatever other form is decisive at that moment. 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. Fought to STOP southern independence. Instead the racket still goes on with endless boatloads of illegals swarming into Europe. Not good. 5 quotes from David Olusoga: 'On a peninsula protruding into one of the great highways of the Atlantic slave trade, a few hundred refugees from British slavery in North America were attempting to recreate the social structures of Northern Europe in the Middle Ages.', 'Time and again events and phenomena that we think we know and understand contain within them lost or camouflaged connections to . Particularly as nowadays anyone who dares even look at someone a few days below the age of consent is believed to be an incorrigible nonce who deserves hanging, castration, or castration by hanging. One of his teachers had a coffee mug bearing a National Front slogan and another attacked him during a school trip, he said. People seem pretty much agreed on what is right and what is wrong. True that unlike certain other examples of slavery, you werent likely to be killed as part of a religious sacrifice or as part of your owners funeral. But werent they lucky compared to the other Germans in Stalingrad? Id say this to Mr Olusoga. After decades of complaints, the Royal African Company lost its monopoly in 1712 and, Olusoga writes, Independent traders were turned loose upon the shores of Africa. These traders had argued (stone-blind to irony) that the right to enslave Africans was a defining feature of English freedom and that the Royal African Company had breached their status as free-born Englishmen. If Olusoga is looking for apologies or compensation for slavery, I am quite prepared to meet him, accept his apology, togehr with cash, cheque or even a postal order. Just how much should Olusoga receive? Both groups today, especially the former, could reasonably claim historic persecution has reduced their present income and wealth. Prof Olusoga is not the only person who has been drawn to Equiano's story. The arguments do you want to get shaken down for several trillion?. During the Second World War, thousands of black American soldiers stationed in Britain were befriended by white Britons who opposed efforts by the white military to segregate them. Anti-black riots broke out in Liverpool that year. So 10.416 were sold by the Africans every month for one hundred years, There will be no peace on this issue until black people acknowledge their own responsibility for the trade. Guess wed have to print it. What is their strongest argument? 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. A renowned economist has said that $12 trillion should be afforded to black Americans in reparation for slavery to help the close wealth gap.. Mans a loon. Eventually, 11,000 separate British slave-trading expeditions resulted in the trafficking of three-and-a-half-million Africans to the New World plantations, the greatest forced migration in modern history until the 20th century. History is just one awful thing after another. The German survivors of Stalingrad were sent to camps and most of them worked to death. But that ignores how the demand of outsiders led inevitably to far more supply being provided. Shouldnt Olusoga be writing in Ubangi bantu-language? Fired by religious feeling, they embarked on a campaign of public education and political lobbying unprecedented in scale and revolutionary in nature. it was cheaper, at times, to starve people and then replace them Long after slavery ended in the British colonies, British people continued to lobby the American government to free their slaves. His choice of subject and his choice of material make that very clear. His book is a product of that childhood terror, and partly an exploration of his condition as a black Briton. He presented the recent series of A House Through Time on BBC 2, and Black and British: A Forgotten History. 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. "So when black history was missing - the history of empire, the history of slavery - was missing from my history lessons, I didn't have a place to go to discover those missing chapters. If more African-Americans started to vote Republican and the Democrats felt they needed something radical to boost their offer, and had enough support from liberal whites and other groups to risk further losses among blue-collar whites, for example.
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