Slavery. Who gives a shit?

Discussion Open Forum
1

Today marks 200 years since the UK outlawed slavery, and there has been the usual chorus of people saying that now is the time to apologise.

What do the events of more than 200 years ago have to do with anyone alive today?

According the BBC’s “Have your say” thingy, most white Britons feel that the answer is nothing.

I bolded the bit I feel is most important, but nevertheless there was the occasional whiney voce complaining that all white people need to understand how hard it is being black, rather than understanding that white people can be poor and oppressed too. 200 years on and you still want to blame everybody for making you into a victim. :unamused:

Well, honey, I ‘respect’ you enough to engage you in an honest debate and ask why you ask for equal treatment while defining yourself as ‘black’ rather than an equal person. I’ve never victimized anyone, except for Tom Hill, and that has nothing to do with his colour.

2

Yeah, no one victimizes anyone else based on race, creed, or the colour of their socks, and yet statistically, some are bound to have a harder go of it than others.

Still, I agree that the argument for compensation for historical wrongs is bunk.

3

Racism and oppression are valid issues. Valid issues in the present.

The racism and oppression of the past are fit topics for the subject of history lessons, and the effect of past inequality is relevant to discussion of current policy. But nobody should be held accountable for the wrongs of people in the past.

Someone wants an apology? Go ask the person who did it.

4

The past is the past, but from my experience with middle-clas Brits, or at least Londoners, is that the hate and resentment is still just as poisonous, just better hidden, except during garden parties with like-minded friends…

Posts like this don’t do much to refute that impression.

5

Hate and resentment towards blacks? Seriously.
Muslims maybe, but Blacks?

6

Every society in history has practiced slavery in some form, at one time or the other. Instead of apologizing, Britain should congratulate itself as being the first society in entire world history to ban slavery.

Think about that for a second. Slavery, an institution that had been around for thousands of years, ever since the beginnings of human civilization, was slowly abandoned thanks to other countries following Britain’s lead.

Britain owes nobody an apology for slavery, until the Nigerians and Saudi Arabians and Brazilians and Russians and Tibetans and every other country in the world that practiced slavery in the past apologizes as well.

The British people deserve applause, not condemnation, for being the first people in human history to develop a conscience about slavery.

7

Hate and resentment towards blacks? Seriously.
Muslims maybe, but Blacks?[/quote]

You’re not from London, are you?

Ah, en tout cas, they weren’t joking about how much Muslims should be at the receiving end of police brutality. I only heard hearty chuckles at imagining black people, or niggers as they called them, being beaten more often to help keep them in line or if not, kill them.

These are your average, middle-class Londoners having a dinner party in their garden. I can only imagine what the angrier ones must chat about.

In defense after I informed my school that I wanted out of their home, the woman of the house angrily told me that she had black co-workers so she wouldn’t talk about them like that. She had laughed the loudest, well maybe not as loud as her husband. :unamused: Hopefully, they’ve been blacklisted from hosting any more students.

There was something symbolic in having my Lonely Planet London stolen (along with my backpack, CD player, camera, notebooks, textbooks…). It was God’s way of telling me that I would never have need of it again.

8

I’ll leave the above issue alone. I’m more concerned with the issue of “Who gives a s***?”

I guess that’s a matter of taste or preference. I mean, I’ve met lots of people who loathe history, and I often find it boring myself. But I can’t help but read a little of it every now and then. I keep being nagged by that assertion of George Santayana’s: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” It’s not that I think I can stop us from repeating past mistakes; I’m just one little guy, and in any case, I have trouble avoiding repetitions of my own mistakes. In my opinion, though, history really does seem to have a sort of repetitive quality that is worth paying some attention to.

So since you asked, I do. I give a s***.

Charlie Jack
(used to be xp+10K)

9

[quote]The past is the past, but from my experience with middle-clas Brits, or at least Londoners, is that the hate and resentment is still just as poisonous, just better hidden, except during garden parties with like-minded friends…

Posts like this don’t do much to refute that impression.[/quote]

Huh?

Er, anyway, back to the topic… Plenty of slavery going on in other parts of the world right now to apologise for. And I would like an apology for that Tiananmen Square thing in 1989 which completely fucked up my China trip that year. And that Genghis Khan bloke too. He was an awful brute. He killed hundreds of millions. Why stop at slavery? I believe the Potato Famine in Europe has already been apologised for, which is great, but I feel there is a lot more useful apologising that can be done and it is good to see St. Tony taking the lead here. I know the Italians are itching to apologise for the Roman Empire and this could be just the impetus they need.

Jia You!

10

Lord Lucan wrote: [quote]I know the Italians are itching to apologise for the Roman Empire[/quote]
I’m assuming you want them to apologise for not civilising Ireland. :smiley:

11

What a scary, scary thought that someone could be so ignorant about the importance of history.

I can think of a few events older than 200 years that have something to do with people today.

The Declaration of Independence would be one. The invention of the wheel being another.

A more relevant question might be, “Why are you being so defensive about the issue of slavery?” No one can make someone feel guilty. So if you don’t think you are, why the bitching?

12

Because some people want some sort of official apology. And we’re being put on the defensive, we’re not going on the defensive over something unrelated.

When someone is bitching to you, don’t you bitch back? And if someone accuses you of something you don’t think you did, don’t you respond with indignation?

13

[quote]
We’re just two lifetimes removed from ugly history of slavery

March 7, 2007
BY MARK BROWN Sun-Times Columnist
When I was a kid, I thought that anything that happened before I was born was ancient history. It didn’t matter if it was five years before I was born or 500 years. The year 1955 was the cutoff point. Events before then might be interesting but couldn’t possibly have any real-world connection to my life, or so I thought.

As I get older, my time perspective keeps changing. Despite the passage of all those additional years, I now feel closer than ever to the events of World War II – Hitler’s extermination of six million Jews and our dropping of the atomic bomb now looming frighteningly large in life’s rear-view mirror.

Even the Civil War stopped seeming so far in the past after I visited Gettysburg a few years back and saw the photos from the 75th anniversary reunion of the famous battle, held in 1938 and attended by 1,918 Civil War veterans, many of whom were pictured participating in a re-enactment of Pickett’s Charge.

I guess that’s why I’m not so quick to shrug off the discovery that my ancestors owned slaves as something that happened “a long time ago,” just because it was more than a century before my birth.

No longer abstract
If you missed Sunday’s column, I told the story of learning from my mom last week that some of my forebears were slaveowners.

This resulted from my calling her to make inquiries after the story hit the news Friday that one of Sen. Barack Obama’s white ancestors owned slaves.

My mom’s always trying to tell me about her genealogical research, but I’ve never paid much attention.

It came as something of a surprise then when she produced documentation showing how her great-great grandfather David E. Richardson (my great-great-great grandfather) sold off the last of the family slaves to his brother in 1853 for $170.

David Richardson and his brothers had inherited slaves from their father, Charles, my great-great-great-great grandfather.

As I explained, it’s not entirely clear from the records how many total slaves were involved, but the 1853 documents make specific reference to “one Negro boy named Tom about 17 years old of yellow complexion,” as well as a 5-year-old girl named Sarah and 7-year-old boy named Patrick, “both of black complexion.”

I suppose none of this should have been very surprising. White Americans whose roots in this country date back a couple of centuries are quite likely to have slave owners in their ancestry. I’d always assumed my family didn’t have enough money to own slaves, although I must have known in the back of my mind that it was still a possibility.

But there’s something about seeing it confirmed right there on paper that puts everything in a different light. It’s no longer abstract and theoretical for me.

‘White liberal guilt’?
The people in my family owned other people. Black people. They passed on these black people in their wills as inheritance. They recorded this ownership in official records the same as if the black people were parcels of land.

It’s not exactly lost on me that this is the same type of finding that Ald. Dorothy Tillman has used to demand reparations from investment banking firms doing business with the City of Chicago.

Do I think I owe anybody financial reparations? No.

Do I feel some personal sense of obligation that I didn’t feel a week ago?

Yes, I think so. I’m not sure what form it should take, but at the very least, I think I have an even greater responsibility to be sensitive to racial issues.

Some people want to dismiss this as “white liberal guilt.”

While I can’t say I received an outpouring of response to Sunday’s column, much of what I did get was along those lines. A lot of whites don’t like to be reminded of slavery.

I’m not telling anybody they should feel guilty.

I don’t personally feel guilty. But I’m not particularly comfortable with this new knowledge, either.

Not such a long time ago
The way I look at it, 1853 isn’t so long ago. That’s just two lifetimes.

Let’s take that 5-year-old slave girl Sarah. It’s possible that she lived to be 82 years old. In her later years, she might have met and had some impact on some other little 5-year-old girl, who is now 82 herself. That brings you right up to today.

That 82-year-old could be somebody whose life has intersected with mine – or with my children’s – without my knowing it.

Maybe that’s too esoteric for your taste, but it seems pretty straightforward to me.

We’re just two lifetimes removed from the ugliest chapter in our history. No wonder slavery’s legacy of racism and dysfunction is so hard to sweep away.

And I used to think it was such a long, long time ago.
[/quote][url]

suntimes.com/news/brown/2860 … 07.article[/url]

Becareful Loretta, your sheet is showing. :wink:

14

Nama wrote: [quote]Becareful Loretta, your sheet is showing. Wink[/quote]
Loretta is a good shag …um… I mean I know him well but he is not a racist. He doesn’t give a damn about a person’s colour. He may, however, be sensitive to people with enormous chips on their shoulder. Anyway, Loretta is a Brit, and Britain had more to do with ending slavery than any other nation.
If you want to honour history, then surely the emphasis should be on ending modern-day slavery and exploitation. Rather than say whitey didn’t say “sorry” enough for past evil deeds, why not focus on the tragedies of the present in Africa. Cuntgabe in the former Rhodesia, Sudan, Congo etc.?

15

Loretta is a good shag …um… I mean I know him well but he is not a racist. He doesn’t give a damn about a person’s colour. He may, however, be sensitive to people with enormous chips on their shoulder. Anyway, Loretta is a Brit, and Britain had more to do with ending slavery than any other nation.
If you want to honour history, then surely the emphasis should be on ending modern-day slavery and exploitation. Rather than say whitey didn’t say “sorry” enough for past evil deeds, why not focus on the tragedies of the present in Africa. Cuntgabe in the former Rhodesia, Sudan, Congo etc.?[/quote]

No argument there with the last part. But why come on with such lack of grace? IMO, it’s not about whether or not he’s a racist, but his way of presenting the argument is a sentiment expressed commonly by lots of whites which is disturbing. I believe if there wasn’t the redunant history of people telling another group of people to get over it, rather than acknowledge it, then more people would be apt to let it go.

I had nothing to do with the Holocaust, but would it be in good taste to say Who gives a F**&? I’m American, am I suppose to feel sorry for the current occupation? :idunno:

16

Namahottie wrote: [quote]No argument there with the last part. But why come on with such lack of grace? [/quote]
Sorry if I offended but I don’t see a lack of grace. I think those outside the US don’t have such a sensitivity to the subject. The States is different in that it allowed slavery until much later than other western countries and its economic might was built - in part anyway - on slave labour.
I’m very interested in the subject of slavery, especially the lesser known stories such as the western slaves held by the Ottomans, Chinese slavery etc.

17

Sorry if I offended but I don’t see a lack of grace. I think those outside the US don’t have such a sensitivity to the subject. The States is different in that it allowed slavery until much later than other western countries and its economic might was built - in part anyway - on slave labour.
I’m very interested in the subject of slavery, especially the lesser known stories such as the western slaves held by the Ottomans, Chinese slavery etc.[/quote]

The lack of grace comment wasn’t directed to you.

The very fact that people are still divided on discussing it, still shows how much impact it has.

18

Hate and resentment towards blacks? Seriously.
Muslims maybe, but Blacks?[/quote]

You’re not from London, are you?

Ah, en tout cas, they weren’t joking about how much Muslims should be at the receiving end of police brutality. I only heard hearty chuckles at imagining black people, or niggers as they called them, being beaten more often to help keep them in line or if not, kill them.

These are your average, middle-class Londoners having a dinner party in their garden. I can only imagine what the angrier ones must chat about.

In defense after I informed my school that I wanted out of their home, the woman of the house angrily told me that she had black co-workers so she wouldn’t talk about them like that. She had laughed the loudest, well maybe not as loud as her husband. :unamused: Hopefully, they’ve been blacklisted from hosting any more students.

There was something symbolic in having my Lonely Planet London stolen (along with my backpack, CD player, camera, notebooks, textbooks…). It was God’s way of telling me that I would never have need of it again.[/quote]

Yeah well that’s hardly a basis for condemning a whole nation. In my eight years in England I heard similar talk about the Irish many times but I would rate your average middle-class Englishman as a fairly decent type. I heard similar talk about bog-trotting potato-eating paddies and what a shower of cunts they were more recently in Taipei during the World Cup rugby from some English twat at the bar in the pub and well there are wankers out there everywhere. Your post says more about you than it does about the English as a whole I’m afraid.

As a matter of interest, how is Africa celebrating this? Yet another Blame The White Man for Everything That is Wrong With Africa Today festival? Even if we take the upper estimate of 60 million slaves transported, and even if we recognise it for the hideous inexcusable evil that it was, and is, will there be any pause for reflection on the number of people in Africa who are dying at the hand of murderous Black dictators? Will we acknowledge the fact that slavery was a part of human civilisation since time immemorial and goes on to this day? Will we take a moment to reflect on the things that can be done to get rid of slavery in Africa and Asia today? No. Of course not.

All I ask is that everybody whinging and moaning about slavery and who is looking up William Wilberforce on Wikipedia in preparation for their dinner parties tomorrow find either Chad, the Sudan, or Zimbabwe on a map (for starters) and count the number of people who have been murdered there since independence. Then multiply that by about five and that’s how many Africans will have died at the hands of other Africans in the same time frame as from the abolition of slavery until today. Then perhaps we can look at war-induced poverty and the AIDS epidemic and preventable famine and put this slavery thing in the context of modern-day Africa.

The end of the Atlantic slave trade is something to be celebrated. But it should not be wrapped up in some political mumbo-jumbo about the condition of Blacks in America or England, or hijacked by African dictators on an anti-Western platform. Indeed the Africans who facilitated the slave trade during colonial occupation, those who were running it long before the Europeans arrived, and those who still participate in it should be the focus of African political discussion on the matter.

19

99% of Brits would also say ‘huh’? It’s a total non-issue in the UK and always will be. As others point out, there are modern issues with race which are more important such as integration or non-integration of British Muslims into the education systems or combatting the trafficking of the modern day slaves such as the illegal workers who come to Britain from China with the ‘snakehead’ gangs (anyone read about the Fujianese cockle pickers who died in Morecambe?) or the young women from eastern Europe who are sold into the sex industry (‘Dirty Pretty Things’ is a good view of illegal immigrants’ London).

Wasting time, money and media exposure is just a political side show, concocted by some political underling to get his mug in the paper. As he knows full well, it’s simply irrelevant posturing designed to keep middle class Britain distracted from the here and now by kicking up righteous indignation in people who have done nothing wrong. How would a formal apology by an unpopular, ‘dying’ PM affect the illegal Somalian worker or the third generation Jamaican? Again, this stuff diverts attention from real issues.

Comments like ‘your sheet is showing’ will also be met with ‘huh’? by most Brits; historically that means nothing to them, unless they watch a lot of TV.

Brits are racist, sure, but I’ve never visited a non-racist country. Apologizing for slavery is a distraction from real life issues such as integration/non-integration of British Muslims into education systems, etc. Racism against older Carribean and newer East African immigrants is not a result of slavery because they have been in the UK since only the 1950s. I may be wrong, but there is no former slave population in the UK, so it’s hard to figure out how apologizing for slavery will have no actual effect on modern day relations between Britain’s different races.

As a side note, which nations have formally apologized for having a part in slavery?

20

[quote=“ImaniOU”]The past is the past, but from my experience with middle-clas Brits, or at least Londoners, is that the hate and resentment is still just as poisonous, just better hidden, except during garden parties with like-minded friends…

You’re not from London, are you?
[/quote]

Well I lived in London for a dozen years, am just about as middle-class as you can get, and am pretty sure I never heard or detected anything like such sentiments expressed or displayed by anyone I ever kept company with.

However, I can recall a few times when I was cursed as an effing whitey and suchlike by black strangers I didn’t know from Adam. Fortunately, I understand that only a small minority of black people think and behave like that, so I didn’t jump to the conclusion that all black people are racist bigots, but continued to respect black people in general as much as I respected people of any other colour, race, nationality, or whatever.

And I quite agree with Quentiin on this, as well as Almas and Lord Lucan. [quote=“Quentin”] Instead of apologizing, Britain should congratulate itself as being the first society in entire world history to ban slavery.[/quote]

So when are you going to be gracious enough to say thank you to us, Imani and Nama?