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. Would also apply even if down a different family line there had been beneficiaries of the slave trade. It was far too real to her. 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. His dad met his mom at the city's university in the 1960s. 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). 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.. Id agree that attitudes in the UK are approaching that situation, but theres still a long, long way to go yet. ), Who is fundamentally right about reparations for slavery? You should know better. There is no reason to single White people out for unique levels of criticism. A House Through Time returned to BBC Two in May for its third season, and once again is fronted by historian extraordinaire David Olusoga. That assumes an increase in demand. Required fields are marked *. Under English law, damages are assessed as being that amount needed to restore them to the position they would have been, had the event claimed against not occurred. Various among the societies that were agglomerated into Nigeria were more or less involved in that slave trade from the supply end. 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. 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. Tull played professional football for Northampton but instead of signing up for Glasgow Rangers, he enlisted. Should black history be taught all year round? 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. Video, 00:02:30Should black history be taught all year round? And the fact youre moved to tears by discovering for the first time a great-great-great-grandmother of yours was a prostitute single-mum with seven kids or a great-x5-uncle you had never heard of was imprisoned for murder, well, your utter lack of knowledge simply reveals how little youve been influenced by them, so youre hardly discovering a new facet of yourself at all. They included Josiah Wedgwood (the pottery entrepreneur), Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson. Although I would expect the Germans, and perhaps even the Japanese, to be happy they lost the war. In fact he is a biased political campaigner working to attack and do as much damage to Britain as he can. Ill disparage them. The answer is money. So my advice would be, for his own health, STFU. "The phenomena of which he is iconic is one that we have written out, edited out of our nation. The masses who once supported black freedom now campaigned for the Deep South. No member of my family ever owned slaves. One of the reasons why the American and Caribbean experiences were very different. 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. As would Beyonce. Full text must be online somewhere but theres an extract at https://www.history.co.uk/shows/the-real-vikings/articles/eyewitness-to-the-vikings. . Have you ever read the account by Ibn Fadlan of a Viking funeral in Russia? It built slave forts on the African coast, some such as Bunce Island in Sierra Leone furnished with a rape house. 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). 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. Prof Olusoga says statues, such as those of slave traders . 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. 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). 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. He writes to inflame white guilt, so that you will ACCEPT destruction of your culture. Later his parents separated from each other when he was just two years old. As he states, The oral history of 20th-century racial violence has never been collected or collated, but it is thereand it is shocking.. And yet Africans and West Indians were banned from the victory parade in 1919. The race obsessed Department of Education goes to considerable lengths to distinguish Caribbeans and West Africans. 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.. Both groups today, especially the former, could reasonably claim historic persecution has reduced their present income and wealth. In the late 1800's and early 1900's, 30,000 Jewish migrants from Russia and Eastern Europe settled in Manchester. But oddly enough, people like Olusoga havent given me the cash yet. It can be withdrawn. My great, great, grandfather was one. What has Nigeria ever done for him? Britain was happy to force the Bevan Boys down coal mines. Joining them is Psychologist and Lecturer at Lancaster University, Dr David Tod, for a fascinating conversation about the psychology of acting. That involved killing the adult men. The strongest argument I can see for reparations is not that white people bear some kind of ancestral blame. As for the future, the University of Manchester professor says younger generations give him hope. Well one economist has worked out the amount to be paid (although not on a damages basis, when one imagines blacks might end up paying whites, but on a close the wealth gap basis): A renowned economist has said that $12 trillion should be afforded to black Americans in reparation for slavery to help the close wealth gap. The following decades were taken up with popular and political rhetoric about immigration and parliamentary acts to limit blacks coming to Britain. You may concede a point here, a point there. 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? Kyle Rittenhouse, unlike the rest of their sorry asses, did something. One in which enslaved people suffered and even died from malnutrition, as the economics of the slave trade meant that it was cheaper, at times, to starve people and then replace them than it was to provide them with food. If black lives really mattered these people would be protesting the 500 shot dead so far by predominantly black men in Chicago this year. Shouldnt Olusoga be writing in Ubangi bantu-language? Thats what I dont like about the angle of Tims header. @ Boganboy And, of course, being half white, he is only entitled to half the reparation payment. Olusoga patterns his narrative after Fryers, starting with the North African presence in Roman Britain. Its extraordinary success rested upon the foundation of sympathy laid down during the previous 70 years of abolitionist activity in Britain. In the 15th and 16th centuries, thousands of pounds of gold were shipped to Europe. at scales that were unusual in the long and varied history of slavery, and levels of brutality that stood out too.. MBE, do not entertain these people, not for one second. They organised a boycott of sugar, produced more petitions and hosted meetings. not at all to disparage your ancestors GC. His black half can get the half-payment direct from his white half. It doesnt end with the parties saying Well that was pleasantly intellectually stimulating, now lets have a nice game of cricket Youre opponents are not playing by the same rules as you are. Its an interesting exercise to consider, given we live within such a system, how or whether that contradiction can be settled. I am not so sure about that although it is another argument. Whether they are too stupid to think of that remains to be seen. You can pay all the reparation for historical slavery related wrongs, real or imaginary, you want. Women such as Elizabeth Heyrick continued to lobby for the abolition of slavery. Prof Olusoga says statues, such as those of slave traders . Welsh slave-raids into England continued until early Norman times. The Coldest Case in Laramie: yet another bleak true crime podcast, From Sophie Mackintosh to Stephen Moss: new books reviewed in short, Universal Credit falls short of covering the bare essentials. This seems rather unlikely. From Roots. Read about our approach to external linking. Id say this to Mr Olusoga. TV historian David Olusoga claims it is "palpable nonsense" to say that removing controversial statues "somehow impoverishes history". I dont think the traders can be given a pass on this front either., Just means they werent alone in being in the wrong.. But its still awful, even on a historical scale. But those were in those long-lost days when democrats and republicans could talk to each other and agree to disagree while both leaving the conversation a little the wiser. What is their strongest argument? Fair point. So is Richard Murphy. John Mandeville, whose travelogue (circa 1356) was one of the most widely translated books of the later Middle Ages, presented Africans as naked savages living amid heaps of gold to which they gave no value. And even if you personally disagree with it, what would be the strongest argument for some form of legal settlement? There is no reason to single White people out for unique levels of criticism. You know, entirely ignoring lifetime effects? Olusoga, who is half-Nigerian, traces this focus to his mother telling him when he was a child that Nigerian soldiers served in World War II. Supported by African authors of slave narratives such as Olaudah Equiano and Ottabah Cugoano, they held meetings all over the country, attracting huge crowds. Tim says there might be some truth to them for the Caribbean. There is no reason to think one system was more or less brutal than the other. They did not pay for them and were going to kill a lot of them anyway. Yet theyre so many centuries and generations removed from the crime, everybody involved with the decision-making is long-dead and while the responsible state still exists, in practice compensation comes from taxes paid by citizens who had no part in it all. Video, 00:02:30. Jamaicans and Nigerians used to hate each other. Giles Terera, the Olivier award-winning British performer who starred in the popular theatre production Hamilton, has . Dont even get me started on the Moors, Arabs and Ottomans, As for getting rich many African tribes kept slaves and their societies did not get rich. But any planter who deliberately starved his slaves to death would quickly go bust. 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 . Maybe someone should advise him to button his lip before he stirs up something he may not like. 7 years was the average working lifespan so it is said. The German survivors of Stalingrad were sent to camps and most of them worked to death. Olusoga brilliantly reveals such contradictions in British society. 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. In the UK its not white people enslaving blacks anymore, but Asians enslaving other Asians, as in Leicesters clothing sweatshops. White people are unique in ending slavery across the world*. But morals are very transient things. Olusoga was born in Lagos to a White mother and a Nigerian father - who, I hate to say nautrally, did a runner. Get back to us when youve developed your historicalguiltometer. The New Statesmans weekly environment email on the politics, business and culture of the climate and nature crises - in your inbox every Thursday. (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.). 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. I was doing some genealogy research when I discovered my great grandfather was a well known member of the 18th Kentucky Infantry. The novel became the bestselling book of 19th-century Britain; it was adapted for the theatre and generated mass-produced merchandise playing cards, jigsaws, tableware. arguments are pretty weak since relying on a doctrine of virtues of the fathers risks implicitly accepting sins of the fathers.. 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. So there were times when food was expensive, we can call those shortages or famines. David Olusoga, introduces his book Black and British, an exploration of the relationship between the British Isles and the people of Africa. 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. 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. There is plenty of slavery about we just do not call it that. We do not know enough to be sure. It died out with the Romans leaving, and its non-legality repeatedly reaffirmed from the reign of the early Normans onwards. I could just as well feel something else entirely, and Im sceptical of all approaches to impose a supposedly universal, timeless or even just coherent, thats a challenge in itself ethical system. . Flyover Americans arent going to take it. Equiano is also mentioned in Incomparable World, a novel by SI Martin, which was selected by Booker award-winning author Bernardine Evaristo for her Black Britain: Writing Back series. Its been banned for two centuries in Britain. Between that night at the opera and 1807, nearly 800,000 Africans were enslaved. He was Chairman of Moneysupermarket Group from 2014 to 2019 and Senior Independent Director of Close Brothers Group plc from 2006 to 2014 and is a Past President of the Chartered Management Institute. people like Olusoga would have to pay their share of the greatly increased taxes It could not have happened at all unless African traders and kings had offered slaves to the Europeans. They arent going to concede anything. That was when the Democrats were still Americans. Not sure how sick this makes me. Not to say it was nice. I think it's an astonishing achievement.". And that still stands even if there really are a bunch of torturing murderers out there too. And Britain worked for the whole of the 19th century to put down slavery in Africa. Re putting the argument for paedophilia they actually gave Gide the Nobel prize for literature didnt they? And the third, fourth, fifth, and so on. I agree BIS. Fought to STOP southern independence. Prof Olusoga, the presenter of the A House Through Time TV series, calls it an act of "historical salvage" to bring to the fore the black British figures who had been "lost in the archives, completely forgotten". Pope Nicholas V gave his blessing, so long as the Vatican benefited. And yet anti-black race riots broke out in 1948 in Liverpool and in 1958 in Nottingham and Londons Notting Hill. And yes, grand scheme of things, forced choice between living in a central Asian city about to be captured by ticked-off Mongols and an African tribal group about to be captured by profit-hungry slavers then fine, I take the latter hands down. 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. Wrong ?!?! Indeed, third-century York may have been more ethnically and racially diverse than present-day York. Exactly, bis. After all, adult males were all but worthless and demand for women might have been enough to drive the trade anyway. This is because forgetting slavery means forgetting its victims. It's all down to people in their 20s, those at school and in their teens, who have a relationship with history which, says Prof Olusoga, is profoundly different from that of their parents and grandparents. 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. Thats fine, BraveFart. He is a Cultural Marxist trying to destroy the West. I just dont really get what Olusoga is saying. And so, equipped with the fruits of Islamic learning (new navigational instruments, books on astronomy and trigonometry), European explorers set sail for Africa to relieve the natives of their gold. 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. Olusoga is just getting even because he was attacked by the right when he was a teenager. 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. We do not know how great the demand for women was. Cheap ass presentism. His exposure to Nigerian culture seems quite limited. That is not true. Pretty much everybody in the West is against slavery. No? many African tribes kept slaves. History is just one awful thing after another. 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. Country Star Kacey Musgraves: Voting for Trump Is an Act of Violence. Instead the racket still goes on with endless boatloads of illegals swarming into Europe. "He was the voice of somebody who wasn't speaking about the past as a historian, but was living it. They may have been turning people they would have killed into a profitable commodity. Theres no point pretending Europeans who profited from either the transatlantic slave trade or the use of slave labour in the Americas were somehow doing a favour to the slaves involved, even if, as it happens but their owners could not have predicted, their surviving descendants ended up financially better off on average than the counterfactual of remaining in Africa. "The way history is viewed is changing. Prof Olusoga is not the only person who has been drawn to Equiano's story. He updates Fryer, citing radioisotope analysis of skeletons and craniometrics, which support written documentation of Aurelian Moors guarding Hadrians Wall and settling in places such as Yorkshire. 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. 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