The English started the slave trade

[Annamaria14]

I just saw a black American woman post online,

"The English started the slave trade. They caused all our problems, they hurt generations of people. I will never set foot in that country".

What do you think? I felt a bit guilty, because the English did cause a lot of problems around the world. Have we learned from our past. How can we do better in the future

you'll notice nobody agreed with them.

But I’m here as a black person asking not to be the only person who challenges racists.

Sorry. I did think the posts were terrible and i didnt call them out. I should have. I did think they were trolls cos their points were so far from reality but actually some people do think like that.

This thread is the most appalling one I've ever seen on MN and that is saying a lot.

Fucking all lives matter bingo on here.

@dreamingbohemian

Fucking all lives matter bingo on here.

I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s said it, I was wondering why no else one was picking up on this, it was all becoming a bit surreal for me.
‘But the Vikings this...’ ‘But the Ancient Greeks this...’ I think we’ve reached peak whataboutery on this thread.

Let me try to be as clear as possible.

If the UK was currently a bastion of racial equality and justice, not many people would care about apologies for historical wrongs. That's why you don't see people asking the Norwegians to apologise for the Vikings or whatever other bullshit analogy has been put on here.

The problem is that the UK is very much NOT a bastion of racial equality and one of the reasons for that is the refusal to acknowledge British complicity in the events that help led to this.

So you can all deny that what the Brits did was so wrong or so important, or say it doesn't matter, or everyone else is evil too, but this only helps perpetuate racial injustice today.

It is NOT about collective guilt. You do not need to feel guilty for historical events. But those events had an impact and the least you can do not as Brits even, just as fucking decent human beings is to acknowledge that impact and try to improve things today. And nothing will improve until we full on acknowledge the gravity of those atrocities and admit that yes, my country played an important role in that. NO BUTS. None of this 'yes it was bad BUT...' bullshit.

Exactly Pink

'Actually the British were victims of slavery....'

I would challenge any person on here to point out a racist statement which I have made.
I would also say that having taken part in this thread, I have not seen any racist language as yet.

andy how do you define racist?

Slavery existed long before England even came into being. Pretty much every civilisation/nation/grouping took slaves.

Yes we get it

All Slave Traders Matter

I have not seen any racist language as yet.

You are blind to it.
Asking people if they would like to be returned to Africa and suggesting Africans of yesteryear should be ever so greatful for the colonial white men coming over and tarting the place up is in fact overt racism.

Then there is the “oh but my family, oh but meeeeee, oh but British people aren’t that bad”, then deliberately dissecting the OP’s friend to have been talking about all slavery ever and not in fact the trans-Atlantic trade of humans. That’s white privilege at the very, very least.

The thing is no one is asking people to throw themselves prostrate on the floor and wail about slave trade but more a general acknowledgement as a country that this terrible thing happened and it still impacts lives today.
My son is 15 and gets called a cotton picker, the impact is still there.

Mauritania was one of the last countries to ban slavery, this was done n ear 1980,s but wasnt effective to mid noughties. (only then started prosections.)

“dissecting the OP’s friend to have been talking about all slavery ever and not in fact the trans-Atlantic trade of humans.”

It doesn’t matter though, whether the OP title and friends quote read “the english started the slave trade” or
“the English started the trans-Atlantic slave trade “

However you decide what it implies, BOTH are false statements.

The English did not start the slave trade. Slave trades had been around for thousands of years before England and the English even existed. And furthermore there were always many slave trades, not just one slave trade- so there is no such thing as the slave trade.

Nor did the English start the trans Atlantic slave trade either.

I have recommended that people read David Olusoga and do so again.

If mention has been made of the Greeks, when someone raises the question of the Elgin Marbles it is difficult to aviod them.

Whataboutery is accusing the initial accuser of hypocrisy without addressing their point. In this case, the initial point that "The English started the slave trade. They caused all our problems.." is as historically inaccurate as it is geographically illiterate.

Even if we correct it, like a primary school teacher, to "The British," we still have that definite article. The British, at that time, in the main, were poor and powerless. They took no part in the slave trade, did not benefit from it directly and would have been better off indirectly if it had never happened.

Saying I need to apologise for something my great great great great great great great grandad did is pretty mad. Saying I need to atone for what someone else's ancestor did because I am the same nationality as them is totally unhinged.

I am a kid from a Brixton council estate. I grew up with friends from all corners of the world. At secondary school my best friend was the son of a minister from Botswana active in supporting South African Exiles. I supported the Anti-Aprtheid Movement and got my ANC badge from the head of the ANC in London. I have met and sat at the feet of one of Joe Slovo's girls embarrassing her with my admiration. You call me a racist and I will smack you in the mouth.

What we do not need are binary baby narratives. It's complictaed. The problem is complicated and so the solution will not be simple. We are not America, luckily. We have our own unique history and our problems are our responsibility to solve. If we look to the examples of Northern Ireland (precarious) and South Africa (mixed) we can see that the first step is to acknowledge that the war is over and now we must build the peace together.

The wrongs of the past are in the past, but scars remain and they hurt. We must acknowledge the wrongs of today. We are a nation of massive inequality in which inequality of opportunity has been increasing. Some would call the presence of a black Old Etonian who went to Trinity and Harvard in the govt progress. Others would call it co-option that makes the problem worse.

No, the entry about slavery on Wikipedia shows slavery was around in the ancient world. Its not exclusive to one group of people.
It still exists today according to Amnesty International, anyone trafficked such as people lured over here and forced into the sex trade are slaves.
I think there is a sound economic argument for the wealthy families who profited from (and still continue to profit from) trade like the sugar trade to pay reparations and invest in the infrastructures of Caribbean islands and the West African countries most effected by the slave trade that our country took part in from the 17th to 19th centuries.
I wish people would look into history more, check lyrics to jingoistic songs like Rule Brittania which is all about how God wanted England to control the world's oceans and a goady celebration of the fact that "Britons never ever ever shall be slaves".
But I don't think you should feel guilty. You did not make this history. I think the best any of us can do is try to learn about it and be careful to ditch any notions of cultural supremacy when we are raising our kids (not that st cultural supremacism is exclusively a "white English" thing either).

The African slave trade is one of the most horrific events in world history, but as other posters have pointed out, it was going long before Europeans got involved. The massive issue for the transatlantic slave trade is the mass disruption of people, which obviously still has huge effects today. But we're not responsible for it - just like we're not responsible for the fact that there are more enslaved people in the world today than there have ever been in history. All you can do is work with what's in front of you, treat people well and fight discrimination where you see it. You feeling guilty for something someone did long ago won't benefit anyone.

the UK is very much NOT a bastion of racial equality and one of the reasons for that is the refusal to acknowledge British complicity in the events that help led to this.

So, before the British got involved in slavery, there was racial equality all across Britain and Mother Earth? It was all rainbows and unicorns too....

Racial inequality is not an event caused by slavery. You have it backwards, racial inequality caused slavery. You don’t enslave your equal, only your inferior whether that is identified by race, nationality, religion, sex, caste or class.

And humans have been hard wired to live in hierarchies since we evolved from primates. The only way to evolve beyond this need for hierarchy is to first realise no one caused it. No ancestors doing historical events caused inequality. It has always existed.

Oh come on, this thread is one massive whataboutery
It's fine to critique the OP's statement by pointing out:
It was the British not the English
They did not start the trade but became one of its foremost participants
'Slave trade' refers to the transatlantic slave trade

But is that where it stopped? No. What about all the other countries who did it. What about all the English people taken as slaves. What about the British ending the slave trade. What about all the civilisation Britain brought to the world.

The cumulative effect of all that is to diminish what Britain did. It's ridiculous.

You say 'the war is over'. What war? Was slavery a war? When only one side had guns?
To say the war is over and now both sides need to make peace implies that both sides were at fault. This was not a war, it was atrocity.

The descendants of the people who were victimised have never gotten an apology or restitution. You may think it's not your job to do that and to be clear for the hundredth time, no one is asking YOU to personally apologise. But the leadership of this country can certainly apologise, can return looted artifacts, can improve education on this issue. It would be something. It would help.

People have been enslaving other people for very long time, long before 'England' even existed as a country. All Empire builders enslaved members of defeated countries to build their empires. Of course the British were very active in the Triangular Trade, enslaving and trading African people but they also actively enslaved their own subjects in serfdom and later bonded service to work in their homes, their factories, mills and farms.

dreamingbohemian
Oh come on, this thread is one massive whataboutery

Its just not going the way that you want it too.

jingoistic songs like Rule Brittania..... a goady celebration of the fact that "Britons never ever ever shall be slaves"

That last bit about Britons never ever shall be slaves is more a vow or promise that they intend never on being slaves again. The Original Celtic tribes were enslaved en masse when Julius Caesar invaded and the Romans added Britain to their empire...even erasing away their native name for the island which was Albion in Celtic (Alba in Scots Gaelic) and renaming the island in Latin as Britain and the natives as “britons”

There is whataboutery and there is nevermindaboutery. It goes like this:

1. The English started the slave trade and caused all our problems.
2. No they did not. Here's why.
3. Never mind about that. The real point is something else entirely.

The Slave Trade was a trade. It started in Africa where Africans got rich selling other Africans to Europeans who came looking for gold and ivory and were offered people instead. That's how it started.

"The" British were mostly minding their own business working in factories and farming while all this was going on. Slavery was a private enterprise operation on the part of those that did it. The only time the British govt got involved was to abolish it, at great expense to ordinary British taxpayers who had to stump up for the compensation.

The war in this case is a metaphor. The point was one that conflict only ends when the parties stop fighting. That's another metaphor.

The descendants of the slavers are, mostly, the descendants of the slaves. This is not an guilt that can be inherited. The sins of the fathers.....

So precisely what difference would it make if Boris 'piccaninnies' Johnson stood on a platform and said officially sorry?

The cumilative profits of empire, all of it, in so far as it was ever in the public purse, was spent on buying bullets and food from the USA between 1939 and 1945. That money is all gone. The private wealth went into the Downton Abbeys and other such estates, the property empires and share portfolios. But you want the poor sod British working class to pay?

The cumulative effect of all that is to diminish what Britain did. It's ridiculous.

You see diminishment, I see a much needed diverse world perspective instead of a laser narrow Anglo-centric focus.

Britannia rules the waves is actually a territorial claim. It stems from Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia) ruling that all the land west of the Azores belonged to Spain and Portugal. In that case, said England, then Great Britain, we own all the water in between.