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

England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution

It is possible to acknowledge both that many white peoples are underprivileged due economic or class factors for eg. AND that across a broad range of categories that black people face even poorer outcomes and discrimination. Why are so many white ppl so sensitive about this fact?

Are all black people everywhere worse off than all whites?

What do you want? If you want to talk about power structures, social hierarchy and how they are maintained then I am right with you, especially when we start to look at practical ways of reducing inequalities and giving everyone a decent chance (while accepting that we will never get perfection). The possibilities of some blind job recruitment, social housing and a welfare system, etc.

Too much of this, and too much of the attitudes I see particularly in current youngsters (millennials typically), sounds rather more trivial. What they want is for their victimhood to be centred irrespective of the complex nature of prejudice in Britain. What they appear to be asking for, and don't realise that they're asking for, is that those who happen to be born white immediately move over and hand over all gains no matter how much they had to be fought for. That we centre their particular ideas of how life should be, no matter who that disadvantages. That is their focus on skin colour and race, not mine.

Do you really expect those of us in Britain's lowest ranks, whose ancestors always were in those lowest ranks, to be happy about swapping one set of masters for another?

It's interesting that there hasn't been any talk of destroying the statues - not that I have seen. Just that they should not be in a position where future generations might think we were commemorating these "people with complex histories" (which is the usual establishment line trotted out to avoid discussing their darker sides).

(Churchill (for example). "Had a long and complex career".)

By all means keep the statues - but in a museum to show that are consigned to history. Along with explanatory notes for future generations. Like the massive Nazi flag the Gloucester regiment took down in Berlin. They decided to put it inside on a wall in the Gloucester Museum with photos of it's capture, not outside on a flagpole.

For what it's worth, I imagine many people these effigies were erected in "honour" of would be horrified to learn they were still being considered the best thing since sliced bread 300 years later. It doesn't really speak much to progress does it ?

All of which being said, I would be worried that the forces of racism do take a few statues down, and then write in their diary that evening "sorted racism out. Took down a statue. Who know it would be so easy ?"

By all means keep the statues - but in a museum to show that are consigned to history

As has already been eloquently pointed out by @TomPinch, statues are also art. Why should the art of the UK's public spaces be consigned to a museum? On the dictates of a tiny group? This is not only deliberately divisive, but profoundly undemocratic. What mandate do you have to impose this Year Zero purge?

Why should the art of the UK's public spaces be consigned to a museum?

Company ?

We live in a fluid and changing world. Unless your argument is that God put the statutes there and they are as permanent as the planets and stars ?

No, thought not.

Art goes where it fits in the time. A few of these artistic masterpieces (are they listed in every guide to Britain - our own rival to Michaelangelos David - on Thames ?) are fortunate enough to have survived long enough to see society change around them.

There's lots of old art in museums. And if Britain hadn't nicked quite so much from around the world, there would be room for lots more.

And if you don't like moving statues into museums for one reason, why not look on it as providing opportunities for modern artists to gain wider exposure. Who knows, some of those artists just might benefit more from a vacant plinth than 300 year old "philanthropy" ?

Moving statues from plinths into museums seems a jolly good British compromise. Because there are some countries that would destroy them, and there are others that would ring them with armed guards and minefields.

No, the English didn't start slavery. Certainly benefitted from it and not all slaves were of different skin colours, there were white slaves as well. My understanding is that tribes who won against other tribes made the people of the losing one slaves and then sold them on when they had an opportunity.

We did end it though, even paying off other countries to get rid of it. Starting at the end of the 1600's/start of the 1700's. During this time the US became independent & slavery came back at one point before being abolished after hard work by Jefferson and it came back in France after Napoleon for a while.

The abolition of slavery and serfdom

Moving statues from plinths into museums seems a jolly good British compromise. Because there are some countries that would destroy them

Yes. There are regimes which applied a Year Zero purge. The Khmer Rouge was one. Suggesting that the citizens of a Western democracy should be humbly grateful for a compromise by allowing a tiny minority to dictate statues of historical significance are dumped into museums instead of being blown up like the Taliban? That's not only peculiar. It's a chilling comparison. By the way? Authoritarian regimes don't need to put landmines around statues. Do you imagine China's citizens are spraying BLM on statues of Chairman Mao?

Do you imagine China's citizens are spraying BLM on statues of Chairman Mao?

I'd wonder if there are any up to begin with ....

And only in Britain could compromise between two extremes be seen as chilling . Presumably Buddhism is a terrorist organisation then ?

I personally think its racist. You don't blame the great grandchild of a serial killer for the crimes they committed. The people that created slavery are dead so surely its racist against white people to judge them because of the past. We don't judge Germans and accuse them of being nazis.

Watching bargain hunt about the miners and factory workers of yesteryear. Quite depressing.

So today I are been mostly listening to my old records. As an angry adolescent, I used to shout the words of The Jam's In The City, which references the men in uniform who never had the right to kill a man.

This is a reference to the death of a white New Zealander who was truncheoned to death by the Met cops on an anti-racist demo in 1976. I stand with Blair Peach.

I was also taken with a Deacon Blue tracks, which asks the question, Can this white man sing the blues? And comes to the conclusion that he has the blue world, and the blue sky, and the blue ocean in his blue eyes. This is my country, he says, And these are my reasons.

So no, it is no privelige that I am slightly less oppressed than black people in this society. It is, in the words of the UNUDHR,

^The inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice
and peace in the world,^

that

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

and

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

This is my country and these are my rights.

The people that created slavery are dead so surely its racist against white people to judge them because of the past.

Unless they continue to benefit from their ancestors actions ?

@woodhill
I’m from Lancashire and spent years tracing my family tree. In the main my ancestors were either miners or cotton mill workers. On the 1841 census I have instances of my ancestors whole families working down the coal mine, including an 8yo girl, 10yo boy, 12yo boy, mother and father.
Harrowing times.

spartacus-educational.com/Child_Labour.htm

Yes it was all peachy for the wc. I think this is not conveyed. The impression is that everyone in the UK was always relatively comfortable. It has been fought for tooth and nail over the centuries and there is still inequalities..

Think of the civil war, transportation and the rise of the Chartist movement, 2 world wars, Jarrow marches, terrible sacrifices in the UK as well as other countries

Every Victorian man just about than a very few like John Stuart Mill was a sexist at home and owned his wife's property but we don't tear down their statues including those of men who invented the railways and that kind of thing.

Triple same here - 1841 census shows my ancestors down the mines including one 10 year old boy. I have gone back on all sides to the 1700s and everyone last one of them was from UK/Ireland and the only one with any money (and was a freeman who only owned a couple of properties and left a will when he died in about 1808) was not particularly well off. All the others were at not much above subsistence level and certainly did not have slaves.

BovaryX

My DW has echoed your earlier words. She remembers the revolution in Iran, when the fundamentalists destroyed the Shah's fathers tomb (they stopped short of destroying all the palaces though and they are used today, and are open to the public).
There are now calls to remove signs and statues of John Hawkins and Francis Drake, two of our most famous seafarers from the 16th century.

"Unless they continue to benefit from their ancestors actions ?"

That just confirms what I said earlier in this thread, that no apology will ever be enough.

She remembers the revolution in Iran, when the fundamentalists destroyed the Shah's fathers tomb (they stopped short of destroying all the palaces though and they are used today, and are open to the public).

Sadly fewer Iranians remember the previous "revolution" where the UK and US removed a democratically elected government to install the aforementioned Shah as a US puppet against the USSR.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

Maybe, just maybe, they had a point.

That's a bit of history worth remembering, if only for the appearance of Kermit Roosevelt (Jnr)

I notice the US apologised in 2013 - possibly so loudly they drowned out all and any news of the UKs apology ?

It's clear history is a complicated and deeply entwined subject. Maybe they should teach it in depth at Universities ?

That just confirms what I said earlier in this thread, that no apology will ever be enough.

There was a question mark at the end, indicating I wasn't stating but asking.

I think the underlying point is that if things were equal, there'd be no need for an apology ?

And if you want long lasting injustices, then look at who still owns most of the land in England, nearly 1000 years after it was conquered. It's the descendants of William the Bastards cronies.

It's clear history is a complicated and deeply entwined subject. Maybe they should teach it in depth at Universities?

It is, yes, as is any social study. Did you really expect it not to be? Perhaps such things are good to study after all? "The proper study of mankind is man" said somebody famous - I expect someone can tell me who - and please note that even as a modern feminist I am not going to try and whitewash his words, which were written with the innocence of the time.

Couldn't resist that one.

"The proper study of mankind is man" said somebody famous - I expect someone can tell me who

Alexander Pope (feels smug he didn't have to Google it ) .

Quite right too. Only he didn't "say" it (as I read it). He declared it. Being as people (then) looked up to him.

ISIS pulled down wonderful ancient Syrian structures and I think some buddhist statues too - it is appalling descretation and we want no part in that kind of thing in the UK. Of course if people don't like a particular statue or street name or person they can just look away when they walk down that bit of a street surely.

And "man" used to be taken to include "woman" in those days, as I understand it ?

...desecration..