To think descendants of slave owners should visit former plantations?

[rowernoke]

Particularly if their family still has wealth earned through the atrocities of the slave trade and slavery?

For example, Laura Trevalyan visited former plantations in Grenada and met with local people to understand the role her ancestors played in the slave trade. She was so moved by this that she is now sponsoring education initiatives for those affected.

Now don't go confusing those poor downtrodden students with fact. 😁Most were out on the lash, posting about something they knew nothing about on facepagetwitx.

Incidentally, Colston gave Millions in todays money to local causes during his lifetime. Sadly the foundation he started which gave to local good causes shut down not long after the demonstrations. But hey thank goodness those demonstrators told us about the bad things he did.

Yes, we mustn't let actual facts get in the way of their righteous indignation.

Quite. A lot of Jacobite rebels ended up on slave plantations too. They were meant to be indentured for 5 to 10 years only. But most plantation owners never bothered to free them.

I am a descendant of a slave owner. It was 300 years ago - the only thing we have to show for it is a rather nice Chinese bowl.

I don't need to visit a plantation to know that slavery is bad.

Every bloody culture in the history of the world has implemented some version of slavery. African countries bought and sold slaves among themselves, long before the Europeans got involved FFS.

There's plenty of slavery going on today OP. Let's do something about that.

Slavery may have been 'acceptable' at one time in the sense that it was legally permitted, but it was widely opposed and deplored as well. Many thinking people even then understood it was evil; that is how it got to be abolished in the first place.

I don't think regular people today have anything to be reproached for. A very few families at the time accumulated vast riches through the slave trade, but most people emphatically did not; we can acknowledge that slavery is a whole different order of evil and still accept that most people in the UK at the time were badly exploited and impoverished too. So why should their descendants feel any guilt for this?

I don't agree though with the angle 'let's demand reparations from the French for 1066'. This is really very recent past: after slavery was abolished it was agreed to pay vast amounts of compensation; none to the former slaves, all of it to the slave owners for the loss of their human 'property'.

Do you know when that debt was paid off? 2015. That means that generations of taxpayers had to pay off that debt - also that descendants of slaves who worked in the UK up to 2015 actually contributed to clearing the debt that was created because of a payment made to their ancestors' owners, just so that they could be freed.

So it would be nice if the other families who have built (and today still benefit from) huge wealth historically acquired on the back of slavery could find a conscience and look at ways of making reparations. It would be nice if our beloved Royal Family (who are heavily implicated) could set an example of leadership in this regard. And I think as a nation we should stop worshipping wealth, accept the ugly side of our past and look it in the face. But collective individual guilt? I don't think so.

Anyone who deplores slavery and human exploitation needs to take action against it here and now. That means things like: don't buy cheap fast fashion. Don't access porn. Report any potential slavery or exploitation if you encounter it.

Yes the British taxpayer paid for a legal abolition of slavery across the world. You're welcome.

See above for examples of families and the perpetrators themselves who are/did make philanthropic endeavours to help the less forunate. The Colston history is a good case in point.

As for reparations. WW2 is far more recent and I believe Germany still owes reparation money to some European Countries. Should we lambast all Germans for the sins of their Fathers? Or should we now accept that they had no control over it, and are disgusted by some of the crimes carried out in their name?

Are you very young?

@Livingtothefull “I don't agree though with the angle 'let's demand reparations from the French for 1066'. This is really very recent past: after slavery was abolished it was agreed to pay vast amounts of compensation; none to the former slaves, all of it to the slave owners for the loss of their human 'property'. “

I was, in fact, joking about 1066….

Slavery was a normal part of life since prehistory. The Atlantic slave trade wasn't the last slave trade.

Slavery is still legal in some US states if the person is incarcerated.

Many cocoa plantations in Africa rely on child labour, and often the children are not paid, technically slavery is illegal but it happens.

Places like Dubai might not have legal slavery but the construction workers are lucky to be paid.

We should be trying to rid the world of slavery.

Think about all the reggae bands that played in Colston Hall

@sashh

Agreed . People should focus that fury into tackling modern day slavery .

Wasn't there someone on Who Do You Think You Are who had the same experience?

And if they will wonder who did the trafficking of the women.

That's like telling Germans they all have to visit concentration camps. Noone is responsible for something a different person in a different society in long gone history did, it's dividing to pretend they are.