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.

It has no value if it is forced, and the sins of the father. If someone chooses to do it, great.

The people we should be angry with are industrialists now amassed fortunes while their workers (actually doing the work to make the money) live in poverty.

It is probable that they do. The Vikings were in Africa. All modern Africans are descended from all people who were in Africa 2k ago..Yes of course there are other parts of the world other than Asia, Europe, the Americas and Africa. I said MOST of the world has Viking ancestry. Not ALL of the world has Viking ancestry

I suggest you improve your reading skills before criticising anyone else's areas of academic expertise.

The white slave traders bought the slaves at slave markets from their existing African owners.
Slavery was rife across Africa and had been for many centuries.
Mansa Musa, Emporer of Mali, famously took 12,000 of his personal slaves with him on his pilgrimage to Mecca.

No, but I do recommend visiting Rome because I am sure some of my forefathers were killed by those nasty abusive Italians c 2,000 years ago.

I doubt it, reading most of these thread it's all about the justification that it's ok and not a big deal. It's not 'done' when the general consensus from what I can assume is mostly white people is that it's not a big deal because it happened a long time ago or because someone else did it too

In WW2 the smart-looking Gestapo uniforms were designed and made by Hugo Boss, I wonder how many posters have bought their products without that knowledge?

Doesn't that just prove OPs point though, that understanding is important?

Interesting that when I made a similar comment a few years ago I was put on the MN naughty step, does that mean we're becoming more realistic about the past?

Surely a much simpler answer to this rather ridiculous suggestion would be a less capitalist based and more socialist based society? Higher taxes for extreme wealth, more investment in public education, disability, housing etc and the various factors that contribute to intergenerational poverty.

Another relevant point to consider is the products we buy. For exame a rich person with inherited wealth buys high quality goods from an ethically sourced product, a poorer person buys a cheaper version made by a slave or indentured worker, who is morally better?

That's not most of the world I also think if you think what is going on today in many parts of Africa as a direct result of colonialism is ok because 'modern Africans' might have some Viking genes

Don't be so ridiculous.

This is such a facile argument.

How would most people even know?

And no doubt are you just talking about the white descendents of slave owners? Or are you rolling in the north Africans who kidnapped whole villages of people from Cornwall or Wales.

What about the Russians. So many were enslaved that this is literally where the word slave comes from. Are you tracking the descendents of the ottomans etc who owned those slaves?

Or is this just another boring attempt at making white a pejorative word?

No but it is gracious and decent to feel sorry about them (not 'for' them) and to want to try to make amends, especially if the father's or ancestor's sins have made them rich.

Tell me you're a communist without telling me you're a communist 👀😂

Particularly if their family still has wealth

Well, unless you're proposing that the people who haven't got a penny of inherited wealth or privilege as a result of what happened 190+ years ago get a free holiday, it would have to be the wealthy ones, wouldn't it?

There's an online database that lists everyone who owned slaves. At the time it was the norm for people to invest in them in the way they do with stocks and shares or property today. So someone living in Manchester might part own a slave in Jamaica as a means of funding their retirement, even though they'd never even been there.

You can search for your ancestors names on the database:
www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/

If you don't know, then you are probably not directly descended from wealthy slave owners. In which case OP is not talking about you.

I think the Trevelyan family are to be commended for their approach to this.

I listened to a very interesting podcast about a black girl bought up in a white middle class family.
She was very surprised when she visited her Jamaican roots that her ancestors were black slave traders.

Yup absolutely this.
if my father murders someone should I and my descendants forever go round in sack cloth apologising for it?

If he stole a diamond ring before the murder and gave it to you, should you give the ring to the victim's next if kin?

Yeah because it's that simple.

I'm a gypsy, I'm still mistreated to this day. Where's my reparations?

Yes actually people ought to. I have been. (Unfortunately even today there are plantations that misrepresent history as being about nice architecture and gardens.)

and before you ask: my family is Jewish and came to the UK from Eastern Europe. I've been to Auschwitz. Unfortunately the Nazis completely destroyed several of the extermination camps as they left. One branch of my family was sent to Chelmno which was entirely destroyed.

you don't know history until you see it in the face. It's all too easy to start being "what about modern slavery..." and "but Africans participated". Well that's all true but it doesn't erase what Britain did.

Why stop at this? All my ancestors were white working class people who lived hard, often short lives, working in brutal working class jobs in mills, coal mines, and factories, to make some capitalist rich. They weren’t slaves, but were physically and mentally brutalised so someone else could make money from their labour. If we’re going down this path, where’s my apology and my reparations?

I think anyone who comes from 'family wealth' can safely assume some element of historic exploitation and resource accumulation (such as hoarding of property) whether 400 or 40 years ago. This is capitalism. To not ponder upon the provenance of one's privilege seems like a massive empathy fail.

No-one got rich from fair treatment and remuneration of employees or sticking to the principle of acquiring property or goods 'for personal use only'. There is generally a point at which an individual has decided to improve their own position at the expense of another, whether through curtailing or withholding rights and reward for labour, time or services or taking advantage of conditions which allowed excessive accumulation. Sometimes through literal violence, oppression and subjugation, and more frequently, much more subtly.

To some, this represents shrewdness and astutely progressing one's interests in the context of the time, to me it illustrates a fundamental flaw in an economic structure which is intrinsically individualistic. Of course, there are instances where individuals have 'done well for themselves' through their own hard graft initially, but for this to become transferable, as passed down family wealth, there is usually an element of investment or accrual of resources, the act of which usually entails the deprivation of another some way down the line.