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.

Totally agree with this statement, and I just wish that some people, like the irritating idiot of my former manager, who is now thankfully retired, would get off their high horses about the slave trade and how EVERYONE in the UK would have had some connection to it!
I can categorically deny it, as I’ve researched my family tree, but he was insistent that nobody in the time of slavery was innocent of profiting from it. A rather weird view, given that my family were fleeing persecution themselves on one side (Hugenots), and struggling with their slave-owning Landlords in rural Ireland on the other…

Oh look another white bait thread. No wonder people are becoming pissed off with the white savior woke agenda.

Black history is not the only history, sick of hearing it. If the woke mob had our way all white people would be paying reparations for ever and the only history taught would be black history.

Sorry nope not interested anymore its been overdone and most people I know are sick of it and its become another decisive load of crap we're all getting sick of hearing.

Every country, every faith and every colour of skin has its horrible history. It's a fact and no one born today had any influence or part in it. So give it a rest 🙄

Why would I feel bad about something I had absolutely nothing to do with?
Also during the time of the slave trade, Africa was ruled by some extremely powerful regional empires and kingdoms. Slavery was a huge part of the economy and culture. The transport of millions of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic absolutely could not have happened had the Africans not been complicit.
Perhaps instead of arguing over historical grievances people should focus on the fact that millions of people are still enslaved in the world, predominantly in Africa. These people would benefit most from people's outrage. No one seems interested though?

There’s several aspects that always get muddled up together in these kind of debates

Firstly, the strong, the rich, the powerful, the cruel, have always exploited others, for all of recorded history for thousands of years. On all scales from individuals through families, clans, businesses and nation states. It’s a sad aspect of human nature and is as true today as it’s ever been and I can’t see that ever changing. Realistically all we can do is mitigate the worst of it through laws to protect the weaker, but it will never go away, just find new routes of exploitation, like playing whack-a-mole.

Secondly, the consideration of what is cruel and exploitative behaviour changes with time. Slavery is a well known example, something again that goes back thousands of years. It is in the Bible and is accepted by Jesus. It took until the eighteenth century for enough white people to start saying hang on, this isn’t right and they had to really fight against others with their bibles saying it’s a totally normal part of human society. Today of course it is condemned by all mainstream society, except as PP have said, it still goes on and we all turn a blind eye.

Following on from that is the tendency to judge history through the lens of today’s values. People we condemn today may have been law abiding, upstanding, admired citizens of their day (eg Colston). We will be judged in years to come for doing things that our descendants will consider abhorrent by their standards, probably related to pollution and climate change.

So I think all we can do today is examine our consciences to ask ourselves - am I living by the right values, do I do wrong by others, have I done so in the past. Can I address those wrongs. Laura Trevalyn has obviously decided to extend her soul searching to further back in time. Good for her, but should it be compulsory? IMHO, no.

To be fair, if they still live in Germany there's a good chance they have visited.

If you started with those that made them slaves and then sold them you may have a point.
You may also have a point if you included all of those that sold slaves and not just the Atlantic slave trade,

Great post

As it happens I visited a plantation in the last few weeks. It was a powerful experience and I'd recommend it to anyone. Trying to understand our history is important.

But this trend in trying to make people accountable for the past wrongs of their ancestors is problematic. Life/history is too messy for this to be done in any meaningful way. Better for us all to live as good a life as we can in the here and now.

Huh www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-65440287
She is descendent from Sir Charles Trevelyan

Because it's much more difficult to do something about modern slavery rather than bang on about feeling guilty for something that happened years before we were all born.

Don't forget White People have been slaves too . Indentured Irish sent to Jamaica , the Barbary Pirates snatching young White Women off the Devon / Cornish coast . It's not all one sided .

No I don’t think it’s obligatory as it’s nothing you have done personally.

Also, how far back are we going with this guilt? Should every Norwegian feel bad that the vikings invaded Britain? I don’t see groups of mournful Norwegians shuffling miserably around the British coastline!

The term slave has its origins in the word slav. The slavs, who inhabited a large part of Eastern Europe, were taken as slaves by the Muslims of Spain during the ninth century AD.

The word from which slave derived referred to white people - Slavs of Eastern Europe.

Is England (particularly old money/ upper classes) not full of inherited wealth??

Where did this come from I wonder? It was largely generated by no strange coincidence, from the slave trade and other atrocities, such as the Irish famine.

well quite intrestingly according to this article, total profits from the slave trade, had they been invested entirely in Britain, would have accounted for about three per cent of all capital formation in 1770.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/did-britain-s-wealth-really-come-from-the-slave-trade/

I think if you know your wealth and advantage has come from the exploitation of others and you can clearly see the legacy of that then the decent thing is to try and redress it. I don't think that involves big performative visits and poverty tourism. Quiet donations to help the people still suffering because of what happened to make you rich is enough.

Absolutely this!

Whilst if voluntarily done it is a good thing, you cannot make people alive today responsible for the sins of forefathers, many generations later, and if there is family money now it will be mostly due to business decisions and prudent decisions since that period as it's now 200 years later in the case of the UK.

When it comes to reparations where do you stop. Do Sweden, Norway and Denmark pay us for the slaves the Vikings took?
Do the French pay the king for stealing Aquitaine from his family?
I'm hopeful I will get something from the West country men placed into slavery "barbadosed" after the Monmouth rebellion

Remember inheritance tax for the wealthy you describe is 40%. This goes into the treasuries coffers and could well be benefitting the people described in the OP.

Also a lot of the 'old money' you described, carry out a number of charitable and philanthropic endeavours that they don't broadcast. I personally know of one local family who did make fortunes which were partially funded by trading with slave owners. Who now pledge millions every year to local causes.

A number already do. It is just that part doesn't fit with the rhetoric of those claiming victimisation for events a number of generations ago.

Even going back to the times slavery was still happening. A number of these business men built hospitals, schools, libraries. Including Colston right across Bristol.

You do realise that hundreds of thousands of people in Africa were sold into the slave trade by their own people? Often they were criminals or other undesirables that the local chieftain or king wanted to get rid of (and get well paid for). They were rounded up by their own people and herded into holding forts at the coast, ready for sale to European slavers. It was a multi million pound industry that sold people on an industrial scale.

Or did you think that innocent people were playing on the beaches in Africa and a European slaver ship just happened by and dragged them aboard?

This ☝️

Oddly my dad was born in a workhouse in 1926 - where’s my reparations?

The whole thing is one nonsense.

Some of them were just from other tribes.

And, in his time, Colston started up a huge educational benefit fund which, 200 years later, donated the equivalent of over 2 million pounds to the University of Bristol. So all the students at Bristol merrily protesting about Colston? Rather ironic.