A Captive
It’s an opinion of mine that there will never be peace without justice.
There is quite a bit of talk about anniversary dates and commemoration of the role the British state, corporations, churches and society played in the genocide of African people.
Gestures, on the part of the part of government, government funded organizations and individuals, fall wide of the mark.
Welsh born Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Anglican (English) and British state church head has this to say:
“We do not have direct moral and legal liability for the acts, however deplorable, of ancestors, nor do we have a clearly defined destination for reparation in the sense of being able to identify exclusively and precisely those who would count as current victims, however obvious and widespread is the ongoing cost of the slave trade’s legacy. We have no clear way of distinguishing levels of culpability as between those who in Britain and America operated the trade and those who ’serviced’ it locally – though the levels of relative profit are enormously wide. Most importantly, as in other areas of the law, we have no simple calculus of cost in terms of the value of lives.”
In a what he called a sermon on 24 April 2007, this fellow went on to declare that trying to set up a legal proceeding to handle reparations to Africans would prove impractical and confusing.
While Williams, connected politically to the Africa-enriched English royals, prefers to be addressed at times as ‘Your Grace’, this author sees him as ‘Your Grease’.
This is trying to wiggle out of responsibility for genocide.
Even for this non-believer, Williams is sinful.
If African people are not involved in finding out whether reparations is in their best interest, how can Williams claim reparations is impractical? There is nothing confusing about treating a serious wound. Hour by hour African people in England, Scotland and Wales are reminded that they are supposedly damaged and not able to fit into society. The presumption that a people automatically heal from historical trauma is probably only applied to Africans. A switch, when convenient is the idea that we were ‘born that way’ (unfit) or just haven’t progressed enough to compete with other races.
Toyin Agbetu interrupted “Slave Trade Anniversary” proceedings at Westminster in
London, April, 2007. The English queen and Prime Minister Tony Blair were
confronted with Toyin’s demand for an apology to African people.
Much of this weird reasoning stinks of that of late 1700s England.
At the time, Africans were prime, the cog in capitalist’s greatest era of human trafficking.
Bristol grew several hundred percent in population due to ships loaded to the hulls with chained Africans, often youth. Treacherously gotten from what is today Nigeria or Gambia. Bristol began solid manufacturing not only of iron body shackles and wrist cuffs but also the favorite colored scarves or buttons for Africans in league with the Whites. Liverpool soon outpaced London and the southwest port as the place to buy and grade human beings. By the 1700s, the elite of the town were all tied to being a ‘zealous servant of the trading interests’. Members of Parliament, mayors, preachers and banking heads all traced their wealth to inhuman activities that cause people to shudder even today. In modern parlance, they diversified their portfolio in order to claim respectability and a civilized profile.
In the closing months of 1786 and early 1787, London had ships sitting at docks for unwanted Africans who had been ‘freed’ to destitution and homelessness. The capital was for most a bleak impoverished existence. A good 10,000 were scattered across the island. Ideas of deporting these Africans—some born on the Continent, some from the generations of US states such as Virginia or Georgia or Connecticut or Caribbean islands like Barbados—were rampant. Many men had been loyalists to the crown in the English colonies only to be refused a pension. Some had lived in the US, fought a losing battle for the Empire and then fled to Canada, only to be denied promised land or the payment in Nova Scotia or New Brunswick. They had usually been socially shunned then shipped to England, or even to West Africa (colonization schemes by White missionaries and liberals) and further exile.
In essence, welfare money for the London Africans was cut off if they did not sign on for resettlement in 1786. An announcement to the public to not give money to the Africans during Christmas was made—instead the English were advised that resettlement would be far better for the ignorant Africans. Those who huddled around the wharf and on boats said to be bound for Africa didn’t know if they would end up back in the US or Bahamas in chains again. Africans began to organize and demand answers to their fate, enraging Whites. Much of what is today Sierre Leone still had the selling of human beings in full swing and there was open talk by Whites of forcing them towards whatever land the impatient White funders wished.
After three ships, Vernon, Belisarius and Atlantic, all finally left London’s Thames river on 23 February 1787 tragedy unfolded. At least 50 people had died while docked and under the fury of English people at the hesitant African position. At Plymouth, stocks of two ships had to be replenished. Theft and and understocked goods had to be replaced. Out into the sea on 9 April 1787 sailed 350 Africans, 41 were women and 59 White wives. A month’s journey and nearly 40 people died before sighting Sierre Leone shorelines. The misery of African captivity resumed at the hands of the French and their version of l’esclavage. Geopolitical storms roared between Americans (seeking African captives) and British (man ‘o war gunship) and an African strongman; and military battles over the exiles as political pawns erupted. The Anglican church missionary fled the scene, angry that the Africans had not built him a church and house.
By 1791, just sixty of the initial more than 400 passengers had survived in Sierre Leone.
Whatever the attempt to disassociate themselves from horrible injustices, the Human Rights violations never dealt with, society in Britain is coming to a point of closure on the issue.
As time moves in circles and not in a linear direction, there will be a judgment in the case of the former Empire vs African people.
18 December 2007
From Exile,
Bankole
www.geocities.com/exiledone2002
REFERENCES:
1. Campaign For Reparations - Can Africa Make Claims To The West?
2. Dying While Black
3. My Face Is Black Is True: Callie House and the Struggle for Ex-Slave Reparations
4. Whiteness and Morality: Pursuing Racial Justice through Reparations and Sovereignty (Black Religion/Womanist Thought/Social Justice)
5. Redress for Historical Injustices in the United States: On Reparations for Slavery, Jim Crow, and Their Legacies
6. The Birth of Black America: The First African Americans and the Pursuit of Freedom at Jamestown
7. Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
8. The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks
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