After the shenanigans at Westminster Abbey yesterday (27/03/07), I re-opened somewhere deep inside of me questions about slavery. I cannot express in mere words the feeling that goes through me when I think about the atrocities committed against my ancestors. And to think, nothing really has come of it. How many people died during slave trade? Is there any memorial specifically in their honour? Why do people keep saying that it is not in living memory? Why are we celebrating W. Wilberforce? Is being wronged made right purely because it was a long time ago? Why will someone parade before you wealth that was gotten through your ancestor's wealth? Questions, Questions, Questions. So many of them. We need answers. We need an apology at least.
Why am I writing this? Well one word... REPARATIONS. I'll come to that topic soon. Stay Tuned. Spread the word.
1 comment:
We are celebrating Wilberforce because he turned the people of Great Britain against slavery at a time slavery was a global institution practiced by every nation on every continent. Thanks to Wilbrforce, Great Britain outlawed the slave trade in its colonies and took military action against other nations' fleet of slave ships. From Great Britian, abolition sentiment spread to the United States.
Great Britain participated, along with the rest of the word, in the slave trade, but African tribes ran the slave markets. The Europeans did not raid African villages to kidnap and enslave Africans; they purchased slaves from the African tribes.
The British public accepted higher taxation to support the colonization of Africa because they were promised it would end slavery, which had continued in Africa after it had been abolished in Europe and the Americas. The European colonization of Africa, which began in the late 1800s, virtually ended slavery in Africa. The colonies enriched some merchants, but proved a finanical drain on European treasuries. This is why the "rush to out of Africa" was as "urgent as the rush to get into Africa."
Slavery has made a stong comeback in Africa now that the Europeans have abandoned their African colonies. More human beings, many of them children, are trafficked today in Africa than at the height of the Atlantic slave trade. European nations continue to provide aid in time of famine and often intervenes militarily to stop genocidal warfare.
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