| Product: |
Apologise for the slave trade - yes or no? |
| Date: |
10.05.07 (109 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: We are moving away from the hate
Disadvantages: It wont go away for some
If I told you slavery was on the increase then you wouldn’t believe me. I’m not talking about men being chained together and transported across the Atlantic Ocean; but I am talking about modern day slavery, something the West still benefits heavily from.
On the news the other day I saw an undercover UN childcare agency operation, infiltrating a Vietnamese brothel that was full of young girls from the ages of 8-18, a stream of foreign men paying for their services. The police didn’t want to know and a tip- off meant the brothel was empty when it was raided. I then read a story about African UN peacekeepers enslaving Sudanese children and adults for sex as the genocide raged outside the compound. These stories and tragic tales go on and on around the world, Britain now a sanctuary from them. But even in the UK we are told Eastern European men are trafficking their women here to serve as sex slaves to the thriving UK market. Has anything really changed with mans inhumanity to man?
The debate and commemoration of the 200th anniversary of slavery will also raise shackles, hence the expression, passions on both sides about reparation payments (compensation for past exploitation and unpaid royalties) and apologies, lots of aggrieved Afro-Caribbean’s feeling that their ancestors unpaid arduous toils helped build the empire and so its payback time. That impressive demonstration by that black guy in front of the Queen summed up a lot of disenfranchised peoples feelings, the guy clearly wanted to be lead away in handcuffs to prove his ironic point. What I do find cringing is those white guys with beards who were clunking around town centers in chains and white togas to show support for their African brothers. I suspect black people just though that was all rather silly.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6490625.stm
The reality is we are all, what ever our color, benefiting in some way from third world bonded labor and exploitation. There are young girls in regions of India that are sold between factories to make cheap goods, their wage deducted from their value, the difference paid to their parents. They can’t leave that employer until they have paid off their asking price, parents often renewing the bond to bring in more money. Wal-Mart, the world biggest retail employer, gets most of its goods from China, girls in similar factories making the products. There the factory employees are often female, have to live in crammed dorms, there bed, board and utility costs automatically deducted from their pathetic pay packets, whether they want to live in or not.
In principal I can understand why some black groups want some cash, or at least recognition through an official sorry or some sort of deal to recognize what went on 200 years ago. The fact some will just spend the cash on goods made in the third world in those factories is not lost. I would prefer if the money was given in scholarships and small business loans, suggested by many black groups. Get some of those proud black thrones of learning like Princeton developed in the UK.
What I do take issue with is black pressure groups claiming the slave legacy is somehow responsible for most if not all of Afro-Caribbean’s current problems in the UK. With more black guys in jail than university-those damaging and disproportionately high crime rates, poor school performance and single parent issues always in the news-it does seems all too easy an option to just point the finger at slavery. The Jewish immigrants don’t point to the Holocaust and say this is why we have failed to excel. The Jewish people took that atrocity and made it their very reason to succeed.
If slavery is partly responsible for modern black Britain’s plight then its no surprise black people are more disadvantaged in the UK than most ethnic minorities today. The Joseph Roundtree Federation, a poverty monitoring group, reported that ‘approximately’ 20% of Bangladeshis are in full time work in the UK, 30% of Pakistanis and Only 40% of Afro Caribbean’s, compared to 50% of working age white Brits. With such low employment rates, clearly these guys and girls are not been given the chance of work as much as white Brits are, resulting in those higher crime rates. Can this disparity be about what happened 200 years ago in the British Empire?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6605725.stm
When Blair made that brave speech calling on the black community to take more action against knife and gun crime by being stronger parents-70% of all gun homicide committed in just seven boroughs of the UK- I think everyone let out a deep sigh of relief that that particularly sensitive bridge had been crossed in search of a solution to this implosion in the youth, again a metal scar of times gone by. You may ask what that has to do with slavery some 200 years ago, but for me all this gun crime is definitely a legacy of that simmering anger, young black kids turning on each other through that low self esteem, the need to be in a gang about belonging, those memories of those cramped boats that crossed the Atlantic the need for a gun for this new found freedom.. When you read the stories of the British captains tossing the guys overboard to claim on the insurance you just shake your head. I would certainly apologies for that as a nation.
http://www.globalblacknews.com/UKPrison.h tml
I do agree that racism plays a big part in those above, negative statistics, but I also agree that if you don’t happen to succeed in the UK it’s not always down to your skin color for that underachievement. As a lower working class person myself I’m certainly guilty of blaming the class system for my failures, the particular excuse on offer to me as a white lower middle class guy. Again, this has everything to do with the debate as slavery is deemed the driver for racism to the present day in the UK.
Wilberforce battled to get these kids out of those chains and confined spaces yet here we are in 2007 with one in every hundred black people still behind bars. In my experience (which is limited) employers and people alike discriminate against color like they do with anything else in life that they are not comfortable with for intrinsic reasons, be it fat people, disabled people, short people or foreign people etc. I’m 100% sure just as many Asian employers would not employ black people as whites wouldn’t employ Asians on race reasons. As long as enough black people believe they will never be fully integrated in the UK because they feel, and are made to feel different, then the slave legacy will always be there as an out. But judging by the attitudes of both groups you talk to they are still very polarized on race in the UK. The big question is just what would Africa be like today if the colonization never happened and the people never taken away some two centuries ago...There lies your answer on if we should apologize.
Summary: This is about race not freedom.
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