If you look at Abolitionism as an international movement, it really got rolling in the 1770s, starting in the UK and the US at about the same time (in the US, the Quakers were a major force). There had been outliers before - e.g. Hungary, ca. 1000 - but Abolitionism as a growing movement clearly started in the US and UK (although it had a long, and uphill, struggle in the former, of course).


Nope. The UK was at that time turning into an industrial powerhouse, and woldn't have felt any kind of threat from the US slaves, who were principally engaged in agricultural activity. (In fact, the UK depended on US cotton for its cloth mills.) Also, the US didn't really start to loom large on the world stage (as opposed to locally) in commercial and military terms until the end of the 19th century, many decades after Abolitionism really took over in the UK.

Noel

Again... considering that we're a British colony and that the British were respsonsible for slave trade in Bermuda, I would fully anticipate that they would be the ones to end it here. But conversely, they were also the driving force behind it in the US and Bermuda given even just the fact that both were colonies... So if we take your irony point and apply it conversely, wouldn't if be justified for black Bermudians to feel some sort of animosity towards the British for perpetuating the institution in the first instance?




I beg to differ. However, wouldn't the UK have had an interest in limiting their former colonies development, and meddling/interfering/interrupting their affairs? Even if just for pride? And or/flexing their muscles as dominant world power? Oh, and here's an irony point for you... Did you know that a number of Abolitionists were actually slaveholders/owners themselves? Ain't that a bytch!? 

Absolutely. You read some of the things Abraham Lincoln said about African Americans, it'll give you a whole different take on who he was.


I was thinking about this in the whole context of the education thing, and I've always had a bit of hard time understanding why black Bermudian educational numbers started to fall apart in the 1980s, compared to earlier (not that the earlier results were all they could/should have been, but still, it's the direction at various times I'm most interested in), but I suddenly had a 'cognition' (as the Co$ would say) a few minutes ago, and now I have a theory. It may be full of it, but here it is anyway.

I think back when legal segregation/discrimination was in force, education represented to black people (in both the US and Bermuda, I think the dynamics may well be similar) one of the few avenues open to them to make things better for themselves. So there was great support for it in that context.

However, at the same time, I wonder if it got internally, emotionally labelled as something 'white', a "white institution" as you say - so that when black people gained greater freedom (and power, in Bermuda), that negative association caused people to turn away from it, once they no longer felt they had no choice?

I dunno, these numbers have always puzzled me, I wonder if this is part of the answer.

Noel

The thing is that the whole point of 'trade' (i.e. commerce) is that one has to have something to trade. In the 1700s and 1800s I suspect that slaves were what the Africans sold because that was the highest-value commodity that they had to exchange.

Your wording above seems to make it clear that you place the blame for the slave trade on the people who bought the slaves. What about the people who sold them? I can point you at personal accounts from Royal Naval personnel from the 1800s where the local African rulers were batshit pissed off at them for trying to (as the rulers saw it) shut down their most lucrative source of income.


I'd have to think about that for a while.

The problem is that you can't judge another time by today's standards; in Rome, family heads (male) had the power of life and death over their families. They could put a child to death, legally, if they wanted to. Was that right? Wrong? By whose standards, and when were those standards evolved/created?

So in this particular case, these hypothetical black Bermudians would first have a complete understanding of the entire circumstances, and in particular recognition that that was in a time of different moral standards, when (for instance) executing people for stealing a loaf of bread (or something on that order, I don't remember the exact details) was sometimes seen.

Moral standards and moral awareness are always evolving. Maybe some day some of our descendants will look back on us and despise us because we so un-enlightened we treated plants poorly, or something like that. So I'd have to think long and hard to accurately assess how much blame people back then deserve for just doing what was accepted back then.

And our hypothetical audience would also have to have an accurate assessment of the blame - because I think it's hypocritical to be all pissed off at white Europeans of that day for not being morally evolved enought to know that slavery was wrong, and to give a total pass to African rulers who were busy selling slaves. What, black Africans get a pass? Why is that?


If that was it, why did they do the same to their then-current colonies - like Bermuda?

Noel

The failure to clarify on your part, does not constitute misleading on mine.  You very clearly said it was a black and white thing.  Just like you clearly said the names in the petition were white.  I think you covered both petitions, if I'm not mistaken.  Plus you even say on a later post that you were referring to last names.  

You are in fact doing the misleading... and being divisive.  The last time I check, Bermuda is a British Dependent Territory - GET USED TO IT!


Who is "they" that can't "understand why black folk have just as valid reasons to feel differently about what the relationship means".  Would that be white folk?  

Just for the record Thaao - I am not "white".  What does that now do to your argument?  What broad brush you paint things with.


Perhaps you can link an audio clip of exactly if I'm so off base...  At the same time, can you add an audio clip of your PLP song so we can see just who have "pre-conceived notions".

I listen to your show to take the temperature of what's being pushed by the leaders above you.  It's a knowledge seeking iniative really.  Don't flatter yourself.  Your rating are very high in the morning, then drop off like hott potatoes thereafter... don't think it's only folks that think like you who are listening.

You don't annoy me at all.  Humour me, yes...

And one final final - the guy who called in about the drug bust yesterday and why it didn't hit the RG today... You may have wanted to let him know that RG folks don't work on a Sunday and that might have had something to do with it.  Ya think?!  I notice you never mentioned it....   Was that misleading?  

Did I give you the expansion you were after, or is there more I can elucidate?


Well, that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside... :-)

Noel

you actually posed this theory in an earlier thread; perhaps in less detail, but the general gist is an idea that's been floated amongst sociological circles for about a decade or so. i.e. black folk had been too ruined by slavery/segregation to know how to manage freedom effectively. like, letting domesticated pets into the wild and expecting them somehow avoid landing badly at the deep end of the food chain. obviously, there would be some success stories who are able to overcome their...instincts, but if you've been neutered for long enough, there's only so much guts you'll be able to muster.

i know. that sounds so...ugly and angry, and tastes more wide-sweeping than i can swallow effectively, but it does have some merit. props due for bringing it up. it explains pretty effectively why the structural inequities need to be addressed, so the proper support for folk with broken benchmarks is available from birth, shoot, from conception until it's not necessary anymore. gotta start the "rehab" process that early and that broadly because the damage was done with that level of frequency and depth.