In this Guardian Opinion piece, Afua Hirsch, describes herself as "the party pooper who, while on holiday in destinations popular with Britons, has the audacity to ask: what actually happened here?" She believes that there is an opportunity "to be honest with and educate British tourists in parts of the former British empire, instead of which we are stuck in denial. Tour operators, hotel and museum owners think that visitors want to hear something that conforms to their already comfortable worldview. They then produce experiences that do so, and British holidaymakers come away with their preconceptions neatly confirmed." On recent trips to Jamaica and Kenya Afua has found herself giving "unofficial alternative history talks" to fellow British tourists and found that they were interested and curious to know more.

Things are changing in places like Auschwitz, Cambodia and Chernobyl. But the British can feel comfortably distant from tragedies in these places. "The problem with the former empire is that the questions of moral culpability it raises are a lot closer to home. It’s hard enough to get people to think about these questions here in Britain. But if Britons are still being helped to avoid the truth of empire in the places where it happened, and where local people are still living with the consequences, then what hope have we got?" Read the full article here.

For the first time in more than a decade, a debate has taken place between lawmakers in Congress on the original sin of the United States – the enslavement of 4 million Africans and their descendants – and the question of what can be done to atone for it through reparations. There was fiery debate between those who argued reparations would damage the relationship between white and black Americans, and those who said it was imperative to achieve justice. Read more here and here.

At least the issue is being debated in the US. Here in the UK it would appear to be still a long way off.

In research to be presented to the Human Rights Council in July, Tendayi Achiume, the UN’s special rapporteur on racism describes the “structural socioeconomic exclusion” of racial and ethnic minorities in the UK as “striking”. Her report claims that race, ethnicity, religion, gender and disability status all continue to determine the life chances and wellbeing of people in Britain in ways that were “unacceptable and, in many cases, unlawful”, and that austerity measures had been “disproportionately detrimental” to people of racial and ethnic minorities. It also highlights that "these groups were also overrepresented in criminal justice enforcement and underrepresented within the institutions that adjudicate crime and punishment." And: "In a broader context of national anti-immigrant anxiety, the predictable result of the UK government’s immigration policy and enforcement is racial discrimination and racialised exclusion. The Windrush scandal is a glaring example.”

This is the second highly critical UN report on UK government policy to be published in the last month, after a UN poverty expert compared current welfare policies to the creation of 19th-century workhouses and said the UK’s poorest people faced lives that would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” unless austerity was ended.

Read more here. Read the UN Statement on the report here.

This is the question asked by historian and broadcaster David Olusoga in a Guardian comment piece on reaction to Cambridge University's decision to investigate its links with the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.

"Cambridge and its colleges are rich. Staggeringly rich. And – spoiler alert – some of the gifts and bequests buried deep within that mountain of wealth will have come from benefactors who were slave traders and slave owners. This is true of other universities, here and abroad. Yet the same commentators who endlessly accuse students of being closed to new ideas and unwilling to face uncomfortable facts have rushed to condemn the university’s investigation into its own past. Their argument, in essence, is that we’re better off not knowing."

After going through some of the old excuses being wheeled out (such as 'grievance archeology'), Olusoga states: "...if Cambridge, the university from which the abolitionists William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson both graduated, had set up a project to explore its role in the ending of slavery, there would have been back-slaps all round. Everyone is happy for the history of slavery to be investigated so long as the investigation examines the parts in which we look good."

The Cambridge announcement is not about "dredging up the past, self-flagellation or any of the other blithe dismissals we’ve heard. It is about breaking the historical silence and uncovering a past that was whitewashed."

Read the full article here. 

This recent article in the Church Times looks at how a diocese in New York is reckoning with the legacy of slavery. Importantly, it goes on to comment on a "reluctance" on the part of the Church if England to talk about this issue here in the UK.

In the USA in 2006 all the Episcopal Church’s dioceses were called on to investigate and report back on the part they had played in slavery and its aftermath of discrimination and segregation. New York diocese created a Reparations Committee to collect and document its findings. These come as a shock for many: “We have a huge bit of our history which has been lost and forgotten — sometimes intentionally. Most people think of slavery as entirely a Southern matter, so they’ve been surprised to find the extent of slavery in New York State”, the Bishop of New York, the Rt Revd Andrew Dietsche. The Reparations Committee went on to propose a three-year programme of lamentation, repentance, and apology, and reparation in the diocese to explore the weight of human suffering caused by slavery and give an opportunity for black and white Christians to grieve together.

In one church’s weekly liturgy, the congregation acknowledges before God “the pervasive presence of racism in our country’s origins, in our institutions and politics, in our diocese and its churches, and in our hearts”, and goes on to repent of “the many ways — social, economic, and political — that white supremacy has accrued benfits to some of us at the expense of others.” Midway through a Year of Repentance and Apology Bishop Dietsche says it is too early to to know what reparations might mean for the New work diocese "but apology without cost to it or action would be empty,"

​In the UK in 2006 the Church of England's General Synod issued an apology for slavery but, unlike the Episcopal Church, little more has been done, symptomatic of “a collective, deliberate amnesia about slavery in Britain” according to Dr Duncan Dormer, General Secretary of USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel). Several universities have begun to look into their links with slavery and they, with the churches, are "well placed to take the lead in this discussion ... The universities have the advantage of discipline in searching for truth, and churches — in theory — start from the premise of priority of relationship. My concern with reparations more widely is that you can send money as if that is enough, but still continue oppressive patterns of relationship. the primary concern has to be relationship.” Read the full article here. (A recent USPG conference also addressed this issue. Read more here.)

​The question MJR would ask is this. Is the CofE, are any of the churches, ready or willing to take up this challenge?

Following on our last post, here are some reflections from a series on 'labels' by Lisa McKenzie on her life as a working-class woman... with a PhD. For this she had to work hard at her education while also funding herself and her son through night work. Lisa’s research as a sociologist for 15 years has focused on class stigma, prejudice and stereotypes. That and her own personal experience have shown that working class women have carried the brunt of that class stigma. "Our education was bound by society’s expectation of us, which was a factory worker and mother, raising the generation of working class people."

"Class sticks to you. It’s the way you walk, your accent, mannerisms, the way you dress and how you understand the world. As a working class woman you suffer 1001 different subtle (and not so subtle) micro-aggressions every day. You are seen as ‘other’ and less than from the day you are born, and you carry it with you." This carrying of expectations and limitation of aspiration through the generations is another aspect of legacy which severely limits social mobility. Read the full article here.

A new study sheds light on the other aspect of legacy MJR is committed to addressing: that of the oppression of the working classes, going back to the Industrial Revolution, and more specifically how "advantages beget advantages."

As reported in the Independent, research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, has found that "people in higher social classes are 'overconfident' about their abilities which means they come across as more competent – even when they don’t know what they’re talking about. Being able to confidently express what they think means a tendency to perform better during job interviews, opposed to working-class people, who are socialised to embrace humility and authenticity."

The research could help explain why "class-based hierarchies persist generation after generation. Psychologists believe that inequalities will continue to perpetuate if people continue to conflate impressions of confidence with evidence of ability."

​Read the full article here, and a press release here, with a link to the journal article.

Chair of MJR, Rev Alton Bell, has written a response on behalf of the charity to the recent announcement by Cambridge University that it will launch a two-year study to investigate its historical links with colonial slavery and will examine how it might have gained financially from the slave trade. Similar research will also be carried out at Bristol University. 

"As chair of The Movement for Justice and reconciliation I welcome these announcements and MJR will work with these institutions to the extent to which the enslavement of Africans still affects their descendants today."

Rev Bell also comments: "...as the educational institutions, such as Glasgow, Bristol, Oxford and Cambridge Universities seek to find ways to redress the benefit they obtained from the slave trade, the UK and other complicit European countries should also acknowledge their involvement and their benefit and right the wrongs of the past." Read the full article here.

Following on from Cambridge University's announcement of research into its links with the colonial slave-trade, now Bristol University has announced a similar investigation. This is amid wider attempts by the city, one of three key ports for British slave traders along with London and Liverpool, to get to grips with its ties to the trade.

The university is to advertise for a permanent academic post examining the history of slavery. Whoever gets the job will oversee efforts by staff and community groups to “explore, investigate and determine the university’s historical links to slavery”. A university spokesperson said: “As an institution founded in 1909, we are not a direct beneficiary of the slave trade, but we fully understand and acknowledge that we financially benefited indirectly.” One source has reckoned that 85% of the wealth used to found the university came from the profits of slavery. Read more here.

A hard-hitting opinion piece by Cambridge student Micha Frazer-Carroll in the Independent comments on the recent news that Cambridge University is to investigate its links to the slave trade. Calling the study a "tiny step towards change" that sends a "small message" she warns: "one piece of research does not systemic change make".

"When we talk about universities’ involvement in colonialism and slavery, it’s important to remember that we are not just talking about issues of the past, but the message sent to current students and academics by overlooking histories of racism.Attending a university that has been complicit in white supremacist thinking is draining. But attending one that then fails to acknowledge its role in that history can be worse.

"The University of Cambridge approaches race uncritically. At best, like in the case of my college’s dining hall, this means being surrounded by faces that do not look like your own. At worst, the legacies of colonialism and slavery – which directly affected my ancestors as well as those of most students of colour at the university – are erased, overlooked, and thus silently condoned."

​Read the full article here.