This article about the higher death toll from COVID-19 among the descendants of slaves in Brazil illustrates again that countries that took part in the transporting and enslaving of Africans have, as a major legacy, structural racism. And this invariably results in disproportionate negative outcomes for the descendants of those slaves. Brazil forcibly brought some 4 million enslaved Africans into the country over three centuries, more than anywhere else in the Americas. About half its 209 million people are black – the world’s second largest African-descendant population after Nigeria. Though Brazil has never had legalised racial discrimination like Jim Crow, there are deeply embedded race-based inequalities shown in employment discrimination, residential segregation and a 3 year difference in life expectancy between black and white Brazilians (similar to the USA).

Government data does not include racial or ethnic information, and it was only after coming under pressure that the collection of COVID-19 racial data was begun in late April – but has yet to be released. Now outside researchers have shown that 55% of Afro-Brazilian patients hospitalized with severe COVID-19 died, compared to 34% of white patients. The research has found that structural racism – in the form of high-risk working conditions, unequal access to health and worse housing conditions – is a major factor shaping Brazil’s COVID-19 pandemic. There is also extreme economic inequality. White women earn up to 74% more than black men.

​There are parallels here with data coming out of the UK and USA. Read the full article here.

On Juneteenth, the annual celebration marking the end of American chattel slavery,a powerful and righteously angry theological statement has been released from a collective of Black pastors and theologians to emphatically repudiate white supremacy and anti-Black violence. No punches are pulled in the naming of the "incessant onslaught of anti-Black violence that is the progeny of white racist structural evil" which "constitutes the very fabric of U.S. society" or calling of "the social, moral and political failure of the 45th administration of this nation." A searing summary of 400 years of white violence is followed by a theological assertion that God is on the side of the oppressed (Luke 4:18). 

"We reject the white Christ that propels so-called Christians into complicity with white supremacy and bad faith that separates justice from righteousness. We further reject the prevalence of the individualist gospel of white evangelicalism that aims toward the perfection of personal piety and the prosperity gospel that asserts “manifest destiny” and capitalist acquisition as the will of God. We affirm God’s care and option for the poor, the prisoner, the infirm, the immigrant and the persecuted."

​Read the full statement here.

This powerful Guardian opinion piece by Afua Hirsh states: "What black people are experiencing the world over is a system that finds their bodies expendable, by design." African Americans have been saying this time after time, death after death – Trayvon Martin, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, and so many more. And now, again. Here in the UK many black people have also been saying the same things because "many of us have been fighting for this all our lives."

Instead of Dominic Raab's wanting to see de-escalation of tension, the British government "could have had the humility to use this moment to acknowledge Britain’s experiences. It could have discussed how Britain helped invent anti-black racism, how today’s US traces its racist heritage to British colonies in America, and how it was Britain that industrialised black enslavement in the Caribbean, initiated systems of apartheid all over the African continent, using the appropriation of black land, resources and labour to fight both world wars and using it again to reconstruct the peace. And how, today, black people in Britain are still being dehumanised by the media, disproportionately imprisoned and dying in police custody, and now also dying disproportionately of Covid-19."

Instead it used George Floy's death as an excuse to delay the report into the disparity in ethnic minority deaths from Covid-19. Even when it appear, a key section, containing information on the potential role of discrimination, was removed before publication.

Black People "have taken what we inherited and had no choice but to make sense of it. We have studied, read, written and understood the destructive power of race. And we are telling you that race is a system that Britain built here. We are also telling you that as long as you send all children out into the world to be actively educated into racism, taught a white supremacist version of history, literature and art, then you are setting up a future generation to perpetuate the same violence on which that system of power depends. We are telling you that we need to dismantle, not to de-escalate."

Read the full article here.   

"COVID-19 has exposed a pre-existing underlying health condition in our society."

In a Press Release today Movement for Justice and Reconciliation has made a call for urgent action from the government on the disproportionate number of BAME people dying from COVID-19. Chair Alton Bell says: "Although underlying health conditions may have contributed to the disproportionate number of deaths, too few people have recognised that social inequality and the legacy of enslavement are also major contributory factors." MJR has produced research that shows the links to enslavement in the descendants and in our modern society. Read the full release here.

Exeter’s Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery (RAMM) has commissioned artist Joy Gregory to create an artwork for an exhibition opening in October on the transatlantic slave trade. It will explore how the impact of the trade can still be seen in Devon and Exeter today.

The exhibition is part of a wider programme in 2020 that will see RAMM use its collections to ask difficult questions and explore hidden stories. Untold Stories will feature a series of exhibitions, events, artist commissions and other activities that are also designed to give a voice to neglected communities. Read more here.

St Catharine’s College, Cambridge has admitted that a bell it had on display for decades was originally from a slave plantation in Guyana. The bell, which carried the inscription "De Catherina 1772”, will be donated to the Rijksmueeum in Amsterdam, Holland for a major exhibition on slavery next year. The action follows the Cambridge University announcement of an inquiry into how the 800-year-old institution benefited from the slave trade, which was responded to by MJR. ​The bell was initially hung in a belfry outside the Porter’s lodge where it was used to “summon College residents to food and to prayer”, but in 1994 it was moved to a less prominent position and arlier this year it was “shuttered” from view while its origins were investigated. Read more here.

The slavery exhibition at the Rijksmuseum, the Dutch national museum, will focus on slavery in the Dutch colonial period, from the 17th to the 19th century, and will testify to the fact that "slavery is an integral part of our history, not a dark page that can be simply turned and forgotten about". The exhibition will run from September 25 2020 to January 17 2021. More information here.

Last Sunday's service at Manchester Cathedral to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Peterloo Massacre was a successful balance of penitence and lament, with celebration and re-commitment to justice and equality. It was developed from a suggestion from an MJR trustee, concerned that the churches complicity in the original tragic event and the consequences for legacy should be acknowledged. 

On August 16 1819 when 60,000 people gathered at St Peter's Fields in Manchester for a peaceful protest for democratic rights, the watching magistrates – several of whom were clergymen – panicked and ordered cavalry to charge and break up the crowd. What became known as the Peterloo Massacre saw at least 15 deaths and several hundred injuries, many of them life-changing. The churches mostly took the side of the authorities. This event was hugely influential politically and formative in the emerging radical character of a growing city. This character would include the dismissing of the church by the ordinary working people as being not for “us” but a part of “them”. 

The legacy of such events is carried down the generations to the present day, so we felt this significant anniversary was a crucial time to make a statement. A large congregation, including a number of civic dignitaries, gathered to participate in and be challenged by prayers, art, poetry, testimony and music. Worth particular mention is poet Andrew Rudd's “Rants, Whispers and Cries: Thinking of Peterloo” with its six “Beware-itudes” (depicted in banners by artist Stephen Rawe) which drew modern parallels with the tragedy of the original event. This all led up to an inspiring message about peace, peacemaking and the Prince of Peace from Rev Dr Deirdre Brower-Latz, principal of MJR partner the Nazarene Theological College, which was followed by a Holy Spirit-filled piece of improvised music from classical music ensemble ‘Epiphany’ which captured the moment and atmosphere superbly.

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.