Italian Serie A club Roma's response to a racist message sent by a supporter on Instagram sent to one of their players Juan Jesus has been hailed as bold and ground-breaking . First the club publicly named and shamed the perpetrator, reported him to the police and banned him for life – a first. It then Tweeted this message to the league authorities: “Are you really serious about tackling racism in Italian football @SerieA.” The league has been criticised for not responding robustly enough to previous incidents and Roma's challenge has been received positively by many, including Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte. This article calls the Tweet "a pertinent inquiry, applicable way outside Italy's borders."
Former US Vice President Joe Biden delivered a passionate rebuke of the "domestic terrorism of white supremacy," on Sunday morning at the 56th memorial observance of the 1963 bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama that killed four African American girls.
"We must acknowledge that there can be no realization of the American dream without grappling with the original sin of slavery, brought to these shores over 400 years ago. And the centuries-long campaign of violence, fear, trauma wrought upon black people in this country." Biden also acknowledged that white people, no matter their efforts, can never truly understand how racism and hate have affected African Americans throughout the country's history. He also warned that despite all people being equal was one of the truths America held as "self evident" as a nation still "we have not relegated racism and white supremacy to the pages of history." Read more here. In what is believed to be the first payment of its kind, Glasgow University is to pay £20m in reparations to atone for its historical links to the transatlantic slave trade. In what has described as a “bold, historic” move, it has signed an agreement with the University of the West Indies to fund a joint centre for development research. The University discovered last year it had benefited financially from Scottish slave traders in the 18th and 19th centuries by between £16.7m and £198m in today’s money. Graham Campbell, who became the city’s first councillor of African-Caribbean descent in 2017, welcomed the agreement. “Our mutual recognition of the appalling consequences of that past – an indictment of Scottish inhumanity over centuries towards enslaved Africans – are the justifications that are at the root of the modern-day racism that we fight now. This action is a necessary first step in the fight against institutionalised racism and discrimination in Scotland and the UK and for the international fight for reparative justice.” Read more here and here.
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has endorsed a proposal for a British slavery museum in the city to help combat modern-day racism as "welcome and timely". The idea has come from the Fabian Society which says the museum could help address discrimination against London’s black and minority ethnic population by challenging centuries-old tropes about racial inferiority.
The Fabian Society report in which the suggestion is made quotes Omar Khan, the director of the Runnymede Trust: “Until and unless Britain comes to terms with this history it will be impossible to understand much less eradicate the views that continue to justify racial inequalities today. It is unacceptable that the capital city of a nation that built a global empire and its wealth in large part as a result of its role in the slave trade has no significant museum or monument marking the role that London and Britain played in these historic atrocities." Bristol, Liverpool and London were the three main cities to benefit from the slave trade. Both Bristol and Liverpool already have museums covering this aspect of our history. David Olusoga, historian and presenter of the BBC Two documentary, Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners, also endorsed the proposed museum. “The impact of the slave trade and enslavement is already stamped onto the fabric of London, but in ways we have learnt not to notice. Britain played a central role in the Atlantic slave trade and the fortunes built on the back of slavery flowed back to Britain. A new museum, in the heart of the city, would help us to acknowledge a history that for the most part is hidden in plain sight.” Omar Khan added history dictated that the government and London’s financial sector had a “moral obligation” to help fund a museum. Read an article on this story here. Read the Fabian Society release 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 week's Church of England General Synod unanimously backed a motion that churches should play a key role in combating serious youth violence in their communities. The motion called upon the churches to be pro-active rather than continue to be mostly reactive.
Introducing the debate, Canon Rosemarie Mallett said the current raised level of youth violence was “in part because successive governments have failed to understand the causes of violent youth crime. These include the pernicious nature of poverty and trauma, and risk factors like school exclusion and adverse childhood experiences, along with public-sector disinvestment nationally and locally.” “The Church is in a unique position, and we shouldn’t let that potential for action go. We must be the Samaritan and not the Pharisee... In most places, the church has been there for generations... A place of stability and peace for families and individuals that lack both of these in their lives is invaluable.” The church could be a place of reconciliation in areas where the families of victims and perpetrators lived side by side. The debate called for Diocesan Boards of Education to encourage alternatives to excluding children from school; for dioceses to provide more training for church leaders and for the church to work more with other organisations to provide support and pastoral care for those affected. MJR trustee Dr Joe Aldred contributed to the debate and quoted a 2008 report in which then Bishop of Liverpool Dr James Jones, wrote of the "ruinous impact of racism, deprivation, and low self esteem on the lives of many inner city youths, rendering them vulnerable to criminality as perpetrators and victims". Read the official statement, a Church Times article, and Dr Aldred's response in full. At their June 27 meeting the trustees of MJR decided to defer the Zong Project until such times as sufficient funding is found.
The decision was as follows:
We will also now be reflecting on and re-visiting that original vision and other aspects of it that have arguably been sidelined by the effort expended in trying to get the Zong Project to happen. This re-focussing and re-calibrating process will be in a context of prayer and we ask those of you who do to join us in taking this vision back to God for fresh revelation. And to consider other ways in which you could offer input and support. 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. 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. Read a Guardian comment piece by David Olusoga here. |
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