Comments by "J Drake1994" (@JDrakeify) on "Owen Jones meets Black Lives Matter | 'One day the chains will be broken'" video.

  1. I agree with the basic sentiment, but I have to question whether it was all that smart to launch there movement by blocking people's way to work or to the airport. A protest movement works not just by drawing attention to an issue, but by getting the public on side in support.
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  2. Richard Taylor No, because again we shouldn't be held accountable for the actions of our ancestors. But if that applies for the good and the bad. So equally we can't pick and choose the best bits from history, and take credit for abolition and forget about the evil of slavery itself.
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  3. Richard Taylor There is no contradiction in what I said. Just because I do not adhere to a strict stereotype of left wing views, doesnt make me confused. I am simply attempting to achieve some degree of objectivity. I find it very annoying when many right wingers knee jerk reaction to any mention of the transatlantic slave trade is to downplay the suffering that took place because the people who inflicted it on them happened to have a similar skin colour,and therefore feel some sort of ownership over them, when they really shouldnt. It is such blatant instinctive bias that I find it difficult to take it seriously as an argument that is based on reason, rather than feeling.
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  4. Richard Taylor​ But most people do not blame white people alive today for slavery. In the minds of many, it seems like just bringing it up equates to that. But that is mainly just a straw man. In reality, slavery remains an important thing to remember as it explains the roots of numerous issues that exist, especially in the Americas but to a lesser extent with black people the world over. Asking that everyone just forgets about it is absurd, as you are asking communities to forget something which is central to there history. You might as well ask the French to forget their revolution. Other slave trades aren't mentioned as much because they don't explain the modern world nearly to the same extent. People do talk about modern slavery, especially in places like Qatar due to the whole world cup thing. The role of African tribes in the trade hasn't been omitted from the narrative, i learnt about it at every level I learnt about slavery.The mainland UK has definitely had slaves in the past, in Roman times, and in the middle ages where there were a very large population of serfs, who are a type of slave. There were not a large number of African slaves in the UK during the time of the transatlantic slave trade. What you seem to be referring to is the fact that slavery was illegal in Britain itself from 1772 onwards, but that ruling emancipated at least 10,000 slaves were freed by that, which tells you the slavery did exist, it just ended earlier than in the rest of the empire. No one is denying that the vast majority of blacks are here of there ancestors own free will, but that is not to say slavery is not important to the history, as immigration largely comes of inequality of opportunity between countries, which for Caribbean countries, began with slavery. The fact remains that people of afro Caribbean extraction would not be here if it was not for slavery.
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  5. TheThirdBaronOfMustard AndOtherSuchCondoments I have no idea what the Caribbean would be like without slavery, because it is vital to understanding practically everything about that part of the world. But the current problems that exist there derive in part from the long term effects of existing as a plantation economy powered by slaves, who formed the vast majority of the population, before experiencing a huge downturn as a result of the shift away from that. Caribbean economies were designed explicitly with the goal of feeding expensive crops to there colonial masters, on a population of slaves, not to exist as long term viable economic units on there own. Haiti is a good example of that. If the Caribbean had never participated in the economic system of slavery, there wouldnt be much motivation for it to be seriously incorporated into European Empires, and you wouldnt have the large black populations with the ability to speak european languages there now, so you might still have an impoverished native population, but not one that would emigrate on a large scale to Europe.
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  6. Richard Taylor I was merely correcting an incorrect assertion. Besides, as I said, there was slavery in the UK less than a century before it was abolished across the empire and in the US. I am presuming from your tone that your the sort of person who wanted the UK to leave the EU,. That was one thing you didnt like about your country, and it was a pretty fundamental thing. Why did you not leave?
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  7. Other people replying to this very post are saying that we ought to forget slavery. I have already said that my position is not that we are not guilty for something we ourselves had no agency over. What I am saying though is that we should take into account the role that slavery had in shaping our world and the way different races interact with one another. Slavery is gone,but the underlying legacy still effects race relations today, so it cannot be thought of as being some bad thing from the past that has no relation to us.
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  8. Richard Taylor It seems my assumptions about your distaste for the EU was spot on. What matters isnt whether it is a good or bad thing for the purposes of this debate, I am saying it is something fundamental to your country that you thought was bad, and by your logic if you dont like something your country does, you therefore hate it and must move elsewhere. And 'move back' to Nigeria or Jamaica? I am not even black, my family is white british as far back as anyone can remember lol sorry to screw with your preconceptions.
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  9. Richard Taylor I am not sure you understood much of what I said. It is great that you have celebrate abolitionists, but that is the easy part of the whole thing. People like to be triumphalist about slavery's abolition, but they spend less time contemplating the horrors of the trade itself, and that emancipation doesnt absolve us of blame when we participated in it for several centuries beforehand. You may say that people should not feel ashamed about something they had no agency over, and I would agree, but by the same token they did nothing for abolition either, so they shouldnt be proud of that. It is just picking and choosing to pretend otherwise. And I am both white and British, I said as much already, and I never said it is racist to vote for out, my point was purely countering you telling me that a political disagreement with the way some things are done in your country means that the people who hold that view should therefore leave. I was pointing out that you, and many others, clearly didnt like the fact that we were in the EU, but that doesnt mean they are people who hate Britain and therefore ought to leave. Also, you asked "Please in what year can we just forget slavery"? Very much suggesting that you did suggest we should forget it.
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  10. TheThirdBaronOfMustard AndOtherSuchCondoments but just becuase everyone else did it, it does not make it okay, especially since we did it on a scale far larger than other countries. I am not saying it means that Britain is an evil country, I am saying we shouldn't be afraid to critique our own past just because we share a nationality with the perpetrators. We were one of the first to ban the slave trade, but we weren't exactly unique, numerous US states did it first, revolutionary France banned both slavery and the slave trade briefly, and Spain banned slavery before we did.
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  11. Richard Taylor​ I am simply saying that when we do discuss slavery or race relations between blacks and whites, that we do not dismiss slavery or celebrate its abolition more than we talk about the atrocities that took place during its existence, otherwise we risk learning entirely the wrong lesson from history. I am aware that there was eventually plenty of abolitionist sentiment in Britain after we got rid of it(though there was some pro Confederate sentiment within the government and certain areas like Liverpool) and that was undoubtedly a good thing, but that shouldn't excuse the crime in the first place.
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  12. Richard Taylor I already said what I wanted some people to do more of, and that is recognize that whilst they are not responsible for slavery, they should recognize the influence it has had on the nature of race relations today and on the development of the Americas, rather than dismiss it all as being purely in the past, or belittle the bad things in favour of the good things which would not have been necessary in the first place without them. And when I say celebrate, I do not mean literally have a day of celebration. I am talking about cultural things. Before a few years with Twelve Years a Slave, there were not many well known films about slavery itself that actually focused on the institution itself rather than the achievement of abolition by a white guy, as Lincoln and Amazing Grace did. And seeing as this is the only conversation you have ever had with me, your not really in a place to judge whether I always go on about slavery. I dont consider that I do. There are probably other topics I have far more conversations about. It just so happens to be related to the topic of this video is all.
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