Afritude

I was at a meeting recently of different organizations who are seeking to either commemorate next year's bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade and/or use the events of next year to highlight both the legacy of that evil and the modern forms of slavery that people currently face…

There are more slaves today than there ever were in the past…check out stopthetraffik.org for more details…

What I was shown that day, in no uncertain terms, was that the scars of the transatlantic slave trade run deeper than I ever imagined. I studied the trade with Martin Lynn (The man, the legend) during my degree and it was so interesting to hear about the legacy…and of course very sad too…

It was a bizarre meeting with people almost randomly shouting out things like ‘institutional racism’ and ‘reparations’…

The Church of England recently apologized for its role in the slave trade. Christians have such a strange relationship to these things…Christians (I don’t know whether I should use inverted commas or not…I think probably not actually…) have played such active roles in both justifying and carrying out slavery, apartheid, the troubles in Northern Ireland…BUT, and often at exactly the same time, Christians have been instrumental in helping to heal these wounds and put an end to these injustices and evils.

I read this quote in the newsletter of a Hindu extremist organization. There was some other crazy things in there (Jesus was a Buddhist who died and is buried in India…that kinda thing…) and some stuff that really got my blood a-boiling but this struck me as an interesting lil quote. The context it was used in…being applied to India…was a bit up the left, but taken on its own I fear that it is tragic in its accuracy…for both sides I should say…

Jomo Kenyatta, African leader – When the Europeans came, they had the Bible and we had the land. They said this is the book of God and asked us to meditate. When we opened our eyes they had the land and we had the Bible.