The Baby and the Bathwater

Racism is what gave Europeans charge over the rest of the world, starting with the conquests of 1492 and right on through most of the 20th century. Who in all parts of the world was not affected negatively by this disease of superiority? Race took hold as a prominent perception in our consciousness?

The fact that race does not actually exist, as science has proven over and over, did not deter the growth of racism. Science may declare that there is but one race, the human race, but if you didn’t look like ‘us’ then you must be one of ‘them’, and so you are worthy of our derision and put-downs and treatment as lesser beings. This is the justification for ‘us’ taking over your lands, stealing your wealth of ores and jewels and crops, and pushing you off to less desirable bits of real estate. Any resistance is just cause enough for mass annihilation. Millions of native peoples were killed gratuitously in North America alone.

The heavyweights who caused the most damage are well known - Spain and Portugal in the south of the Americas, France and England in the north - while several competitors got in on the good deal while carving up Africa and Asia – Netherlands and Belgium, Germany and Turkey were added to the racist peoples who set about ‘civilizing’ by plundering and slaughtering and converting these ‘savages’. But the pre-eminent winner by far, creating the largest empire the world has ever known, putting the Roman empire to shame by comparison, was England. Rule Britannia, Britannia rule the waves!

It was precisely because slaves were reduced to an item of ‘property’ that they appear so regularly in historic documents, both in the US and in Britain. Such is the way slaves were listed in plantation accounts and itemised in inventories, not as fellow human beings but as an inferior form of life. How dare the abolitionists dare try to steal their most prized possessions.

The history of British slavery has very much been buried, not surprisingly, by the very ones who profited most from it. Thousands of British entrepreneurs and upper class investor families grew unbelievably wealthy on the slave trade, much like billionaire oligarchs are doing today by using the ‘slave labor factories’ in the poorest countries to churn out their clothing and electronics that they then sell to the rich nations at hundreds or thousands of percent profit. The laborers work 8-to-10 hour shifts six days a week for as little as a dollar a day, for that $19.95 t-shirt you’re wearing. Slavery by any other name.

The golden triangle of wealth by sailing vessels began in England with chests of money to buy human beings in West Africa, ship them across the Atlantic to many ports in the Americas to the highest bidders, then back to England laded down with cotton and tobacco and sugar cane that found eager buyers throughout Europe. For enriching Britain’s shores so generously, the royal crown bestowed honors and titles, lordships and ladyships on the greed monsters of the 17th and 18th centuries. At their dubbing ceremonies not a word was said about how they were so enriched.

As David Olusoga attests in Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners, a documentary for BBC, today there are plaques on Georgian townhouses that describe former slave traders as “West India merchants”, while slave owners are hidden behind the equally euphemistic term “West India planter”.

Slavery was abolished in Britain some 30 years before it was in America. But at what a bribe-laden cost! As Olusoga says, the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 formally freed “800,000 Africans who were then the legal property of Britain’s slave owners”. That statement in itself should blow your mind, especially given that this gruesome fact has been buried in silence, known only to some few in power.

The greater shocker is the provision for the financial compensation of the owners of those slaves, a ransom paid by the British taxpayer for the loss of the owners’ “property”. And who amongst the British citizenry then or now had even an inkling that their hard earned pounds sterling was still paying for those lavish obscenities of private homes, a compensation that is the modern equivalent of 17 billion pounds. The debt was so enormous that it was only paid off just a handful of years ago. And not only did the slaves themselves receive nothing under this agreement, but they were compelled to provide 45 hours of unpaid labour each week for a further four years for their former masters. This so-called liberation was an abomination.

But what’s a suddenly slaveless owner going to do when you have enormous estates in England with private woods for hunting and chasing foxes, jolly good sport, and a quaint manor house of 365 rooms and who knows how many servants to serve the thirsty riders and their mounts. I’m sure the recipients of multiple lashes didn’t mind the pain, given that it was all for a good cause.

This is not an exercise in putting down certain traditions that mostly go back several generations. But where oh where is the admission, the apologies, the ‘outing’ of those who themselves are guilty, and as the inheritors of these ill-gotten streams of unconscionable wealth from an ancestry that only won praise, constant bows and curtsies from the ‘lesser’ beings around them. Japanese citizens of Canada and America have received formal apologies and compensations from the jurisdictions where they were incarcerated. Jewish communities and the state of Israel have received sincere apologies and compensations from a contrite Germany. And right now Canada is under the gun for the abominable treatment of the original inhabitants of this land, the Indigenous peoples, the true First Nations, once mistakenly called ‘Indians”. The recent uncovering of unmarked graves in the hundreds of bodies of young children who were forcefully sent to ‘residential schools’ for proper schooling despite the protestations of their families, has brought this country’s citizens to the point of utter outrage.

The blame in part must fall on those who at the behest of the governments ran these residential schools, the religious organizations of Catholic and Protestant denominations, who took it as their sacred duty to do God’s bidding in seeing to it that these ‘savages’ speak like their teachers, act like their teachers, and pray to God as their teachers assured them was the way God wanted them to. These were children, we must remember, as young as four years old torn from their mothers and sent far away, the farther the better, for a very thorough education. Pain and punishment all inclusive. The separation of families was among the most bitterly resented aspects of the slave trade in the Caribbean and the US.

The theory of how to inculcate children and make it stick goes back to St. Ignatius Loyola, 16th century, who advised “Give me the child for the first seven years and I will give you the man.” Whether this is a direct quote from Loyola or whether it is misappropriated to him, the truth is that so many religious Christians – Roman Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian – and respected educators like Egerton Ryerson in the late Victorian Era believed that this was indeed his highly-regarded teaching, and thus they set out to mold children, from as young as they could get them, to be obedient believers in their European traditions. Thus missionary schools in Africa and Asia, and Indian Reserve schools in North America, especially Canada, set out their policy to redirect their charges away from their rightful culture of birth towards the beliefs of those who often, with violence, set about molding them in the Loyola tradition.

Which brings us around to the topic of the baby and the bathwater, as in don’t throw out the one with the other.

The bathwater, as I see it, is the racism that washed over the whole of European culture from Columbus to the present day, and is still getting in our eyes and ears as it waterlogs our collective thinking. It poured across this land from sea to sea to sea, infecting and polluting everyone it touched. Thankfully the age of exploration of parts unknown has been replaced by millions of us jetting off to all parts of the planet, and coming face to face with ‘savages’ whom we discover are no more savage than we are ourselves. As my wife and I have travelled by surface to more than 85 countries over the years and have with very few exceptions got to know our fellow humans as warm and caring, not at all aliens to be feared or mistrusted. This world touring has had a sobering and eye opening effect on most of us, though there are still those who prefer to see things in the old way as taught by their forebearers, where they are superior, especially if they are of that white European heritage.

The baby is the birth of the country itself and the growth of its people, a people who have magnanimously opened their arms to all peoples of many colors and religions and ethnic origins and welcomed them to our shores. Not to mention that so many of these are refugees, impoverished and fleeing oppressive regimes, in search of a better life for their children. And there is no lack of those recent arrivals who will attest to this and bow in thanks to this people known the world over for their generosity and good will. This is the baby that grows and changes and learns new realities that it must adjust to, as any child should.

So I write to those who have recently screamed that we should cancel Canada Day, that this country is an abomination given what has happened to its indigenous people, and should not be celebrated. Yes, we Canadians are outraged at what has so horribly taken place on our soil. No amount of apologies can replace the massive loss of innocent lives. As the Jewish saying goes, “whoever saves one life saves the world entire”. But who or what are we affecting in cancelling Canada Day, or even diminishing it? Indigenous people are as much a part of this country as are the rest of us late comers. As National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations said just the other day about Canada Day, “It is a day to recognize that it is a beautiful country, but there are some terrible things that have happened.”

Terrible things indeed. But don’t forget the enormous contributions we have given freely to the world. Great Canadian contributions to two World Wars, voluntarily and first to hop in with massive manpower, years before America in both cases, and in which of course the Indigenous peoples from across the nation also gave of their lives freely. Canada has always been in the forefront of the leadership at the UN for peaceful resolutions to conflicts, standing up and fighting for democracy, welcoming refugees from nations the world over when no one else would have them, including my own mother at 13 and family escaping from life-threatening internecine troubles in Ireland. And who can forget that precious feeling of freedom when we step off the plane, arrive home, and are free to settle wherever we please. No wonder, despite our homegrown problems and friendly bickering, Canada is awarded year after year as one of the top countries in the world to live in.

Acknowledging our failings and abusive behavior is the first step to making ourselves and Canada better and more aware of the lives of others sharing our world. But amidst all of this we have yet to hear even a peep from that group mentioned at the top of this essay. Those who made their fortunes from the disgraceful centuries of slavery have yet to apologize or own up to their integral part at the center of it all, at the spread of racism which they thoroughly backed. Yes, this current generation did not own the enslaved, but they are none the less living off the avails of it, partaking liberally of that momentous fortune. Certainly it’s about time for a heartfelt apology for all the harm their ancestors caused to millions of their fellow humans. And a few billion dollars from each of these families to go toward reparations to help ease the strife of the most needy.

Canada was never a part of the slave trade, only a destination at the end of the underground railway for runaways, but that same ingrained racism and wealth were powerfully behind the negating of Indigenous rights, stealing their lands, and herding them off to ‘reserves’ like unwanted wild stock. On top of apologies and substantial reparations coming from current Canadian taxpayers, those same households of estates in Britain and other European countries, and their offspring who have migrated to Canada to head the social and wealth registers, should apologize deeply, and contribute billions of dollars to all the Indigenous peoples, in memory of the outrages that incarcerated their innocent children.

Maybe then we can once again celebrate Canada Day with our heads held high and continuing onward in showing the rest of the world what genuinely decent people we are.

Oh, and see if the Queen can send me over a case of Dom Perignon champagne. It’s been a long time since I worked as an usher at the Leicester Square Odeon Cinema in London where Her Majesty came every fortnight to attend the premiere of a big movie, complete with topline movie stars and cases of her favorite bubbly, just to make certain there would be enough left over for the staff to indulge while the rest watched the movie.