<
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/non-fiction/english-theft-countryside-taken-public-using-profits-slavery/>
"Here’s a radical idea: racism is more alive today than it ever was in
the slavery era. In the words of Eric Williams, the first prime minister
of Trinidad and Tobago, and author of the 1944 book Capitalism and
Slavery: “The reason (for slavery) was economic, not racial. It had to
do not with the colour of the labourer, but the cheapness of the labour.
Slavery was not born of racism: rather, racism was the consequence of
slavery.”
The concept of race itself was a quasi-scientific lie, concocted on the
sugar farms of the Caribbean as a way of dividing the solidarity between
white indentured servants and the enslaved Africans. In 1661, the
English authorities passed The Act of Better Ordering and Governing of
Negroes on Barbados. By banning miscegenation (sex between races) and
giving privileges to the white workers, it gave race a salience it never
had before.
Even so, the white workers, both in the Caribbean and back in England,
took a long time to fall for the ruse. The 1661 Act didn’t work; the
Irish and Africans together plotted two major slave uprisings in 1686
and 1692, and to this day there are many Murphys, McDonnoughs and
McGanns in the Caribbean phone book. Likewise, at home, racism took a
long time to take off. The Anti-Corn Law League saw slavery as a
violent, extreme extrapolation of what was happening to the white
workers of England. To them, the divide between black and white was a
smokescreen to mask the fundamental issue: the exploitation of labour
and land, the idea that certain sectors of society should have a greater
share of the world than others."
Via
mudhooks@pluspora.com.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
