IBARW -- kind of a local topic I guess
Sometimes I see posts in fandom racism discussions from non-US fans that seem to think that the legacy of slavery was somehow just an US issue, and didn't have much relevance to racism elsewhere and the forms it takes.
Maybe there are places like that somewhere, I don't know, but the history of slavery is not an "US-centric" issue. I think more often than not colonial history is just glossed over. Not just with regard to profiteering from slavery of course, for example in my high school history lessons of German colonial expansion the Herero and Namaqua genocide was barely mentioned, otoh there are still colonial monuments and street names in German cities honoring colonial troops that committed atrocities often without even mentioning their victims at all, as would be appropriate in a more critical and modern approach to monuments dealing with the colonial history.
But it it not just some historical legacy of monuments for war deaths and such: My hometown is Hamburg and there's this neighborhood, called Wandsbek, which used to be an independent town before the city's administration, districts and government were restructured in 1937. Anyway, that town had this fairly prominent citizen, a merchant who did much to make it grow, and himself rich (and to some degree the town too). Hence there are several streets named for him, and in 2006 the district administration erected a bust and a plaque in his honor.
That merchant was Heinrich Carl Schimmelmann (1724-1782) and he got rich through slave trade. He became one of the richest people in Europe at the time, kept slaves himself, and further profitted from exploiting orphaned children in his cotton factory and serfs on his farm estate.
And they gave him a newly erected bust last autumn, To make it worse, the way the memorial plaque text is phrased is beyond offensive, not because were trying to hide that Schimmelmann was a slave trader, but because it simply lists the humans he kidnapped and enslaved alongside the other trade goods, and that is the only way it addresses slavery. On that plaque, there's an explanation that the basis of his wealth was acquired through through supplying the military during the Seven Year War, and then the phrasing of the only sentence in which slavery is mentioned on the plate is "Auch durch den so genannten Dreieckshandel (Kattun und Gewehre, Sklaven, Zuckerrohr und Baumwolle) zwischen Europa, Afrika und Amerika galt er als reichster Mann Europas." (that translates as: "Also through the so called triangle trade (calico and rifles, slaves, sugar cane and cotton) between Europe, Africa and America he was said to be the richest man in Europe.") The sentence after that goes on to praise his charity work, and that he consolidated the Danish state finances.
The following link is in German, but you can look at photos of the bust and plaque, and of the protests agaist it that were organized by the black community in Hamburg on this site that's part of a project to increase awareness of German colonial history through, among other things, performance art involving colonial monuments.
Anyway, that bust was erected in September 2006, to celebrate the slave trader making that town richer, praising the pretty buildings he erected with his blood money, and what a great citizen he was. Despite protests of various NGOs, the local black community, parts of the press and two of the parties forming the minority in the district parliament, the district administration refused to remove or change that memorial into something more appropriate and less racist. I think, the protests and actions against this are still ongoing (like for example critical, anti-colonialist city tours offered for tourists are still drawing attention to this), sometimes even noticed by the media, like back in April this year when Arte (a French-German public tv channel) did a brief feature on the tenth local black history month here (which I think is less official than its counterpart in the US, but it does exist), and mentioned it. (You can watch a German recording of it on YouTube here.)
So to my mind the history of slavery and more awareness of it and the connected history is relevant to me locally, even though I'm outside the US.
Maybe there are places like that somewhere, I don't know, but the history of slavery is not an "US-centric" issue. I think more often than not colonial history is just glossed over. Not just with regard to profiteering from slavery of course, for example in my high school history lessons of German colonial expansion the Herero and Namaqua genocide was barely mentioned, otoh there are still colonial monuments and street names in German cities honoring colonial troops that committed atrocities often without even mentioning their victims at all, as would be appropriate in a more critical and modern approach to monuments dealing with the colonial history.
But it it not just some historical legacy of monuments for war deaths and such: My hometown is Hamburg and there's this neighborhood, called Wandsbek, which used to be an independent town before the city's administration, districts and government were restructured in 1937. Anyway, that town had this fairly prominent citizen, a merchant who did much to make it grow, and himself rich (and to some degree the town too). Hence there are several streets named for him, and in 2006 the district administration erected a bust and a plaque in his honor.
That merchant was Heinrich Carl Schimmelmann (1724-1782) and he got rich through slave trade. He became one of the richest people in Europe at the time, kept slaves himself, and further profitted from exploiting orphaned children in his cotton factory and serfs on his farm estate.
And they gave him a newly erected bust last autumn, To make it worse, the way the memorial plaque text is phrased is beyond offensive, not because were trying to hide that Schimmelmann was a slave trader, but because it simply lists the humans he kidnapped and enslaved alongside the other trade goods, and that is the only way it addresses slavery. On that plaque, there's an explanation that the basis of his wealth was acquired through through supplying the military during the Seven Year War, and then the phrasing of the only sentence in which slavery is mentioned on the plate is "Auch durch den so genannten Dreieckshandel (Kattun und Gewehre, Sklaven, Zuckerrohr und Baumwolle) zwischen Europa, Afrika und Amerika galt er als reichster Mann Europas." (that translates as: "Also through the so called triangle trade (calico and rifles, slaves, sugar cane and cotton) between Europe, Africa and America he was said to be the richest man in Europe.") The sentence after that goes on to praise his charity work, and that he consolidated the Danish state finances.
The following link is in German, but you can look at photos of the bust and plaque, and of the protests agaist it that were organized by the black community in Hamburg on this site that's part of a project to increase awareness of German colonial history through, among other things, performance art involving colonial monuments.
Anyway, that bust was erected in September 2006, to celebrate the slave trader making that town richer, praising the pretty buildings he erected with his blood money, and what a great citizen he was. Despite protests of various NGOs, the local black community, parts of the press and two of the parties forming the minority in the district parliament, the district administration refused to remove or change that memorial into something more appropriate and less racist. I think, the protests and actions against this are still ongoing (like for example critical, anti-colonialist city tours offered for tourists are still drawing attention to this), sometimes even noticed by the media, like back in April this year when Arte (a French-German public tv channel) did a brief feature on the tenth local black history month here (which I think is less official than its counterpart in the US, but it does exist), and mentioned it. (You can watch a German recording of it on YouTube here.)
So to my mind the history of slavery and more awareness of it and the connected history is relevant to me locally, even though I'm outside the US.