A former Conservative MP has asked to be removed from an award-winning academic’s research presented in a TEDx Talk that connects her to a slave-owning ancestor
A former Conservative MP has asked to be removed from an award-winning academic’s research presented in a TEDx Talk that connects her to a slave-owning ancestor
I feel like that’s fair. I’m certain I have ancestors who did things I would not be proud of if I knew, and I wouldn’t want people making the connection that I must somehow be also held responsible or that I condone their actions in any way. Unfortunately, we can see the Streisand effect in action here.
I think that it is fair to name her because it is a very good example of how people that committed what we would now think of as crimes have passed that systemic advantage on to all of their descendants. The descendants may feel blameless themselves but I feel like confronting that in some way is a small price to pay for their privileged position.
There was a study done about a decade ago now that showed that all of the descendants of large landowners in the Domesday Book were still continuing to live very comfortably, thank you.
Even, to push the point further, as a recipient of various social welfare benefits at various points in my life I have to acknowledge that the ability to form the welfare state was due to the systemic advantage of the UK as a whole that was built up during the days of empire and colonialism.
It’s not about individual responsibility, it is about the structural inequities that persist. No one is suggesting that living descendants are personally responsible. It is perfectly reasonable to point out that they are personally profiting.
I’d love to see that email where she tries to draw comparisons with the treatment of Victorian housewives. There is a lot to say about that but hard to know where to start without knowing exactly what she said. But if, for example, she thinks it is a good thing that women can now inherit property, she needs to think about how redressing that sort of imbalance is possible when the structural inequity is between and not within families. Taking the (imagined) point to its logical conclusion, her wealth belongs to the descendants of the enslaved people who created it but were prevented from owning it.
I think there is a way of providing these information as neutral, just as information. There is a way of talking about people that just describes what is happening without judging ob the information. Besides, this is a compelling example of structural advantages/ disadvantages. The former slaves family would be unlikely to make it to an MP position. That’s nothing personal about the PM, but how can you illustrate systemic issues like that without using specific examples. Now the question is, what does the MP make of that legacy? Trying to squash it, that’s not a good way of dealing with her family’s legacy. If it’s factually correct, the stronger approach would be to let us her from her about it.