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| One of my heroes - William Wilberforce (Unfinished portrait by Thomas Lawrence) |
It seems today that everybody must be a victim of some sort to have any credibility. The adoption of the word ‘queer’ seems a case in point. God forbid, that straight people like me should accept you as part of the mainstream if you are gay. It is important to feel rejected, to be part of a minority as part of your identity. Hence the – slightly desperate, I believe – adoption of ‘queer’ to show that you a part of you remains unconventional. And here was me thinking that gay people would be accepted if they drank sherry and listened to Radio 4.
If it is not sexuality, it is race. Last night I listened in as The Guardian explored its links with slavery. It turns that the paper was set up by people in Manchester, a bug cotton city, some of whom owned slaves and even applied for compensation once they gave up their part in this hideous trade in human beings. It also turns out that the British government did not clear the debts of slave-owner compensation until 2015. The slaves themselves were never compensated and are now complaining loudly and asking for their share of reparations.
I, incidentally, am not in favour of paying them for being victims. That does not mean that I defend the trade. However, I tend to take a ‘that was then, this is now’ attitude to injustice. Surely it is more important to see that people who have suffered in the past are treated well in our society than try to pay them back for wrongs which were done in the past and which, by definition, cannot be changed now. Giving them money for what was done centuries ago to their ancestors entails locking them into the ghetto, a phrase I use to glorify victimhood.
Despite the evils of slavery, there were benefits to be had from entry into white society, benefits they would probably not have enjoyed if they had remained in an uncolonized country. We are so determined to be victims that it is virtually impossible to admit that there were upsides as well as downsides to being introduced to western ways, even if they were accompanied by unacceptable attitudes of racial superiority. Remove the superiority and accept equality and previous victims can become leaders - as Obama demonstrated.
If you perpetuate victimhood – which reparations for slavery would surely do – you prevent people standing on their own feet and pulling themselves up by their bootstraps (and other clichés of self-reliance). You can recognise evils done in the past without locking those whose ancestors suffered from them into a perpetual cycle of grievance and victimhood. As, I have said that was then and this is now. Let’s treat people properly today rather than constantly harping back to historical injustices which may hold them back from success.
One of my heroes is William Wilberforce, who recognised the fundamental injustice of slavery and campaigned long and hard to abolish the slave trade in the British Empire. He was not a particularly left wing man and opposed trade unionism and other means of establishing equality for working men in his society, which earned him the enmity of men like the radical writer William Cobbett, who was notably silent on the evils of slavery and allowed his hatred of Wilberforce to hold him back from opposing them. (See here for more on this.)
Wilberforce rather became an evangelical Christian and, thinking that condemning people of a different skin colour to being second class citizens was fundamentally evil, saw it as his duty to oppose and try to abolish it. Hagiographic portraits of him ignore or deny his social conservatism because they want to portray him as fundamentally good, while ignoring his faults. Yet he did more than anyone else to destroy one major evil in our society because he was single-minded in his opposition to it, so we can surely forgive him some other mistakes.
Forgiveness does not loom large in the attitudes of many people today. I am highly sceptical of those who think that we have got it right while our ancestors had it wrong. Condemn those who come before you and you will surely be condemned in turn by those who come after. Recognise people in the past as flawed but human and you might be better at gaining respect for them. Wilberforce was able to move beyond the attitude that so many of his contemporaries shared – that slavery was inevitable, necessary and, therefore, acceptable.
The list of those who benefited from treating people of colour as second class citizens is long and depressing. George Frederick Handel and James Watt are two otherwise admirable men who profited from slavery. The first was distinctly Christian yet still invested in it and the second was a brilliant engineer who lacked Wilberforce’s stubborn humanity. The church itself profited from the institution and encouraged slaves to be obedient and not rebellious. They now accept their responsibility for supporting the trade in human flesh.
While I am not against acknowledging the sins of the past, I think that apologies should be reserved for personal mistakes and sins, which most of us are guilty of. The Guardian has insisted on apologising for what its founders did two hundred years ago and they should be congratulated on owning up to this. However, you cannot properly apologise for what they did unless you can show that you as an individual would have acted differently if you had been in their place. And that is, by definition, impossible to do unless you have a time machine handy.
Like Wilberforce, I am a straight, white male with a decent background and education and have, therefore, little opportunity to be a victim of any sort. I am quite happy with that and limit my apologies to things that I have done wrong personally - there are plenty of those - rather than to things that have been done wrong by people in my position from a similar background. Am I deprived by lacking qualifications to be a victim? Perhaps that is the ultimate deprivation of all.
Edwin Lerner
My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com
