Britain's politics of race

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mikesiva
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Dr Michael Siva, a historian, described mock slave auctions as “problematic”.

“Schools staging slave auctions are very problematic because slavery itself was a brutal institution. Schools need to approach the subject of sugar, slavery and the slave trade as a genocide, much like the Holocaust,” he told HuffPost UK.

“Staging a slave auction trivialises the brutality suffered by African slaves on British West Indian plantations. These Africans were ripped away from their families, and they were displayed, naked and oiled up, for the British sugar planters to inspect. These inspections were intrusive, and often involved the planters feeling the private parts of the displayed African, and using other methods to check their fitness for the upcoming brutal work on the plantations.

“Charities that encourage the practice of slave auctions as fundraisers are obviously not aware of the brutal history of slavery itself. Until the British Empire, and in particular sugar and slavery in the West Indian colonies, is made compulsory in the history curriculum of British schools, then the widespread British ignorance of the brutality of British slavery will persist.”

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