This is a brilliant article by Marika Sherwood which should be a 'must read' for every Briton, Black and White. THANK YOU! However, she left out the greatest legacy of the slave trade and its consequences that Black people everywhere are suffering today, en masse: low self-esteem, the poor sense of self and history and a lack of self-belief. It is hard to believe you are worthy if all you have had as role models down the years is slavery, brutality, repression and exclusion, while your White slave masters and oppressors are the epitome of success. The lost generations of dispersed Africans have been haunted by these negative acts for centuries, but the White population expects them to get over it in a few years. In real terms, Black people in Britain have been really 'free' only since the passing of the Equal Opportunity laws in 1976. Up to then it was almost legal to put up signs on one's gate saying 'No dogs, no Blacks'. African descendants were still racially abused, deprived of accommodation and career opportunities, edged into ghettoes and deliberately excluded. It took a riot in Notting Hill a few years later to spotlight the poor treatment and general exclusion of Black immigrants in Britain. So, it has been just over 30 years for Black people in Britain to be treated with any equality or respect, a drop in the ocean of nearly 500 years since slavery began in Britain with Sir John Hawkins in 1560. Time in which their White peers have grown fat and fortunate off the backs of slaves; time to create country seats and to set up their 'customs' and 'traditions'; time in which to promote their glorious activities and to lay the foundations for their own dynasties, all made possible through slave labour. That low self-esteem, the legacy of a life of servitude and brutality, has cemented itself in Black consciousness, being internalised as 'deserved' and then taken out on ourselves and each other in the form of self-loathing, anger, jealousy, envy and violence. We tend to see each other as the enemy, the ones responsible for our self-loathing and feelings of inadequacy caused by trying to imitate White culture, yet never succeeding in being accepted; eternally roaming without a sense of belonging. We are cut off from our African roots yet the European culture we have imprinted and tried to emulate does not want us either. So we end up losing self-respect while being unwanted caricatures of another race. If anyone doubts this aspect of Black development, they have only to look at Asians and how their own strong cultural heritage, belief in their traditions and customs and sense of self have guided their actions and development to produce their unqualified success. If you know who you are, with the encouragement and role models to guide you, there is no need to search for your roots or your purpose. Everyone else around you reflects it. Deprived of Black heroes in their culture through years of being denied opportunities to forge out on their own, and their inventors and achievers being deliberately suppressed, generations of Black children have had few models, or encouragement, of success; no feeling of being valued, of being appreciated, being significant or being included - the four essential things we all need to feel a sense of pride and value in our history and heritage. In fact slavery of Black people in Britain have been replaced by complete invisibility. Look around, particularly in the positions of success, among the celebrities and the experts and you will not see a Black face. However, there is no shortage of Black faces when there is a crime involved. The whole Black community has to take collective responsibility for individual deviant acts within it. Recently, in a courtroom, one White woman screamed at a Black family whose son was on trial, "Your family have let your people down." I have never heard any White wrong-doer accused of letting his people down! So Black people have no individuality. The pattern across the world of displaced Africans is unmistakeable: the self-loathing, the endemic crime, the lack of mutual support, the underachievement of our kids, the lack of self-belief and constant dependence upon others to provide our answers, are all there in great technicolour. Somewhere, lodged securely in our psyche, is the 'dirty secret' of slavery which no one has wanted to talk about for years but which has unmistakeably shaped the self-perception of our worth and potential, our talent, where we are coming from, who we are and where we are going. Those three questions relating to our past, our present and our future, are very difficult to sort if you are nameless, stateless, without anchor and history. Most important, they are near impossible where there is denial and a lack of understanding or empathy of the true legacy of slavery and its pervasive and debilitating effect relentlessly down the years.
Elaine Sihera Diversity Leaders UK