"We don't need you to feel guilty or ashamed for a history that wasn't you. You can't help what your ancestors did any more than I can help what mine did." Bishop TD Jakes.
"The anti-African history of the past 500 years has seeped deep into the Western psyche. Many white people seem unaware of the heightened resentment black people have towards the racism that blights so many black lives in a world that moves to the tune of whiteness." Dr Joe Aldred.
The descendants of the oppressed are well aware of their disadvantage – they are reminded of it daily, usually in small, niggly ways. However, the descendants of the beneficiaries of the wealth generated by the slave trade, the white population, are largely unaware of their ‘unearned privilege’, not intentionally, but because it is hard to recognise and address something that has always been there. They are not directly responsible for the actions of their ancestors, but they are responsible for righting the consequences of their wrongful actions – starting with recognising how history and a culture rooted in supremacy feed into modern-day injustice.
"The slave trade tells us more about ‘white’ history than anything else — a trade that was conceived by white people and largely organised to profit European nations and their colonies in the Americas." Afua Hirsc