Texas’ most famous statesman, Sam Houston, was a slave owner who opposed the Confederacy. But white Texans tend to omit his dissent in current debates over removing Confederate markers.
Anne C. Bailey, Binghamton University, State University of New York
Former enslaved persons never got ‘forty acres and a mule,’ and their descendants have been denied reparations for the legacy of slavery. Will Joe Biden be the president to change that?
History is full of examples of nations paying out to compensate for slavery. But the money never went to those who suffered under the system, only those who profited.
Marie Rodet, SOAS, University of London; Bakary Camara, Université des sciences juridiques et politiques de Bamako, and Lotte Pelckmans, University of Copenhagen
Descent-based slavery – when a slave status is ascribed to a person based on their alleged ancestry – continues to exist in Mali.
President Lincoln was a statesman. John Brown was a radical. That’s the traditional view of how each one fought slavery, but it fails to capture the full measure of their devotion.
Geographers are documenting slave-built infrastructure, from railroads to ports, in use today. Such work could influence the reparations debate by showing how slavery still props up the US economy.
‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ the best seller of the 19th century, is not a relic from the past. The complex Uncle Tom figure still has a hold over Black politics.
Supply chain transparency is important, but countries like Australia also must do more to support the justice process, such as securing compensation for fishermen and putting traffickers in jail.
The turn towards authoritarianism, xenophobia and racism in Western democracies makes it unlikely that former Western slave-trading nations will agree to reparations in the near future.
Trump supporters have staked a claim to the US Constitution and the founding era of the country in their battle against what they perceive as an ‘illegitimate’ government.
‘Bridgerton’ alludes to and obscures social, racial and political tensions in England’s Regency era, the extraordinary decade that marks the dawn of the modern world.