Descendent of slave trader seeks absolution in Africa
A reader, Laurium, writes;
The ritual self-abasement and redemption rituals are fascinating. Do you think it gets us off the hook? Or is more required?
He then quotes from an
article in the
Independent:
Sir John Hawkins … was … the first person to buy slaves in West Africa and sell them to Spanish landowners in the Caribbean.
Now his descendent, Andrew Hawkins … has delivered an extraordinary personal but public apology for his ancestor’s involvement in the trade, kneeling in chains in front of 25,000 Africans in a stadium in Banjul, the capital of the Gambia.
After he had spoken, the Vice President of Gambia, Isatou Njie Saidy, came forward to accept the apology and symbolically remove the chains.
The event was part of the Roots Festival, linked to the Alex Haley bestseller, Roots, which tells the story of the origins of black Americans in the slave trade. The Lifeline Expedition group also wore chains and shackles during a “reconciliation walk” in the village of Juffureh, from which Kunta Kinte, the slave whose story is the basis for Roots, is believed to have come from.
David Potts, the founder of the Lifeline Expedition said: “We do not think there has been a really sincere apology from Europeans to Africa and we want to do our part in trying to redress that.”
Laurium continues:
I wish someone would do a religio-psycho-sexual analysis of these guys. It would really help us understand the central component of liberalism and its major component of white self-abasement, ritual degradation and racial submission. The nut of it is right here, right in these guys’ heads.
Some historians have said liberalism’s roots lie in a “decayed Puritanism,” but I don’t believe Puritanism ever had such an extreme component of public shaming, did it? And even if the Puritan stocks (for example) could be considered public shaming, the shame and guilt was always for personal misdeeds, wasn’t it? It certainly wasn’t race-based or ancestor-based genetic shame, was it? It certainly did not have a racial component. And again, the stocks were to break the stubborn spirit, weren’t they? They wouldn’t be appropriate in this case where there is a desperate desire on the part of the fallen (white people) to get right with God (black people) as in the case of these guys.
And Christian personal suffering was always private, wasn’t it? The whole point of the hairshirt was that no one knew you suffered. The secret nature of the suffering was an important piece. No S&M-style public suffering allowed.
And what about that other strange component: the ritual release and redemption by the Vice President of Gambia. The notion that release from one’s racial guilt and sin can only come at the hands of blacks, that it is they who offer the ritual release. Have blacks have collectively replaced Christ in this ritual in the form of the VP of Gambia? Or is the white man in chains actually acting out Christ’s suffering for the sins of what … his race? his ethnicity? his immediate family?
I wish I had taken more anthropology, religion and political science courses. They could explain so much of this. A dash of Freudian psycho-sexual analysis, would also help a great deal, I suspect.
- end of initial entry -
James R. writes:
Laurium writes: “And what about that other strange component: the ritual release and redemption by the Vice President of Gambia. The notion that release from one’s racial guilt and sin can only come at the hands of blacks, that it is they who offer the ritual release.”
I prefer the chainless absolution offered by Walter E. Williams.
LA writes:
I think I’ve previously told about a spontaneous oration, delivered by a female friend in Central Park years ago, in which she explained how white America’s debt to blacks was put paid. Unfortunately neither of us wrote it down afterward. It was one of the greatest things I ever heard.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 22, 2006 09:16 AM | Send