Some Reflections on Slavery in the USA and what that has to do with our story in aotearoa-New Zealand.

Bonnie and I have been in the USA over the last couple of weeks. For the first five days we were in New Orleans, and then three days in Washington DC. The final 2 days were spent in Philadelphia before I went off to a TSSF meeting.

New Orleans was great. We did a couple of tours and learnt some of the history. This history is important. This year is the 300th anniversary from its founding as a French colony under Louis XIV. From New Orleans the French controlled the hugely important Mississippi River which provided an excellent transport system for the many properties that spoke wheeled off it. Louisiana was French and Catholic. The colony was built on huge numbers of European colonists - all of whom had to be catholic by law, and slaves. The Catholic church taught that black people have souls. And although France and Spain (who took over Louisiana in the 1760's) took part in the slave trade, those slaves had the right to buy their freedom and live as free people of colour within the colony. As such they were able to own land, own businesses, and take part in the economic and political life of the colony.

In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson was able to buy Louisiana from the French - who had got it back off the Spanish in 1802. This doubled the size of the USA and gave them control of the Mississippi and provided an economic lifeline right up to Canada. It allowed the USA to become what it is today. New Orleans became one of the largest and wealthiest cities in the USA. It also became one of the major points of entry for immigrants into the USA. It was a game changer. While the French influence continued, in part from the French refugees from the slave colony in what is now Haiti in 1804, the law around slavery became American law. And that was a game changer for the people of colour, free and slave.

While we were in New Orleans we went on a Swamp Boat and Plantation tour. We visited Oak Alley Plantation and Laura Plantation. These were (and in one case still is) sugar plantations. Once a cost effective process for refining the sugar cane was invented in the early 1800's sugar became a source of great wealth. At both plantations there was an acknowledgement that everything that was there and the wealth that represented was built on slave labour. That is the buildings, including the sumptuous homestead, were built by highly skilled slaves; the running's of those houses were done by slaves, the ground was drained and the sugar cane planted, harvested and processed by slaves; the clothes the slaves wore was made from cotton grown and processed on similar plantations elsewhere in the south where the work was also done by slaves; the food cooked for everyone on the plantation was cooked by slaves etc.... The owners of these plantations grew very wealthy on the back of the labour and lives of their slaves. But these were not slaves under catholic France. They were slaves in the USA. And because they were black, they were by definition slaves for life with no chance of ever being free. The American version of slavery. Unique and evil.

When Bonnie and I were in Washington DC we visited the African American Museum. What an experience. We were there for over 3 hours and still had much more to see. It was a sobering experience, in part because the story was so horrific, in part because there were moments of hope that were lost and in part because I realised both how much our story in Aotearoa-New Zealand is linked to this story and how much I had bought into the underpinning lies.

When the foundations for the American version of slavery were put in place America was a British colony under British colonial rule. When Virginia passed those first laws defining blacks as slaves for life with no hope of freedom, when those attitudes that black Africans were inferior to the British white man it was a British colony. To be fair Britain did what other European empires were doing at the time, using black Africans as a cheap labour sources to do the work needed to produce wealth for the empire and to enrich Europe. The difference was that Catholic Europe allowed black people the possibility of freedom, and life. That possibility was not an option under the worst of British rule.

At its root is the notion that Africa was a very primitive place and that Africans were primitive and inferior. And I had somehow bought into that. The idea that Europe brought civilization to primitive societies. It was a shock to realise that was not the case; that West African societies were complex social, economic and political structures. Initially, once Europe worked out how to sail out of sight of land in their revolutionary sailing ships, they traded for gold and silver jewelllery and artifacts made by West African artisans. They traded for rice grown by West African farmers. And when slavery did begin, they were after people of particular skill sets that could be used in the new colonies, skills Europeans did not have. That is not the story I have been told along the way. These were NOT primitive people. But their societies were slowly destroyed as it is estimated, 12 million people were forcibly relocated to the Americas. Societies ripped apart and cultures destroyed just so the wealthy of Europe could benefit and grow so much more wealthy. Empires are expensive businesses to run, and the European Empires were built on the enslavement and abuse of those 12 million people, and their descendants born in the new lands.And it was all built on the notion of the superiority of the white man, or in Britain's case, the superiority of the white Englishman. At its heart the British Empire was deeply racist and destructive for indigenous groups and other groups of people around the world. And we are seeing the consequences of that deeply racist empirical system being played out around the world now. The legacy of the British Empire is not the spread of enlightenment and civilization as we are so often led to believe.

So I wonder how that played out in other parts of the British Empire? 
It can be seen in the appalling treatment of indigenous people in Canada and in Australia, with the policies of forced separation of families so that children could grow up in a British environment and have their identity and culture eradicated. We see it in the genocide of Aboriginal people in Tasmania, and the attempted genocide in Queensland and other parts of Australia. We see it in the fact that Aboriginal Australians were not defined as people until the 1960's when they were given citizenship and the vote in their own land. We see it in "white Australia" policy that even saw people from Eastern Europe as "non-white" -  a legacy that people like Pauline Hansen seeks to return to with her appalling xenophobic positions. We see it in the British Raj in India, which viewed Indians as inferior to the English and incapable of ruling themselves, even though they had been doing so for a very long time and very well long before the British arrived; and which as one Indian academic and politician described, was built around the sole purpose of impoverishing India to help pay for the British Imperial system. The legacy of the Raj was a divided and impoverished India and Pakistan, and millions dead. It turns out the British Empire was not the beacon of light some like to portray it as.

In Aotearoa we see the same story of deeply embedded racism. There is ample evidence to suggest that for some of those involved in developing the Treaty of Waitangi there was the hope that some of the worst consequences of that deeply racist system could be avoided. But it wasn't. Maori were are are still seen as inferior. All things British were and are still seen as vastly superior. And anyone who questions that understanding of the world are described as revisionist and politically correct  - neither of which is meant in a complimentary way. Cliff Simons and Buddy Mikaere are in the process of  publishing a new book on the Battle of Gate Pa, one of the last battles in the New Zealand Land Wars. And some people associated with the group Hobson's Pledge, a group dedicated to upholding the racist myth of British superiority and enlightenment have rushed out a book to beat them which simply restates the ill informed narrative of 1864 as if that is the only way the story can be told. It was done to head off any criticism of our racist history, any suggestion that we of British descent are not as superior as we like to think.

Don Brash, one of the founders of  Hobson's Pledge, was recently prevented from speaking at Massey University in Palmerston North. It now has become clear that the Vice Chancellor played a role in that decision, and based that decision on her understanding of Massey University upholding the Treaty of Waitangi. Brash was there to speak about how he understands the Treaty to be a mechanism by which we all became one people, and by one people he means we were all to be like the Englishman. In his criticism of the Vice Chancellor's position Brash asked how Maori might be critiqued in future if the Treaty was invoked in this way. I wonder on what basis this 70+ year old white man who has lived a pretty privileged life for much if not all of  his life feels he has the right let alone the credentials to offer critique of Maori. In my experience young Maori are very capable and willing to offer critique of their world and history, and they do so with more integrity that Brash can ever muster.

And the unstated and yet implied assumption that is at the heart of Hobson's Pledge is that our British history is beyond critique. Which is really what all the above is about. When do we get to honestly look at and talk about the incredibly racist and destructive assumptions and world view on which the British Empire was built on? When do we get to talk about how those assumptions and world view played out in our history, and how they still play out today? It seems to me that groups like Hobson's Pledge are all about stopping that discussion. Why? Because, like Don Brash, they are people, publicly mostly male, mostly older, whose lives have been based on this world view and they have benefited from the fruits of those assumptions; and they do not want any of that critiqued in any way at all. And if I am honest, that is true for many of us who live in New Zealand. Being white, being descended from British settlers in this land however they got here brings a certain amount of privilege. I benefit from those assumptions and world view. Unwittingly I have for most of my life bought into some of that world view. I was appalled as I read about the cultures Europe first experienced in West Africa. I knew about the great empires of Sudan and Ethiopia built on trade in spices and silver and gold, but for some reason I had just accepted the narrative about primitive Africa - the very narrative on which the American version of slavery, and the appalling story of Jim Crow in the South are based on.

As I walked around the African American Museum in Washington DC and the very compelling way they have told this history I became increasingly saddened at what I read. It goes on into today. America has a long long way to go yet.
But this is not just an American story. It is a British story. As  went around I sighed a lot; and became increasingly outraged as I realised that our story in Aotearoa is linked with this story of enormous human degradation and suffering. We have to talk about this. We have to acknowledge this and find ways of moving on from this. If we don't we will perpetuate the injustices of our past because we will not know any  better. We still live out those assumptions and worldviews. And that is not good for anyone.