Rather than telling the descendants of the Caribbean to shut up and be grateful for being given a home amongst us, recall that our descendants enslaved their descendants, transporting them across the Atlantic in the most horrific dehumanising conditions possible.
This land is as much their home as the Americas were. They did not migrate to there by choice, but were brutally seized from West Africa — once a land of rich cultures, art and learning — to provide forced labour to the plantation owners that made Liverpool, London and Bristol so rich.
If you’re still wandering around telling yourself that you owe these people nothing — and that they owe us a debt of gratitude — you need to extract your head from your posterior. Read some history, with humility. Learn how the wealth of this nation was made.
It’s not woke to recall that our forefathers wronged theirs: that is to be a compassionate human being whose heart is not yet withered and dead. Some amongst our predecessors were great men: the likes of William Roscoe, William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson. If you must praise our past, celebrate men like these.
As for what makes any of us superior to any other, that has nothing to do with your gene pool, the colour of your skin, your class, your nationality, your intellect, your education, the language you speak. Only our conduct has any impact on that.
What will explain to you what the steep path is? It is to free a slave, to feed at a time of hunger an orphaned relative or a poor person in distress. And then being among those who believed and advised one another to patience and advised one another to compassion. These are the people of the right.
Quran 90:12-18
Last modified: 15 December 2022
