LorMarie
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02:39:56 am on April 1, 2008 | # |
Apparently, the natives of a Devon city centre in England would like to. The BBC reports that there’s a pub (aka, a bar to us yanks) named after John Hawkins who used the worst type of violence you can think of to keep his slaves captive. But according to the locals, the evils of slavery are only a small part of what made Hawkins. They’re probably right. In fact, I’m sure you could find an SS officer for whom Nazism was only a small part of his being. As sarcastic as I am attempting to be, I’d have to side with the Caucasian owners of the pub. If Hawkins was a great historical figure for their country, not to mention the pub sits near his birthplace, why not name the pub after him? This is a PRIVATE business, correct? I’m quite sure that Esther Armah, a black British journalist and Thursday morning co-host of Wake Up Call on WBAI, would disagree with that. She implied that naming the pub after Hawkins is nothing more than blatant disrespect toward black people.
History shows us that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson slaves. Yet, there are plenty of public schools named after them. So I ask what’s the difference? Was not Queen Elizabeth I a horrid racist? Also, should we be seeking formal apologies from African governments since they were involved in the slave trade? Why not erase every Malcolm X or Marcus Garvey BLVD’s from every street corner where they exist? Get my drift? There is likely a lot of racism in Britain that should be fought against. Particularly those who want to make racism the dreaded law of the land like the BNP (which stands for British National Party). But the name of a pub is not one of them. So I’d say to the Plymouth Racial Equality Council to carefully pick your battles.
Or you could simply just apologize for something you didn’t do. One of John Hawkins’ descendants decided to go all the way to Africa in order to apologize for slavery. But there’s one missing…an apology from the Africans (which actually did occur btw), it has simply never been done formally. Is there anyone who would like to apologize to me personally?
