This article argues that the complex interactions of history, race, agency, memory and trauma are both essential to and negated by contemporary dominant understandings of racism in the US and Europe. The lethal racist policing of black communities in the US and the fanatical policing of national borders by the EU are richly and disturbingly redolent of the violent raced labour practices which have authorised capitalist modernity. Focusing on cultural representations such as The Wire and the United Nations’ slavery memorial, ‘The Ark of Return’, the authors argue that the history of radical black agency is consistently marginalised in a very particular language of ‘recovery’ and ‘healing’. The acknowledgement of historical crimes is mobilised in such a way as to neutralise the past and to negate the connections between that past and present structures which continue to exploit and vilify racialised subjects within the terms of neoliberal globalisation.
Woolfolk was the first professional slave trader to make extensive use of the coastal trade routes to transport slaves to Natchez and New Orleans. By the mid-1820s, his family dominated the trade out of Maryland. Between 1819 and 1832, he shipped 2,228 captives south. GudmenstadRobert H., The Troublesome Commerce: the transformation of the interstate Slave Trade, (Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 2003), p. 29. See also SchermerhornJack Lawrence, The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815–1860 (London, Yale University Press, 2015), pp. 33–68.
5.
Niles Weekly Register (19May1826), p. 205.
6.
The Genius of Universal Emancipation (2January1827), pp. 109–10.
7.
The mutiny was widely reported. See for example, Essex Register, Salem, Massachusetts (22May1826), p. 3, City Gazette and Commercial, Charleston, South Carolina (26May1826), Alexandria Gazette, Alexandria, Virginia (22May1826).
ScottDavid, ‘Preface: Debt, Redress’, Small Axe (Vol. 18, no. 1, March2014), p. x.
18.
We would like to thank all of the contributors to this conference, we would especially like to acknowledge our conference organiser Ian Sinclair and our friend and colleague Tom Hickey who was instrumental to the event.
19.
The examples here are too numerous to detail, but instrumental to our race/class politics have been A. Sivanandan, ‘From resistance to rebellion: Asian and Afro-Caribbean struggles in Britain’, Race & Class (Vol. 23, nos. 2/31981/1982) and Manning Marable, ‘Rethinking Black Liberation: towards a new protest paradigm’, Race & Class (Vol. 38, no. 4, 1997). See also Jenny Bourne’s timely account of the politics of race and belonging in the UK and the role of the Institute of Race Relations at the frontline of anti-racist education, Race & Class (Vol. 57, no. 1, 2015).
