0:25

You're listening to a special bonus

0:27

episode of Human Resources. Our

0:30

guest today is Chris Manjapra, author

0:33

of The Brilliant Black Ghosts of

0:35

Empire, The Long Death of Slavery

0:37

and The Failure of Emancipation. The

0:40

book explores emancipation and abolition

0:43

and how the end of slavery actually

0:45

helped codify racial inequality and

0:47

oppression into our present. Here's

0:51

our conversation. I

1:08

am a professor of history. I live

1:11

in Boston. My family

1:13

is from Bahamas. That's where I'm

1:15

born. And my

1:17

mom's family comes from Andros, which is

1:19

an island, one of the biggest islands

1:22

of the Bahamas. And, you

1:25

know, we have in our

1:27

line the experience of slavery.

1:29

So we have a group

1:32

of, I mean, a line in our family who came to the

1:34

Bahamas, who were brought to the Bahamas long ago in the 1700s.

1:37

Another line came much

1:39

more recently, probably in the

1:41

1880s, forcibly brought there during

1:44

the illegal slave trade. So

1:46

in my bloodline is this

1:48

history of forced displacement and

1:51

the African diaspora and all the

1:53

questions that that leaves me

1:56

with, you know, today. And that

1:58

informs what I write about. That informs how I write. I

2:00

think. When did you start

2:02

becoming aware that

2:04

this is not just history,

2:06

but something that you wanted to lay

2:08

visit in and study yourself

2:10

rather than just being a part of the

2:12

fabric that you've grown up with? I

2:16

think I've always known that this

2:18

is not just history, but this is

2:20

family history. And I think when growing

2:22

up and you hear stories from my

2:25

mum, for example, about things she experienced

2:27

while she was growing up, or when

2:30

I ask questions about my

2:32

grandmother or my great-grandmother, and sometimes

2:34

we don't have the answers because

2:36

of what slavery does has done,

2:39

or even the ways

2:41

in which when I see,

2:43

as I mentioned,

2:45

grew up in the Bahamas, partly grew

2:47

up in Canada, moved to the United

2:49

States. So when I meet other black

2:51

people in different parts of the Americas

2:54

or when I've traveled to Africa, all

2:56

of this is very much personal history

2:58

because I feel like I'm meeting people

3:00

who we share fragments

3:03

in common, and there's something in need that

3:05

wants to understand how we fit together. And

3:08

that is an intellectual interest, but

3:10

it's also just something emotional about

3:13

it as well that I think informs

3:16

why I become a historian, why I

3:18

want to write about the things I write about. So

3:20

you've written this amazing book, which is Black

3:22

Goes the Empire, which I have right here.

3:25

In the beginning of the book, you talk about

3:27

this void caused by slavery, this lack of history,

3:29

which you mentioned there with some of your ancestors

3:32

or grandmother in particular. Are there any gaps

3:35

that you know from your own

3:37

personal history that pushed you into doing

3:39

this in the way you just discussed? Like

3:42

I mentioned, in my family, I

3:45

never knew the names of any

3:47

of my ancestors before my grandmother.

3:51

And so that was a void. It has

3:53

been this void and it's left me with

3:55

such curiosity. Where did we come from? How

3:57

did we get here? There are things that

3:59

have been there. happened in our family

4:01

that feel like they are reverberations

4:03

or something that must have happened

4:05

earlier. And

4:08

so that's the concrete void. I,

4:10

in traveling to the Bahamas on

4:12

my own, came across folks

4:15

who do some ancestry research and who

4:17

have access to some of the archives.

4:20

And it's through working with them that I've

4:22

now learned the names of some

4:24

earlier ancestors and taken the history

4:26

back to places where my mother

4:29

had no idea we

4:31

could go, for example. And that

4:33

is something that I

4:35

dedicated my book both to my mom as

4:39

well as to my fourth grandmother who has

4:41

shown up in the archives. It was almost

4:43

like she came to find me is how

4:45

it feels to me. And

4:47

it's so interesting that every time I

4:49

speak with my mother now, we always

4:52

bring in our ancestor. We

4:54

always reference her as if she's

4:56

in the room. So writing the

4:58

book was also a journey to

5:00

that place that both of us didn't know in terms

5:03

of Lorena and Woodside, this ancestor of

5:05

mine, and also to the place that

5:07

she came from. And in

5:09

that place, there also happens to be this

5:11

thing called the Blue Hole, which I had

5:14

never seen before, which is a void, but

5:16

it's more than a void. And so all

5:18

of these things kind of came together and

5:20

they affirm for me

5:22

that when we stare into the

5:24

void of our family history, it's

5:27

not emptiness that comes back. There

5:30

is voice, there is a presence that speaks

5:32

to us. And I've experienced that in

5:34

writing this book. What was it

5:36

about staring to that void and hearing those

5:38

reverberations that made you want to focus on

5:40

the age of emancipation? The

5:43

Blue Hole itself is...Andros has a

5:46

lot of them and they exist across the

5:48

Caribbean and Mexico and other parts of the

5:50

world, but they are these deep

5:53

holes that go down into the

5:56

island bedrock. I was standing around one of them

5:58

and Andros and... what struck

6:01

me as I was looking into

6:03

this deep, deep, deep water hole

6:06

was that the surface of it was actually like

6:09

a mirror. That

6:11

blew my mind. And the

6:13

mirror was showing the environment.

6:15

So there were these pine trees around,

6:17

and there was the sky, and there

6:19

was myself, and there was my friend.

6:22

And so that metaphor of what looks

6:25

back at us when we look into the

6:27

void just really captivated

6:29

me. And so that becomes a metaphor

6:31

in this book. But what

6:33

is looking back at me when

6:36

I ask questions about the voids

6:38

in my family history is

6:40

not only the history of

6:42

slavery, but it's also this

6:45

history of how slavery ended or

6:47

supposedly ended. And that

6:49

is important because the ways that

6:51

slavery ended, what we call emancipation,

6:53

were actually designed to do something

6:56

that we don't often talk about,

6:58

which is to actually continue the

7:01

rule of racial oppression and

7:03

to continue the dynamics

7:06

of enslavement, but just in other

7:08

ways. And so that's the message

7:10

that was coming back to me

7:13

as I was looking into this family

7:15

history and looking for my grandmother, my

7:17

fourth great grandmother. And it's an important

7:20

piece to how we understand our

7:22

past because it helps us explain

7:24

why things that happened seemingly

7:26

so long ago still have

7:30

such an impact on our lives

7:32

today. It's because the mechanisms that

7:34

were supposed to stop them didn't

7:36

stop them. They perpetuated

7:38

them. So that's the theme

7:40

of the book. Could

7:43

you just quickly define emancipation as

7:45

it's commonly understood for any listeners

7:47

who might not be quite aware

7:49

of what emancipation is? Yes,

7:52

of course. Emancipation very simply

7:54

is the term that we

7:56

use to talk about the

7:58

processes that ended. slavery. So

8:01

abolition is another very

8:03

common term that we use to

8:05

talk about the end of slavery,

8:07

the end of the institution of

8:09

slavery, and emancipation are in some

8:11

ways the toolkit that's used to

8:14

make abolition happen. The laws, the

8:16

policies, the arrangements, all of those

8:18

are what constitutes an emancipation. And

8:21

if we look at the term itself,

8:23

the term comes from Roman law and

8:25

it means to let free from the

8:27

hand. That's the definition. That's what

8:30

it means, you know, in

8:32

terms of its etymology. And

8:34

so it's a legal and

8:36

procedural process whereby slave owners

8:39

agree to voluntarily let the

8:41

slaves flee. And

8:44

that's how, and so all of the arrangements

8:46

that go into emancipation are, have been in

8:48

the favor of the enslavers,

8:50

because it was, these are ways to

8:53

allow them on their terms to

8:55

let go of what they

8:57

thought to be their property

9:00

in African people. So that's what an emancipation is,

9:02

both in terms of like how we think of

9:05

it every day, but also like what its legal

9:08

terms are. You in

9:10

the book, obviously, are seeking to reinterpret

9:12

the word emancipation as may

9:16

be suggested by the evidence. It's

9:18

not a process of freedom per

9:20

se. And even the word emancipation,

9:22

what do you say that implies about ownership?

9:25

I differentiate emancipation from

9:28

liberation and emancipation is

9:31

about agreeing or assuming

9:34

that the ownership right to

9:36

African people actually lay

9:39

with the enslaver. That is

9:41

inscribed in the very term

9:44

emancipation, as opposed to African

9:46

people owning themselves, you

9:49

know, as human beings. And

9:51

so that's, for me,

9:53

the difference between emancipation and

9:55

liberation work is that emancipation

9:58

reaffirmed the property rights

10:01

of enslavers in a variety of ways

10:04

and rejected the

10:06

obvious truth that Black

10:08

people, like all people on

10:11

Earth, are self-owning. We

10:14

are full human beings. We are not property.

10:16

So to be freed as property is

10:19

still to be seen as

10:21

property, which is what the emancipation did.

10:25

Then what's so important in this story

10:27

is that in response to the many

10:29

emancipations that happened throughout the

10:32

19th century, Black people always

10:34

began liberation projects. So it's

10:37

not as if they

10:39

just agreed to the terms of emancipation.

10:41

They saw those terms as

10:44

the reason to organize,

10:46

to resist, to demand

10:49

reparations. We've been doing

10:51

that as people in the wake of

10:53

every single emancipation that took place. So

10:56

yeah, this is a different way of

10:58

thinking about what emancipation means. It doesn't...

11:01

Emancipation are not things that end

11:03

a story. They have been for

11:05

Black communities always the

11:08

beginning of a new

11:11

struggle. And that, for

11:13

me, was really important to track across

11:16

different locations of the Atlantic

11:18

world. What were some

11:20

of the broad patterns that repeated themselves

11:22

in emancipations across different empires? You argue

11:25

that the first sort of emancipation process

11:27

comes from the American North. What did

11:29

that look like? There

11:32

are five main

11:34

types of emancipation which we

11:37

can talk about. And also, just to

11:40

start us off, observe that

11:42

these five different types, they

11:45

interrelated with each other and it's

11:47

kind of like this entangled thread

11:50

or weave of different ways

11:52

of preserving the rights of

11:55

slave owners and

11:57

of continuing the bondage of

11:59

Black people after. after emancipation

12:01

happened. The very

12:03

first type that the model in

12:05

some ways was something called the

12:08

gradual emancipation. These

12:10

began in the American North, especially

12:12

in places like Pennsylvania. 1776

12:17

was the year in which the American Revolutionary

12:19

War was the context, was the year in

12:21

which this was beginning to be developed. They

12:24

developed, like I'm saying, this toolkit. The

12:27

they, being enslavers and the political

12:29

elite, developed this toolkit that soon

12:31

began to travel to other parts

12:34

of the world and

12:36

would continue to travel for like 100 years to

12:39

come and define many other emancipations. And

12:41

the key to this toolkit was,

12:43

number one, that when

12:46

abolition happened, when emancipation

12:49

processes were complete, what

12:51

black people would experience after

12:54

emancipation would be for a

12:56

period of time the continuation

12:58

of bondage. So for

13:00

example, children born after emancipation date of

13:03

in Pennsylvania, 1780, they had to live

13:06

in slavery for another 18 years

13:09

or sometimes a little longer. So

13:12

until their 18th birthday or beyond. The

13:14

reason being that the enslaver said

13:17

they need to be trained into

13:19

their freedom as well as they

13:21

need to pay us through their

13:23

free labor for the cost of

13:25

our loss of property. So

13:28

the burden being put then on

13:30

black people as lost

13:32

property as opposed to black people

13:35

being compensated or the

13:38

harm they experienced being redressed

13:40

as human beings who were

13:42

imprisoned and kept in captivity. That

13:45

was the key to how the gradual

13:47

emancipation worked. And we see that

13:50

seed replicating over the course of

13:52

the coming century and every other

13:54

emancipation. The bottom line being that

13:56

black people were made to always

13:58

be the debtors. always had to

14:00

pay for freedom, and

14:03

enslavers across the board

14:05

always received reparations, compensation,

14:07

some kind of payment

14:09

or restitution because their

14:11

property rights were recognized

14:13

by the state. This

14:16

basically set the terms for

14:19

why race works the way that it does

14:21

today, and why we

14:23

as Black communities experience the

14:25

kinds of, well, have the kinds

14:28

of experiences that that we have today. In

14:30

particular, when you say set the terms for

14:33

today, could you detail some of those just

14:35

so that people are really aware? So

14:38

if we think about so many categories

14:41

of social experience, so for

14:43

example, just access to housing,

14:46

just access to food security,

14:49

access to education, just

14:52

access to equity in

14:54

law, the overrepresentation of

14:56

Black communities in the

14:58

carceral system, the way

15:00

that policing targets

15:03

Black communities. So in that list

15:05

that I've just given, housing, food,

15:08

prisons, policing, and

15:11

political representation, the underrepresentation of

15:13

Black communities in representative

15:16

government, what's interesting

15:18

about these key pieces of our

15:21

civic life is that Black communities,

15:23

as we know and

15:25

can be shown in the numbers,

15:28

do not experience equity in these

15:30

domains today, nor have

15:32

they since the generations, since

15:34

the emancipation has happened. And

15:37

my point is that in

15:39

the wake of each emancipation, this

15:42

is precisely what Black communities were asking

15:44

for. So these were the contents of

15:46

what they called reparations and

15:48

restitution. They were always asking, back in the

15:51

day they would ask for land, they

15:53

would ask for the vote, they

15:56

would ask for security, they

15:58

would ask for a just company. compensation

16:01

to return to them the wealth

16:03

that had been robbed from them, plundered from

16:05

them. And they were

16:07

not given that back in the

16:09

day when the emancipation took place and

16:11

that created this ongoing,

16:14

it's almost like a recursive story.

16:16

It's like a reverberation that when

16:18

it was not settled back then

16:21

and it's not been settled since and

16:23

that's the deep cause

16:25

for why we see the

16:27

systemic inequity today, right? And

16:30

so another way to say it is what

16:33

would address this inequity? It begins with

16:35

going to the root cause, I think,

16:37

which is saying we need to actually

16:39

stop as a society, stop and

16:41

first of all, recognize what

16:43

has gone wrong and then make the

16:46

amends and the restitutions

16:48

to correct those structural

16:51

problems, structural racism. You

16:53

obviously mentioned that there are five trips

16:55

of emancipation processes. Could you

16:57

detail this for us? I

17:00

mentioned the gradual emancipation. 1780s

17:03

is when the gradual emancipation

17:05

began. By the time

17:07

that we come to the 1820s, there's

17:09

a new emancipation model, what I call

17:12

the retroactive emancipation, which is something that

17:14

the French state imposes on

17:16

Haiti, which had freed itself in a

17:18

liberatory war, in a liberation war, 20

17:20

years earlier. And

17:23

in 1825, the French

17:26

imperial government imposes an emancipation

17:28

on the Haitian people,

17:31

which is a huge debt that

17:33

would take more than 60 years

17:35

to repay and then there would

17:38

be all kinds of interest that the Haitian

17:41

people had to pay for generations afterwards

17:43

to pay off this debt. So that

17:45

was $22 billion in

17:48

today's money was demanded eventually from

17:51

the Haitian people. That was the

17:53

retroactive emancipation. Then about

17:55

a decade after that, in the

17:57

1830s comes the compensated emancipation.

18:00

emancipation, which the British empire

18:03

then carries out across

18:05

its plantation colonies. And

18:07

here what the innovation is, is

18:10

that the government pays a

18:13

huge cash distribution to British

18:16

slave owners, and that

18:18

creates its own debt legacy. That

18:20

continues for 180 years and was finally

18:23

repaid only in 2015. The

18:26

compensated emancipation in the British empire

18:28

sets this model, which

18:30

then many other European empires

18:33

follow, the Spanish, the French,

18:35

the Dutch, the Swedish, others,

18:37

the Danish. And then the next big

18:40

new innovation in paying

18:43

slave owner compensation comes

18:46

in some ways, well, in many ways during the

18:48

American Civil War. America copied

18:50

Britain, by the way, in Washington,

18:52

DC. And it paid a compensated

18:54

emancipation in the city of DC.

18:57

But then in 1865,

18:59

there is what I term the

19:02

war emancipation that happened. And

19:04

that's when almost half a million

19:06

black people in the American South

19:08

were set free. Initially,

19:11

there was the hope that there

19:13

would be a proper reparations for

19:16

what slavery had done to

19:18

them and their families. But

19:21

basically within the first year after

19:23

the war ended, President Johnson reversed

19:26

whatever progress was being made and

19:28

paid in some ways

19:30

this huge reparations of

19:32

confiscated lands back to the slave owners.

19:35

And over the coming decades, we

19:37

have Jim Crow, we have the

19:39

Black Codes, we have

19:41

the lynching campaigns, a variety of

19:44

ways in which we can think of

19:46

this as benefits that

19:48

slave owners as the ruling class

19:51

derived through policy and through law

19:53

to ensure that their

19:56

rule, their order of racial

19:58

oppression would continue. And that

20:01

effect, what happened back there and you know after 1865

20:03

and onwards is what the United

20:06

States is still living with today, you know,

20:09

in a regime of racial oppression which continues.

20:12

And then the final and the last form of

20:15

emancipation is what I call the conquest

20:17

emancipation. I think of this as the

20:19

way that a global war on Black

20:22

lives began to expand in and through

20:24

emancipation struggle. So by the

20:26

time that the 1870s rolled around 1874, the

20:29

British are becoming a major imperial

20:32

presence in Africa and the west coast

20:34

of Africa in particular. And

20:36

the Gold

20:40

Coast colony which is today's Ghana,

20:42

they actually conquer officially through

20:44

saying that they are there

20:47

to emancipate the African slaves.

20:49

So they use the British,

20:51

the French and then later

20:53

other powers, the German others,

20:55

they use this kind of

20:57

term or banner

20:59

of emancipation as a justification

21:01

for the conquest of

21:04

Africa. The story is about, in

21:06

some ways, it starts in this

21:08

small place, Philadelphia in 1780, and

21:10

it ends, you know, across

21:14

the oceans back in Africa. But

21:17

it's a growing story about

21:19

how racial property,

21:21

how racial oppression is

21:24

being vented through emancipation and

21:26

allowed to expand as opposed

21:28

to being addressed and

21:31

redressed. Why did

21:33

the British choose compensated emancipation as

21:35

their sort of model of choice?

21:37

And how did that help them

21:39

consolidate their power? Because as

21:41

you argue in the book, these emancipation, the choice,

21:43

the process usually comes through an

21:45

economic interest. So

21:48

the key here is private property,

21:50

you know, private property. What the

21:52

British empire did

21:54

is it innovated a way

21:57

to free enslaved people that That

22:00

would fully

22:02

respect the claim

22:04

to private property of

22:07

British slave owners. You

22:10

might say that the gradual emancipations, which were

22:12

the earlier model, which were taking place in

22:15

the American North, they left slave

22:17

owners in many ways

22:20

feeling that they still

22:22

had gripes. They did

22:24

not feel that they received their proper compensation

22:26

for the loss of their racial property. We

22:29

think about even the Fifth Amendment of

22:31

the American Constitution, and that amendment was

22:34

all about clarifying how important

22:36

property rights were to the

22:38

new nation of the

22:40

United States. So when

22:42

the British came around some decades

22:44

later to their emancipation, they saw

22:46

this, I would argue, as a

22:48

way of perfecting what emancipation

22:51

could be by making it even more

22:53

in the interest, more clearly in the

22:55

interest of the enslavers, by ensuring that

22:57

the property rights of the

22:59

enslavers were being, equitably as

23:01

they would say, redressed.

23:03

And that's the language when we read the Abolition

23:06

Act of 1833. Something

23:08

that I find so interesting is so many of

23:10

the articles in that act have nothing to do

23:12

with the interests of the

23:14

enslaved. It's

23:17

really an act that is about property

23:19

of the enslavers and how that is

23:21

going to be protected and honored through

23:24

basically pairing out this

23:27

valuation process, calculating

23:29

the monetary value that

23:31

every single living enslaved

23:34

person in the Caribbean

23:37

was claimed to embody, and

23:40

then paying that amount, that

23:42

calculated amount, back to

23:44

the enslavers. And that was what

23:46

the compensation involved. Along

23:48

with not only that, but guaranteeing

23:51

the enslavers, in addition to the

23:54

cash payout, a set of

23:56

years, ended up being

23:58

four years of free labor. of the

24:00

enslaved, so that that would be

24:02

an additional form of payback, additional

24:04

way of paying for

24:07

this loss of property

24:09

rights. So to boil

24:11

all of that down to something very

24:13

important, what we see

24:16

in the compensated emancipation is

24:18

that a rule of racial

24:20

property is being

24:23

respected and continued

24:27

through emancipation as opposed to

24:29

being abolished or ended. So

24:33

emancipation in that sense didn't actually bring

24:35

about abolition. And

24:38

that's why today when we have

24:41

abolitionists, when people are on the street,

24:43

Black Lives Matter in Britain and in

24:45

the United States, and people call themselves

24:47

abolitionists, that is a proper way of

24:49

speaking about what they're doing because emancipation

24:52

did not bring about abolition. And

24:55

obviously it was your work that revealed

24:58

British taxpayers had been paying off compensation

25:00

given slave owners upon emancipation up until

25:03

2015. How

25:05

did you discover that research and why do

25:07

you think no one had spotlighted it before?

25:10

I discovered that just by

25:12

chance. I noticed

25:15

something in the archives that

25:17

caught my attention. No one

25:19

had until that time in

25:21

2018 had kind of asked

25:23

when the West India loan, which was taken

25:25

out in 1835, it was a huge loan that

25:28

was the equivalent of 40% of the British

25:30

GDP at

25:32

the time, when that loan was

25:34

repaid. We just never asked the

25:36

question and we didn't do the research

25:38

to find out when. And

25:41

so when I started wondering, well, if

25:43

it was a loan that the

25:45

British government took out, when did the British

25:47

government pay it back? That

25:49

was the question that led me

25:51

to sending a number

25:54

of Freedom of Information Act requests

25:57

to HM Treasury. doing

26:00

some archival research at the Bank

26:02

of England, at the Rothschilds Bank, and elsewhere.

26:05

And that's what eventually uncovered this, you know, the

26:07

fact that this was a 2015 redemption. It

26:12

took until that time for this to

26:14

end. And

26:17

then the question that you ask after is, why did

26:19

it take us so long to... I

26:23

think that the real answer to

26:26

that is the mainstream

26:28

wants to move on. I

26:31

think of when the

26:33

then Prime Minister Cameron, who right in

26:35

2015, like we know, went to Jamaica

26:37

and was saying it's time to move

26:39

on from the history of slavery. This

26:42

is not unfamiliar. This happens

26:44

in... This is the

26:46

common way of speaking often amongst

26:48

white liberals in Britain

26:50

and in the United States

26:53

and many other European or

26:55

white dominant societies, which

26:57

is to say, look, it was long ago. It's

27:00

time to move on and also

27:02

to focus on this narrative

27:04

of inclusion. Things were

27:06

not perfect back then. We've been doing

27:08

a lot of work and we've included

27:11

our minorities in

27:14

our system. That

27:16

is a very convenient narrative because

27:19

it allows us to not ask the

27:22

questions about how history actually happened

27:24

and how things

27:27

that supposedly are deep in the past and

27:29

over are not over. And

27:31

this debt legacy is just a very

27:33

concrete way of making that point, right?

27:36

That it has... People have been... The British

27:38

public had been paying that West

27:40

Indian loan until 2015. Not

27:44

only that. Caribbean colonies had

27:46

been paying, helping to pay that loan

27:48

until 2015. So that's

27:50

just one concrete metaphor and it

27:53

manifests in so many other social

27:55

ways of how we continue

27:57

to pay for this history that is

27:59

not over. that

30:00

that narrative seems to be just

30:03

a little more unstable as

30:06

time goes on. And

30:09

we're more able to talk

30:12

truth, or maybe it's

30:14

not even that, what it is is

30:16

that there are more avenues for

30:19

people who hold different kinds of truths,

30:21

different kinds of experiences to express their

30:23

views. There

30:26

isn't as much of a control on what the

30:28

narrative is. And that I think is very, very

30:30

refreshing. We see the way that the Caribbean spoke

30:32

back, right, to the Royals

30:35

and basically changed the narrative. I

30:37

thought that was amazing or what Barbados

30:39

has done. It really begins to change a

30:41

narrative, which I'm imagining must be a little

30:44

distressing to the ruling

30:47

classes. Yeah,

30:49

I think they can do with a little bit of distress. So

30:52

I wanna zoom in on Haiti because it's a

30:54

really interesting example that you pull out. It's an

30:57

enslaved population who liberate themselves,

31:00

but still retroactively get

31:02

emancipated by the French. Why

31:05

is that? You've touched on it briefly, but

31:07

I'd like to go into it deeper. And

31:10

also how was Haiti treated as a nation

31:12

prior to France officially emancipating them? Haiti

31:16

was freed itself in 1804 is

31:20

the official date in

31:22

which Dessalines declared Haiti free.

31:27

And what happened in the

31:30

aftermath of that was a boycott, an

31:33

international boycott, official boycott by

31:37

France, Britain, America,

31:39

Spain, other European countries. And

31:43

so because Haiti had

31:45

decided to free itself on

31:49

its own terms, it

31:51

was then punished. And not only

31:53

that, its freedom was not recognized. And

31:56

that's like a national at the national

31:58

level, but you could... think of it

32:01

almost at a personal level as

32:03

well, that when black people demanded

32:06

freedom on their own terms, that

32:09

was not recognized by slave owners.

32:13

Slave owners only recognized black freedom if

32:15

it happened on the slave

32:17

owners' terms. So that's the narrative.

32:19

That's what's happening here. It took

32:21

20 years for France

32:24

to agree

32:26

to recognize Haiti's independence, and that happened

32:28

in 1825, like I mentioned, under King

32:30

Charles X. When

32:36

the king of France agreed

32:39

to recognize Haiti, he

32:42

framed it in terms of, quote-unquote, exceeding

32:45

the freedom of the Haitian people, as if

32:48

it was his to give. And

32:51

even after 1825, the

32:53

French state often still called Haiti

32:56

by its colonial name, of Saint-Domingue,

32:59

again, showing that there was no

33:02

real will to recognize

33:04

the Haitian nation as an equal

33:07

in the international domain. And

33:10

so that has how the

33:13

international order, which

33:15

was organized by European nations

33:17

and by this time also

33:19

the new American nation, how

33:21

they functioned, which

33:23

is to recognize

33:25

only themselves as equal and

33:28

to insist on putting

33:31

the first revolutionary black nation

33:33

on earth into the category

33:35

of something lesser, something subordinate.

33:40

And look at the experience

33:42

that Haiti has had over

33:44

the coming centuries to

33:46

this very day in which it has been

33:49

a site of both European

33:51

and then American colonization. Now

33:55

having said that, the other side of the

33:57

story is the way that Haiti served as

33:59

a nation. and still serves as a

34:01

kind of sentinel of

34:03

liberation for black communities

34:06

internationally. In

34:08

the years after the Haitian Revolution, we

34:11

have people from New

34:13

York and from the Carolinas, from

34:16

Cuba and from Jamaica, who are actually

34:18

moving to Haiti because it was the

34:20

one place on earth where

34:22

black people could have full citizenship.

34:26

And we know that, you

34:29

know, anti-slavery activists across

34:32

the American North and other places,

34:34

they were creating, you know,

34:37

centers or meeting houses

34:42

that they named after Haitian leaders, like the Boyer

34:44

Halls that were opened up in New York City.

34:47

So there

34:49

is both in the story of

34:51

Haiti, the

34:54

way for us to think about how this

34:56

racial oppression continues at

34:59

a kind of international level, as

35:01

well as at an international level

35:04

to think about how early Pan-Africanism

35:07

emerges as a response

35:09

to these unjust

35:11

emancipation, right? That

35:13

what black communities do

35:16

when they are faced with this kind

35:19

of ongoing oppression is

35:21

that they mobilize, they organize,

35:23

they find each other, and

35:26

they form, you know, ways

35:28

of resisting. And I think that

35:30

to me is a really

35:32

inspiring part of the story. I

35:34

don't see the story as depressing

35:38

or as pessimistic. Sometimes

35:40

people say, well, why are you so pessimistic? I

35:42

don't see this as pessimistic. I see it as

35:44

realistic. Because I think that the

35:47

history that we have is very

35:49

repetitive in how it likes to

35:51

treat black people and deny

35:54

black people their freedom. But

35:56

the optimism that I feel

35:59

is... in the legacy

36:01

of forms of movement building resistance and

36:03

the demands that black people continue to

36:05

put forward to say the only kind

36:08

of freedom that we will be

36:11

satisfied with is full freedom.

36:13

And that is what continues

36:15

today in so many different ways. Yeah,

36:21

I saw actually, I think, probably

36:23

what you're referring to, the review in the New Republic,

36:25

which called the word pessimistic,

36:27

which was by a white academic and

36:31

I found its conclusions quite confusing. But

36:33

I wondered how you would discuss some

36:36

of the points that Ray is saying that, you

36:40

didn't talk as much about the

36:42

ways that enslaved and freeback communities

36:45

created the political context that made

36:47

these laws possible. What would you say

36:49

to that? Because it seemed

36:51

a strange reading of your work to me, but I'd like

36:53

to give you the space to respond. There

36:56

is this real push to

36:58

want to tell histories of integration, to

37:02

want to say that black

37:05

communities used the

37:07

structures that they had and

37:10

then created,

37:12

helped create those structures and

37:15

then inhabited those

37:17

structures and integrated themselves into them. And

37:19

that's what our history is. And I

37:21

just disagree with that way of looking

37:24

at history. I think the

37:26

structures have been set up often

37:29

in the image of elites,

37:33

often in ways that

37:35

are repetitively about racial

37:37

oppression and

37:40

continuing the rule of racial property. And

37:43

what happens in response is

37:46

not that black communities just

37:48

integrate themselves. No, they

37:51

work in and through those systems

37:53

to move to something beyond them.

37:56

So it's a real different

37:58

way of looking at how history is. history

38:00

works. It's not that because

38:08

emancipation to each one was failed and designed

38:10

to operate in these unjust ways that somehow

38:12

this is a story of pessimism and

38:15

all we have is failure.

38:20

No, that's not what it is.

38:22

The story is that because power

38:24

interests, the ruling groups, seek

38:27

to recreate their privilege

38:32

over time. What others

38:35

who are oppressed do in

38:37

response is two

38:41

things. They strategically

38:43

use those systems that they are given to

38:46

their best advantage, but

38:49

they don't satisfy with those systems. They

38:51

move beyond those systems. And

38:53

that's what I often find with, let's call

38:56

it the white imagination, is that they are not today,

39:00

is that this

39:02

imagination has a hard time

39:05

thinking beyond, beyond what

39:07

the current structures are. So for

39:09

example, black communities

39:11

historically and today talk a

39:14

lot about reconstruction and

39:16

what a true reconstruction of society and

39:18

the state would look like. That's

39:21

a discussion about going beyond. Black

39:24

communities talk a lot about

39:28

collective property and collective benefits

39:30

like the land bank movements

39:34

that have been part of the past and part of our

39:36

present. And what I think often

39:40

the mainstream here is in that is

39:42

this is an attack on private property.

39:44

There can be nothing beyond private property.

39:47

Many black communities have been thinking beyond private

39:49

property for a very, very, very long time.

39:52

And one last example, I

39:54

think black communities in the past and

39:57

the present have really lifted up the

39:59

importance of reconstruction. reciprocity of creating

40:02

a world in which we can depend

40:04

on each other, trust each other. I

40:07

write about one reparationist

40:10

who wrote in the 1890s. Her

40:12

name was Anna Julia Cooper.

40:15

And she had this language of saying,

40:17

what we need now is

40:19

a universal amnesty and

40:23

reciprocity for

40:26

American society. And so

40:28

here's a Black woman who was born

40:30

under slavery, who was experiencing

40:32

Jim Crow, and she

40:35

was talking about the need to create

40:39

trust and reciprocity between

40:41

everybody in a society.

40:44

That's something that I think Black communities

40:47

have long asked for and tried to

40:49

practice today, but

40:51

it rubs up against what

40:54

I think defines

40:58

a lot of our problems, which

41:00

is this idea that there's

41:04

a racial group that has

41:07

particular privileges and other groups

41:09

who have to wait.

41:15

Another point there that I find interesting

41:17

is this

41:20

white imagination, I'll call it the white

41:22

liberal imagination, it

41:25

also focuses a lot

41:27

on this idea of gradualism.

41:32

We're taking small steps. Things take a

41:34

lot of time. Let's just wait,

41:36

and in the future, full integration

41:39

will happen. That

41:41

gradualist way of looking at

41:43

change. But

41:45

from the very beginning, if we

41:47

go back to the 1780s, one

41:49

reparationist, famous reparationist in

41:51

London, Ottobock Koguano,

41:53

he wrote this book in which

41:56

he said, what we need now

41:58

is and

42:01

reparation. And he

42:03

also said that when

42:07

enslaved people rebel, that

42:10

rebellion has to be celebrated

42:12

because it's not about waiting

42:14

for the future. It's

42:17

about full freedom now. And

42:20

so that's what I find

42:22

resonating in the abolitionist discussions

42:24

today. All the different

42:26

kinds of abolition that we could talk about is

42:29

this demand for living

42:32

full freedom today. It's

42:34

not something that black communities need to

42:37

wait for. And so all

42:39

of that to me is actually really optimistic. I'm

42:42

sure that for other groups or other

42:44

people, they might hear this and feel

42:47

upset, distraught, or feel pessimistic because

42:49

it means that the way

42:52

things work would have to change. But yes,

42:55

the way things work need to change because

42:58

the system is still based on racial oppression. It's

43:04

fascinating to me that the gradualist

43:07

perspective is applied to ideas of

43:09

freedom and liberation, but it's not

43:11

applied to the initial enslavement or

43:13

violent act of conquest. There's

43:16

no gradual act of conquest there. It happens.

43:18

And then people are suddenly put on this

43:20

brand new regime or find themselves enslaved. The

43:23

whole point of enslavement that it was

43:25

so brutal and sudden and

43:27

freedom is slashed away. But the

43:29

freedom has to be given back gradually. That's

43:32

right. The conquest and

43:34

this plunder happens

43:37

suddenly and immediately, but

43:40

freedom can only

43:42

be delivered gradually with

43:45

no defined delivery

43:47

date. It's always the post-dated

43:50

check. Freedom is post-dated check, but the

43:53

conquest is like an

43:55

immediate transfer to the bank. That's the contrast.

44:00

there in the white liberal imagination,

44:02

which I want to add also

44:04

goes beyond people who might be racialized as

44:06

white, white liberal imagination affects a lot of

44:08

people and

44:11

the fear that what they have done to

44:13

others may be done unto them. Yes,

44:16

yes, yes. Again, isn't that a

44:19

failure of imagination? Isn't

44:21

that a failure to

44:24

recognize that

44:26

other communities who

44:30

are in touch with history in a different way

44:33

may have no interest in replicating

44:36

that history? There's something beyond

44:38

the dynamic, this returning over

44:40

and over again dynamic that

44:42

I think we experience,

44:48

that actually a lot of

44:50

people want to break out of. So

44:52

I think that speaks to that failure of

44:56

emancipation and to a certain kind of,

44:58

I would call that the pessimism. I

45:01

was going to say that is

45:03

the pessimism, it is that idea that is

45:05

the pessimistic idea and not the idea that

45:07

people can go beyond, that they can imagine

45:09

bigger, better and completely break down

45:12

the existing structures. I

45:14

just want to ask, because we're coming to

45:16

the end of our time, a bit about

45:18

C as a society of emancipation, because you

45:21

talk about it in the book and I

45:23

find it really interesting. The C obviously plays

45:25

a huge part in the process of enslavement

45:27

and the images we have of enslavement with

45:30

the Middle Passage. And then it

45:32

became a site where supposedly emancipation

45:35

was taking place, especially once the

45:37

British got involved. What did those

45:39

C emancipation look like? What

45:41

were they supposed to be? And what were

45:44

they in practice? The

45:46

C emancipation began in earnest

45:48

in 1807

45:51

and the British innovated there. This

45:53

was the when the end of

45:55

the slave trade was declared by

45:57

the British Empire. And

46:00

there was a process that was

46:03

introduced to free

46:06

captives who were held in the holds of

46:08

slave ships. And it involved

46:10

basically setting up a

46:13

colony in Africa, the

46:15

port of Freetown in Sierra Leone,

46:18

as an emancipation port. And

46:22

British squadrons would patrol

46:25

the African coast to the West African coast.

46:28

They would commandeer slave

46:30

ships and they would take them

46:32

to Freetown. And then

46:34

the enslaved would be led out of

46:36

the holds and would enter this emancipation

46:39

process. So up until now, this

46:42

is sounding like a kind of

46:44

abolition taking place. But

46:46

then what happens is this recursive

46:50

act of what we've already seen

46:52

in the gradual emancipation, that

46:55

the enslaved were

46:57

first renamed as

47:01

contraband or as

47:07

they were seen as property that was being

47:10

brought out of the holds of the ships as opposed

47:12

to as people. They were

47:14

then assigned or

47:16

consigned to up to from seven to 14

47:19

years of bondage. And

47:22

in many cases, they entered

47:24

into a lifetime of bondage. So

47:28

they, in many cases, reentered forms

47:30

of slavery. And

47:32

that emancipation

47:35

mode then spread to

47:37

a number of other

47:39

ports around the Atlantic,

47:41

creating this sea emancipation

47:45

scheme. And it

47:47

touched Cuba, it touched Brazil, it touched

47:49

parts of Africa, and

47:51

it touched Bahamas. Bahamas

47:53

was a major place in which

47:55

people who were emancipated at sea

47:57

would be sent. then

48:00

would be sent into bondage. So

48:03

that, I think, you know,

48:05

fits into the story

48:07

of all of

48:09

these other emancipation, and also because

48:11

it talks about how all

48:14

of these histories are kind of tangled together,

48:16

they touch each other, because they're all sharing

48:18

the same ocean in a certain way. We're

48:22

coming to the end of our time together. First

48:25

of all, I wanna say, is there anything that you would like to

48:27

bring up that you think has been missed,

48:29

or hasn't been discussed in relation to this

48:31

work? You know,

48:33

my book ends talking

48:37

about reparations in

48:41

the context of this history that

48:43

we've been discussing. And

48:45

I think it

48:47

helps us understand what reparations means

48:50

today by seeing reparations

48:52

as the counterpoint to this

48:55

continuing story of failed

48:58

emancipations. We

49:01

might say that reparations

49:04

is the pathway to true abolition,

49:07

and emancipations were

49:10

a false pathway that

49:14

promised abolition but never delivered it. So

49:17

I think that is the message that

49:20

the book is really wanting to

49:22

send, because it's a message to our

49:24

present. And

49:27

it wants to point out that reparations

49:30

struggle today is actually a lot

49:33

about so much more than

49:35

what is comfortable to, let's

49:37

say the liberal mainstream. The

49:39

liberal mainstream in Britain and

49:41

in the United States would

49:44

like the reparations discussion to be

49:46

about an amount

49:48

of money. And how much

49:50

should it be, and to how many people, and

49:52

then how are we going to figure out who

49:56

qualifies and who doesn't. But

49:58

if we step back from that. That's

50:01

exactly what

50:03

emancipation's were doing, just the other

50:05

way around. They were all about

50:07

calculating and property and paying individuals,

50:10

except the individuals were slave owners.

50:13

So it's easy for the system to do what

50:15

it knows to do in reverse, but

50:17

the system still stays the system. It still

50:19

stays a system that's based on ideas about

50:23

private benefit, private property, monetizing

50:26

harm, and so forth, but the

50:28

real problems that we're facing are

50:31

structural, systemic, policy,

50:33

law. They're about entitlements,

50:35

they're about benefits. They're

50:38

about returning generational wealth to communities

50:40

that have been plundered. And

50:42

to make it short, they're about really

50:45

thinking beyond the structure we have. So

50:48

that is the discussion

50:50

about reparations. It's

50:52

not about an amount or a check.

50:54

It's about changing our society and how

50:56

it works and stopping racial

50:59

rule. So I

51:01

think that, to me, clarifies in my

51:03

mind what's at stake

51:05

today and why the reparations

51:07

debate and

51:10

movements are

51:12

so timely, so

51:15

timely, not just for Black communities, but

51:17

for our societies

51:20

more generally. We're

51:25

trying to finally address, with

51:27

truth and with justice, things

51:30

that have been buried and

51:33

like I say, ghost line for a

51:35

very, very long time. I

51:37

find this a really exciting time that we're

51:39

in because it's harder

51:41

and harder to maintain the kind

51:43

of dominant narratives. We

51:45

have opportunities for change

51:47

that I think are exciting. Thank

51:54

you. www.mooji.org