Black History ToolKit

The Asiento de Negros (agreement of blacks') was a monopoly contract between the Spanish Crown and various merchants for the right to provide African slaves to colonies in the Spanish Americas. The Spanish Empire rarely engaged in the trans-Atlantic slave trade directly from Africa itself, choosing instead to contract out the importation to foreign merchants from nations more prominent in that part of the world; typically Portuguese and Genovese, but later the Dutch, French and British.

The Asiento did not concern French or British Caribbean but Spanish America. The 1479 Treaty of Alcáçovas divided the Atlantic Ocean and other parts of the globe into two zones of influence, Spanish and Portuguese. The Spanish acquired the west side washing South America and the West Indies, whilst the Portuguese obtained the east side washing the west coast of Africa - and also the Indian Ocean beyond. The Spanish relied on African slave labour to make their American colonial project possible, but now lacked any trading or territorial foothold in West Africa, the principal source of slave labour. Thus the Spanish were reliant on Portuguese slave traders for all their requirements.

John Hawkins is considered to be the first English slave trader. He left England in 1562 on the first of three slaving voyages. In 1563 he sold slaves in St Domingo, his second voyage was in 1564 and his final, and disastrous voyage was in 1567. At this time British interests lay with African produce rather than with the slave trade and between 1553 and 1660 numerous charters were granted to British merchants to establish settlements on the West Coast of Africa to supply goods such as ivory, gold, pepper, dyewood and indigo. 

Portugal and Britain were the two most ‘successful’ slave-trading countries accounting for about 70% of all Africans transported to the Americas. Britain was the most dominant between 1640 and 1807 when the British slave trade was abolished. It is estimated that Britain transported 3.1 million Africans (of whom 2.7 million arrived) to the British colonies in the Caribbean, North and South America and to other countries.

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Seven out of 10 young black people in the UK have felt under pressure to change their hair in order to appear more professional in school or at work, according to a new survey. Research by YMCA among young people of black and mixed ethnicity found many felt they had to change to be accepted in society, prompting warnings that rigid school and workplace policies could result in “cultural erasure”. Asked about racism in education, more than nine out of 10 (95%) said they had witnessed racist language at school and almost half (49%) said they believed racism was the biggest barrier to academic attainment. In this episode Abu-Bakr discusses the impact that racism has on the psychology of black children in the UK education system. 

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The Sewell Report made the claim that there is “no evidence of institutional racism” and that, although the UK is not a “post-racial society”, it sets a good example for other white-majority countries when it comes to diversity.

The term “institutional racism” was Kwame Ture's coinage. It appeared first in “Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America,” a book Tuare wrote with Charles Hamilton in 1967. A reader runs into the phrase right away, in the second paragraph of the very first chapter. The writers distinguish individual acts of racism—which can “be recorded by television cameras” or otherwise “observed in the process of commission”—from institutional racism: “less overt, far more subtle, less identifiable in terms of specific individuals committing the acts.” (The italics were Tuare’s and Hamilton’s.)

But institutional racism exists, “it permeates the society,” Tuare and Hamilton wrote. And its effects were certainly palpable—in the higher death rates of Black babies, for instance, or in how Black families couldn’t break free of their tenements. Like gravity, institutional racism couldn’t be seen, but it could be felt by the minorities who became its victims. 

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This episode exposes the pervasive nature of racism in society - it also gives advice on the steps needed to overcome them. For the uninitiated  race does not biologically exist, yet how we identify with race is so powerful, it influences our experiences and shapes our lives. In a society that privileges white people and whiteness, racist ideas are considered normal throughout our media, culture, social systems, and institutions. Historically, racist views justified the unfair treatment and oppression of people of colour. We can be led to believe that racism is only about individual mindsets and actions, yet racist policies also contribute to our polarisation. While individual choices are damaging, racist ideas in policy have a wide-spread impact by threatening the equity of our systems and the fairness of our institutions. 

To create an equal society, we must commit to making unbiased choices and being antiracist in all aspects of our lives. Being anti-racist is fighting against racism. 

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In this podcast Abu-Bakr reflects on the life of Malcolm X and his tireless effort to change the narrative from a civil rights to that of a human rights struggle.

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In this episode Abu-Bakr looks at the effect of eurocentrism on Black and African history. Some European authors had assailed and even doubted Africa's historical heritage; one even went as far as to say, “Africa had no history prior to European exploration and colonisation, that there is only the history of Europeans in Africa.

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Black history taught in the west usually contains two approaches: The Catastrophic and Survivalist approach. These methods of inquiry focuses on degradation and the exploits of blacks to reinforce the notion that black people have not contributed anything towards world history and science.

In this episode Abu-Bakr talks about the survivalist approach in order to provide an insight to world events that preceded the horrors of slavery and to highlight the education and socialisation process that leaves us ignorant of our past, strangers to our people, apes of our oppressors.

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William Wilberforce takes all the plaudits and admiration for his role in banning the British slave trade in 1807. However there are many others who seem have been written out of the history books.

Thomas Clarkson travelled the country generating petitions to parliament and creating a huge popular movement. Another major factor totally forgotten was the huge slave rebellions that shook the West Indies. The British army were defeated in Haiti after a five year struggle and more than 12,000 British death. The army of enslaved Africans had defeated the army of the world's superpower, and the largest slave-trading nation. The humiliation of this defeat sent a shock wave through the British establishment and, indirectly, strengthened the forces in parliament that voted to abolish the slave trade in 1807.

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The Haitian Revolution secured black independence in the former French colony and sounded the death knell for the European slave trade.  Though long ignored by many the Haitian Revolution stands out as the only instance in which enslaved people and free people of colour fought and defeated the French, Spanish, and British to end slavery and the slave trade. This successful and complicated campaign for freedom and equality, begun in 1791, resulted in the creation of the second republic in the western hemisphere, an independent Republic of Haiti in 1804.

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