T he usual White supremacist malarkey about how abolishing the racial slave‑traffic was an act of godliness, but which never explains why the unloving institution – and the racism supporting it – was established in the first place (with the approval of supposedly‑loving Christians).
A fully‑incomplete history that leaves the racism‑instigating White culture unexamined, as if racial slavery were somehow a curable disease, rather than the logical outgrowth of an endemic part of the culture, which helped to fund the Industrial Revolution and the growth of the British Empire.
Inevitably, because of institutionalized White guilt, those who benefit from White supremacy today (White people) are hardly likely to fully‑investigate the true basis and the actual history of their culture, nor the present‑day benefits they currently receive from such supremacy: Institutionalized Racism.
The lowest estimates for the number of slaves forcibly‑migrated to the Americas are used in a vain attempt to minimize the scale of the Black Holocaust; without taking into account the many slaves that were never accounted‑for: As if this somehow minimizes White guilt. Guilt seen in this way magically becomes a quantity rather than a quality; making it similar to Holocaust‑deniers disputing the Jewish claim that as many as six million Jews were murdered, despite the existence of far more reliable documentation to refute such Holocaust denial.
The patently‑absurd and unchallenged claim is made that racial slavery was accepted by most people as if even the millions of slaves thought the same. White films like this never consider the victims as truly human – only the victimizers, who are viewed more as morally‑misguided rather than what they really are: Volitionally‑evil. (Compare this with the common opposite treatment of the Jewish holocaust, where the victimizers are always seen as willfully bad.)
Whites see Blacks as essentially passive recipients of White goodness; hence, the fact that the ongoing, contemporary slave rebellions are barely mentioned and certainly never actively‑supported by White people. White people see Whites who speak‑out against racial‑slavery as brave, but not the Blacks who actually risk their lives to fight it. The present‑day legacy of racial slavery (White supremacy) is still with us, and likely to remain, since old habits die hard – as racist movies like this amply attest.
There is:
- No consideration of the short-lived economic benefits of racial slavery and that its abolition was a long-term economic advantage to Whites, since it rendered them more employable and killed the commodity‑monopolies that would have prevented the expansion of White laissez‑faire capitalism:
- Beforehand, Whites experienced more unemployment because slaves do not need to be paid and are thus, in the short‑term, cheaper. In the long‑run, transporting, housing, clothing, feeding & controlling slaves who must be forced to work, eventually, becomes more expensive;
- thus, there is also no mention of the economic and political fact that Prime Minister Pitt wanted the slave‑traffic abolished because it was becoming less economically‑beneficial to the British Empire. And also because such abolition would hurt the French Empire (whose slave colonies were far more productive) by depriving them of fresh slaves;
- little recognition of the fact that Whites treat the White poor as little better than slaves. Wilberforce himself was a member of a secret committee investigating and repressing lower-class discontent in 1817, as well as opposing feminine anti‑slavery associations;
- no reflection on the fact that any democratic system will always tolerate evil so long as a majority of voters supports it; resulting in the moral compromise of gradual abolition in order to avoid the revolt of slave‑masters as well as that of slaves;
- no examination of the fact that the racism justifying slavery was not being abolished, since it was also used to justify the British Empire. After so‑called Emancipation in 1833, slaves could not own land nor vote, so the word Emancipation is clearly not the same as Equality, even though this movie implies that it is.
With Caucasians, the only constancy is hypocrisy, since Whites discussing human rights is always nothing more than a parlor game in which human suffering is viewed, by them, only in the abstract – as here. The schadenfreude is self‑evident and suggests racial slavery and abolitionism are two sides of the same coin. The brutality of slavery is simply a recognition of its economic fragility, since it requires the use of expensive force to maintain it. But none of these obvious historical facts is ever mentioned in this dishonest film.
This movie is a perfect example of the narcissism pervading all White anti‑racism; perfectly mirroring the alienated self‑regard of the White supremacist. While it is impossible to imagine any White more committed to the abolition of racial slavery than a Black, yet again, Blacks feature here mostly as passive victims – as if Whites believe the sufferings of Whites to abolish slavery were in any way comparable to the sufferings of slaves. As if Helen Suzman were the architect of the fall of Apartheid and not Nelson Mandela. As if the execution of Colonel Von Stauffenberg was somehow more important than the deaths of six million Jews.
Somehow Whites believe only they can change the world for the better – saviors made in their own image, in a world they have made bad by their own actions; eg, apartheid, Jim Crow, the Third Reich & the British Empire. The obvious mental conflict this causes inside Whites as to the inconsistency between thought, word & deed on show here reveals a love of unearned privilege at permanent war with a hatred of earned feelings of guilt and shame.
This eerie critique of White supremacy ends‑up tacitly‑favouring it by supporting the abolition of racial slavery, but not the racist nature of the British Empire. This Caucasian propaganda tries to abolish the effect, but not the cause and, like the film Amistad, is a weak critique of racial slavery, despite the exceptional quality of the acting talent and the high, overall technical quality of the production.
A film about John Newton (the composer of the eponymous song) would have made for a far more satisfying work, but would have confronted a White audience with a crisis‑of‑conscience (that they still vainly grapple with today) regarding the fact that Negrophobia is a fundamental basis of their culture. But this film brushes all this aside by implying racial slavery has nothing to do with racism; thereby avoiding White blushes.
Whites today still clearly have their moral priorities reversed and their ethical compass pointing in the wrong direction; making this movie as White supremacist as the historical figures it claims to denounce and those it claims to support.
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