Photo credit: “JMW Turner, Slave Ship, detail of ship” by Steven Zucker, Smarthistory co-founder is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Apparently, King Charles “supports” research into his royal family’s links to slavery. The story should be how it has taken until 2023 for the palace to open up the royal archives so that such a study could be done. But in the year 3 PGF (post-George Floyd), we live in a brave new world where anything anti-racist is possible. Rather than seeing this as some sort of positive step, I can’t even say the research is better than nothing. In the current atmosphere, it is nothing. Since the great anti-racist reset, we have seen companies like Lloyds of London (who have so much blood on their hands they can never be cleansed) apologize and commit to token reparations. Universities like Glasgow and Bristol are researching their obvious links to slavery. Most recently the Guardian offered a mea culpa (Latin for “through my fault”) because of their founding being bankrolled by cotton (i.e. slavery) money. Owning up to a company’s historical sins is the brand-aware step that does more for the image of the business than it does to atone for the racism that shaped the institution. So, get used to more stomach-churning campaigns.
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