Photo credit: “Manchester United” by .sanden. is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
As a lifelong United fan, it was a strange experience to find out that the ship on the badge has links to slavery. It shows just how embedded the histories of slavery are in the present that you can go decades without seeing what should have been blindingly obvious. The first time I noticed there was a ship was when one of our Black Studies students raised the issue with the ship on the badge. I later visited the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool and saw a picture of a slave ship that had been doctored to remove the boats with enslaved Afrikans being ferried on board and air holes at the bottom of the ship. The ship looked remarkably similar to the one I had worn on my chest for years and the Whitewashing of history was a metaphor for the badges of the clubs.
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