Privilege, me and my city’s bloodstained history.

I wrote this the other day after seeing a documentary on the history of Liverpool and after reading many blogs about privilege, suddenly things just clicked into place a bit more. 

Privilege, me and my city’s bloodstained history.

A lot has been written about privilege lately. I must admit as a beneficiary of white privilege and a comfortable middle class upbringing I have let this issue slide under the carpet for too long; not deliberately but just as the result of well being privileged, the fact that you so often don’t notice it.

However reading the plethora of posts on the feminist blogsphere lately has opened my eyes; I’d like to add my small piece about how privilege affects me and the wider world I live in. A ‘How I learnt to see my privilege’  story so to speak.

I live in Liverpool, UK. It’s a fantastic city, I am proud to be from here and I love living here. However this city would not be what it is without the slave trade; Liverpool ships were estimated to have carried 40,000 African slaves, Liverpool controlled over 41% of Europe’s and 80% of Britain’s slave commerce.
Slavery was outlawed in the UK in 1807; Two hundred and one years ago, yet you can’t deny it still affects us. The grand Georgian houses that form part of my university, they once belonged to merchants and it’s pretty likely they were built with slave money; the same can be said for the majority of the old buildings of the city. Our status as a city would not be the same if we were not such an important part in the slave trade, that money helped the city grow, prosper and gain a foothold in the world. The institutionalised thinking that we, as white Europeans were superior, thinking that was at one stage backed by our religious establishments, yes the church that preached ‘love thy neighbour’. The wealthy merchants used their money to fund philanthropic gestures all over the city, these projects helped many but at what price?
For years this history has been hushed, not talked about, brushed under the carpet. We now have an international museum of slavery and we are begging to admit to our integral part in this horrific practice. Yet one thing this privilege argument has taught me; we don’t often admit it we still benefit. We can say ‘nothing to do with me, it happened years before I was born’ which is true enough. But while cannot be held directly responsible for the crimes of our ancestors we cannot go through life pretending that this history has no effect upon us now. No matter how horrific we find the idea of slavery now, the fact is as a white person in Britain today, in one of the key centres of the slave trade, I benefit from these crimes. You can outlaw the trade, but the attitudes that created it are still entrenched in our society, in our systems, in who has the wealth and power. I only have to walk around the city, to see the buildings built on slave money, street names named after slave traders (including the famous Penny Lane), go shopping in the designated world heritage site docks that once held slave ships and traded sugar and cotton from the plantations. This city would not be this city without the slave trade and like it or not, I benefit from it.
I hope we continue to have such informed and thought provoking debates in future, the feminist community has been as guilty as anyone for marginalising the voices of women of colour and as my city and country is slowly facing up to it’s ugly past, I feel the women’s movement is too, we have to.  I know I feel a bit awkward as a white woman talking about race issues, I suppose I fear the well meaning foot in mouth ignorance faux pas or the noted ‘turn it into being about us’ phenomena which has been pointed out on a few comment threads, but at the same time I can’t just sit back and pretend the whole thing doesn’t happen and that it doesn’t involve me. I just thought I’d post my piece about how I can now see my privilege staring me in the face and that I’m thankful for all those fantastic bloggers   who opened my eyes to it.