As a kid rising up in Edinburgh, I used to be taught this used to be a town constructed at the genius of the Scottish Enlightenment. That tale used to be sunk deep into our bones and handed between us as our valuable inheritance. It shaped our sense of ourselves and our trust in Scotland’s just right and worthy contribution to the sector.
We walked previous statues of David Hume and Adam Smith. We celebrated their mind and claimed it as our personal. But no person spoke of what lay underneath that brilliance – of whose labour constructed their wealth, whose our bodies have been stolen, dispossessed and abused because of their “considering”. Edinburgh used to be framed now not as a town of complicity however of genius. That silence formed us.
Now, the College of Edinburgh’s evaluation of its legacies of enslavement and colonialism joins a much broader reckoning that has been construction throughout Scotland. It confronts the tales we have been advised – that we proceed to inform. That we like to inform.
Scotland has lengthy located itself as a country at the margins of empire. We discuss of being oppressed, victimised – or as a benign player within the British imperial challenge. However many people, thru our circle of relatives histories, have all the time identified that’s now not the entire reality. It’s a lie of omission. Person who has excluded us, exiled us from a countrywide tale by which we even have histories to give a contribution, and by which we now have a declare.
Edinburgh College’s contemporary inquiry into its historical past is sobering. It specializes in the establishment’s monetary beneficial properties from plantation slavery, its highbrow give a boost to of racial pseudoscience and its memorialisation of colonial figures. It names how Enlightenment considering in Scotland justified racial hierarchies. Those aren’t revelations for lots of Black and Brown Scots, or for the ones concerned with Scotland’s anti-racism actions – they’re confirmations of truths lengthy lived and denied.
And nonetheless, we’re met with denial, minimisation and the defensive flinch of a country uncomfortable with the reality of itself. There’s a reflex to maintain delight in any respect prices inside our society – even if the associated fee is exclusion and erasure of fellow Scots; in their histories and their tale of Scotland.
The paintings of uncovering Scotland’s pivotal function in enslavement and colonialism has been led via folks comparable to the teachers Geoff Palmer and Stephen Mullen, Zandra Yeaman on the Hunterian Museum, Lisa Williams, founding father of the Edinburgh Black Historical past Stroll, and the poet Shasta Hanif Ali, who explores the tales of the Indian ayahs who lived and labored in Edinburgh. Their paintings has helped us perceive long-denied histories and given many people a more potent sense of belonging in consequence. The College of Edinburgh’s record provides additional weight to their labour. However what comes subsequent?
Race is a social assemble. However we should now confront the truth that it used to be built, partially, right here, via so-called “nice males” – our nice males – whose legacy continues to form our nation and establishments. And their legacy nonetheless reasons us hurt.
This hurt isn’t summary. In 2024 on my own, Police Scotland recorded 4,794 hate crimes beneath the brand new Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act. Black and minority ethnic persons are 60% much more likely to reside in essentially the most disadvantaged portions of Scotland than their white opposite numbers. Black and minority ethnic staff have poorer results than white staff when making use of for jobs in our public sector organisations.
Those are reverberations of a legacy born in Enlightenment philosophies that theorised racial hierarchies – concepts introduced as science, later used to justify enslavement and colonialism. Those narratives of white supremacy negatively impact us all, they usually proceed to hazard and blight the lives of Black and Brown other folks.
What occurs subsequent should due to this fact transcend apology and symbolism. It should be structural, sustained and fiercely imaginative. Schooling is essential. Now not simply to right kind the file, however to change into how we consider and create a greater country. Inside of our faculties, reform is beneath approach – tasks comparable to Schooling Scotland’s Development Racial Literacy programme and collectives comparable to The Anti-Racist Educator supply important assets and coaching.
Such efforts should be scaled, funded and politically sponsored in the event that they’re to meaningfully reshape how we perceive ourselves, how we embed anti-racism inside our establishments and the way we educate Scotland’s historical past.
Edinburgh council’s Slavery and Colonialism Legacy Overview, counseled via councillors in 2022, integrated a public apology and the introduction of an implementation staff, chaired via Irene Mosota, to steer reparative motion. This integrated tasks such because the Disrupting the Narrative challenge, which has shaped the principle frame of my paintings as Edinburgh makar (the town’s poet laureate). The conferences of the Scottish BPOC Writers Community’s writers staff on the College of Edinburgh, and the vital paintings of mentorship and give a boost to from We Are Right here Scotland also are dwelling examples of this reparative paintings. This paintings isn’t symbolic – it’s foundational. It let us rebuild from the margins, and write ourselves again into the tale of Scotland, and into the tale we inform.
It is a reside, unfinished dialog – person who should embody intersectionality, mobilise harmony and withstand the a long way proper’s weaponisation of pseudoscience and ancient denial. Opposition to anti-racism is continuously framed as resistance to “political correctness”, and requires decolonisation are regularly mocked or intentionally misunderstood. Silence, on the other hand, is complicity.
Historical past isn’t settled. Our tale isn’t completed. We’re able to confronting ourselves in truth and significantly. We will be able to show pride in our historical past of social justice actions – however this delight should additionally personal and recognize the reality of what and who constructed this country. That suggests interrogating our previous and the explanations for our collective amnesia. It approach paying attention to voices lengthy silenced. The time has come, Scotland. The time has after all come.
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