*Sathnam Sanghera* # Progressive Summary # Definitions # Chapter Notes Incredible foreward by Marlon James: > So in the fall of 2015, I went after David Cameron. Not in person, or in any print or visual media (the Daily Mail would have lapped it up). I took my shot on Facebook, back when it was slowly but steadily losing its cultural influence over anyone who would not eventually vote for Trump. Whether my anti-Cameron rant means anything to you (he was prime minister at the time) might depend on how much stock you put in social media, but maybe it was for the best that online was where it stayed. Regardless, I was on fire. Cameron had just visited Jamaica, and in stunning and downright imperial fashion, demanded that we Jamaicans get on with moving past the legacy of slavery—that we stop living in the past. With that trademark condescension he reserves for speaking to people of color, he advised us to “focus on the future.” He then introduced the real reason for his visit, which was to announce that the United Kingdom was about to front a whopping 40 percent of the cost to build a new prison on the island. That way Jamaicans convicted of crimes in the United Kingdom could be sent back to the country they had supposedly come from, whether or not they were legal British residents. Even by Churchill’s colonial standards, the speech was jaw-dropping. Equally enraging was how the entire Jamaican parliament—based on the rowdy British model no less—seemed to take it like a bunch of house slaves being given a sermon on loving their masters. I couldn’t decide if the speech came from ignorance, arrogance or simple gall. > > Cameron seemed ignorant of how much his country’s imperialism, particularly during slavery, had shaped every aspect of the Britain he has lived in, from its magnificent palaces right down to the stunning sense of national entitlement that allowed him to make such a speech. How it was only a few years before his speech that the British people had stopped compensating slave owners for post-abolition losses. On my first trip to the UK four years before, I was a little appalled that the British Museum would ask me for a donation to enter. I couldn’t conceal the sense that I owned the place, or at least that I had earned it through the work of my people, unpaid during slavery, and barely paid after. Looking around Bristol and Liverpool, I wondered how I was supposed to get over all the bad that had been wrought by the empire, while the empire itself held on to all the good. So after David Cameron’s speech, I couldn’t hold myself back: > > *Listen David, I feel you. I’m with you on this forgetting slavery business, screw all the haters. I too am all ready to move past slavery and forget the whole thing. I just have one condition: You First. You heard me. I promise to stop bitching about the legacy of Slavery and Colonialism (don’t get it twisted, the latter was even worse) and move on if you also move on, by destroying every building, every landmark, every statue, every port, every bridge, every road, every house, every palace, every mansion, every gallery (Hello, Tate!), every museum, and every ship built with slavery and colonialism blood money. That would mean that London, Bristol and Liverpool would all have to go. Then we’d all be just about full free, David.* # Quotes # References