McGill researchers study slaves
McGill University is doing a kind of penance for the fact that its founder owned slaves, by supporting research into the lives of the seven enslaved people. A paper about them with recommendations for transforming the “harmful and exclusionary racial climate of McGill university” in future is available on the Black Canadian Studies site.
david192 13:35 on 2020-07-28 Permalink
If you believe there’s a “harmful and exclusionary racial climate” at McGill university, you’re obviously totally out to lunch. But worse – how will you ever survive in the world if you’re so far gone that the hand-holding rainbow of life at McGill stresses you out as this bastion of oppression?
Jebediah Pallindrome 14:03 on 2020-07-28 Permalink
And yet, the name stays…
Also, it’s not just that he owned slaves, it’s that the economic system he made his fortune off of was itself entirely dependent on the slave trade.
McGill traded slaves as part of his business – there are records of these transactions.
And what do we think McGill was getting in exchange for all those beaver pelts? Tobacco, cotton, sugar… products that were cultivated by slaves.
When we think of the slave trade we tend to think about SPain and Portugal. The British made the Iberians look like slave-trading hobbyists. The Brits industrialized the process.
The university should change its name. We hold on to these things not because of tradition or memory but because some words sound better than others. McGill sounds distinguished. The idea of some enterprising Scot wearing a tricorner hat fits our romanticized Anglo-American perspective on settler colonialism.
Some scholars think the McGill family may have kept one servant as a defacto slave after the Wilberforce laws went into effect.
These were not nice people; they didn’t want ot be your friend. Why commemorate them in perpetuity?
EmilyG 17:08 on 2020-07-28 Permalink
The racial climate of McGill was quite harmful and exclusionary when I went there, but I didn’t realize it at the time.
Kate 18:19 on 2020-07-28 Permalink
I never went to McGill, Emily. Can you give some examples of how it manifested?
Blork 18:25 on 2020-07-28 Permalink
Just a note regarding Jebediah Palindrome’s statement “the economic system he made his fortune off of was itself entirely dependent on the slave trade.”
Not true. That is true in much of the U.S., particularly the south, where cotton plantations — the largest drivers of the economy in the 19th century — were entirely dependent on slavery. But the economy of Canada in the 18th and 19th centuries was almost entirely based on fur and timber. While there were scatterings of slavery in those industries it is false to say they were entirely dependent on slavery. McGill also made much of his fortune from land speculation.
An idiot will take my comment as some kind of refutation of anti-slavery but all I’m doing is pointing out facts. In particular I’m pointing out the erroneous attribution of a situation that applied in one place but did not apply in the place in question. Just because this is a hot button issue that doesn’t mean we can just make things up, or paint with a too-wide brush that blurs important distinctions.
Chris 10:16 on 2020-07-29 Permalink
>When we think of the slave trade we tend to think about SPain and Portugal. The British made the Iberians look like slave-trading hobbyists.
It’s curious, and perhaps telling, that you only think of European countries as the slavers. The
Arab Slave Trade started before, ended after, and was larger than the European Atlantic slave trade. Yet it’s hardly ever discussed, or even known.
Humans enslaving humans was a near-universal historical phenomenon, practised in all regions, by all races. (I say “was” but remnants remain, note the map for where.)
While there is room for improvement here in Canada, we must also not lose sight of the fact that we are currently one of the least racist places anywhere on Earth, anytime in history.
Meezly 10:45 on 2020-07-29 Permalink
@Blork, I don’t think that’s what Pallindrome meant. If you read further:
“And what do we think McGill was getting in exchange for all those beaver pelts? Tobacco, cotton, sugar… products that were cultivated by slaves.”
So what Pallindrome was getting at was that the economic system that McGill relied on was the global demand for products from the American South. He made a good part of his early fortune by exploiting resources from Canada in exchange for goods produced by plantation slave labour.
McGill was stinking rich. In Wikipedia, under the Legacy section, he is described as “a fur trader, slave owner and land owner.” As if “slave owner” is some mark of distinction. I feel gross reading about him.
Jebediah Pallindrome 17:02 on 2020-07-29 Permalink
@ Blork –
I invite you to consult the following, as these are the sources I based my statements on:
1. Frank Mackey – Black Then & Done With Slavery
2. Rosalind Hampton – Black Racialization and Resistance at an Elite University
Even Stanley Brice Frost’s exceedingly laudatory biography of McGill mentioned both his ownership of enslaved people and his direct involvement in a global economic system principally based on industrial slavery. Brice Frost also points out that McGill was indirectly involved in compensating for enslaved people lost during the American War of Independence.
In other words, McGill was involved in slavery in nearly every way possible: direct ownership of other people (somewhere between 7 and 11, Indigenous and Black), indirect slave-trading and trading in goods that produced, cultivated and/or trapped by enslaved people.
I understand full well this is unplesant but I can assure you what I said was factual and grounded in recent academic research. When I was in CEGEP nearly 20 years ago my Canadian history prof made much the same point: we didn’t have the same kind of chattel slavery that was practiced in the Southern American states and in the Caribbean. While this might be for the most part true, it omits the basic economic foundation of the 18th and early-19th century British Empire. Consider as well that the Wilberforce laws were explicitly omitted from applying to India so that this source of free labour could be somewhat maintained.
Consider as well: I wouldn’t tolerate even one minute of slavery, regardless of whether I was picking cotton or working as a domestic servant. The idea ‘our’ slavery wasn’t as bad because it was mostly indoors is a peculiar distinction.
If someone tried to enslave you, you’d be justified in using lethal force to prevent this occurence. Whether you were to sleep indoors or out wouldn’t matter.
Our society has come a long way; our institutions have not.
EmilyG 21:01 on 2020-07-29 Permalink
Kate: In response to your comment, I’ll explain some of the racial inequities/issues that I now see looking back at my time at McGill (2003-2007.)
–In general, courses/studies being white-centered, in many instances (a bit hard to see or even determine because that’s more of a lack of diversity than something being overtly racist.) This includes music, anthropology, culture, and ethics courses, from what I saw during my time there. For example, in learning about other cultures in anthropology, it was often from outsiders to those cultures who had studied them and/or compared them to other cultures, rather than people actually from those cultures.
–A specific instance: discussion of a song from an opera only in terms of how the character is being portrayed, with no discussion about the fact that this song was stolen from a First Nations culture without permission.
–Another specific instance: looking at a piece of music where a Western composer imitated the music supposedly from an “Arab village.” A student familiar with the kind of music the composer was trying to mimic said that his imitation sounded ridiculous.
–In general, rampant ignorance about cultural appropriation, especially among music composition teachers. A lot of this still goes on in the “elite” world of fine arts today, with artists and composers thinking they can take what they want from any culture they want “because it inspired them.”
–Overly-gendered language, little to no discussion of trans people in a sexual ethics class, and general perpetuation of the idea of gender being a binary. (Perhaps only tangentially related to race issues, but worth noting maybe that many non-Western cultures have less restrictive/harmful ideas surrounding gender, and that the gender-binary is sometimes considered a colonialist/patriarchal idea by marginalized cultures.)
A lot of these problems, I only realized recently, looking back on my time at McGill and knowing all that I’ve learned, and had to un-learn, since then.
It was a less-aware time for a lot of us, myself included.
I think some similar issues still go on at McGill but I’m not as familiar with what goes on there today.
Kate 08:59 on 2020-07-30 Permalink
Emily, thank you for the detailed exposition.
looking at a piece of music where a Western composer imitated the music supposedly from an “Arab village.”
Would this by any chance be Ketelbey’s “In a Persian Market”? (I know – he isn’t classical, but he did compose for orchestra.) I discovered awhile back that the piece was rearranged by Taraf de Haidouks for a different kind of musical ensemble. It reminded me of how, when the stories from the 1001 Nights first became fashionable in Europe, new stories were written there (or collected elsewhere by Europeans, the provenance isn’t always clear) which found their way back into the collection and are now considered typical parts of it, like the stories of Aladdin and Sinbad.
What I’m saying is, when it comes to the arts, it isn’t illegitimate to claim “inspired by” and it isn’t only Westerners who get inspired by the “exotic” but it goes perfectly well in the other direction too.
EmilyG 09:22 on 2020-07-30 Permalink
Kate –
It wasn’t Ketelby, it was a bit less obvious than that because it tried to be more “authentic” – a piece by Gunther Schuller, from a longer piece inspired by the art of Paul Klee.
Many marginalized cultures argue that it doesn’t go in the other direction, because Westerners oppressed their cultures and then just took whatever elements of the marginalized cultures they wanted, without permission or context. The issue of cultural appropriation has to do with the relationship between oppressed cultures and oppressor cultures – it isn’t just one culture using elements of another.
“Without permission or context” is important to note here. Often Western artists have just used songs/art/instruments/clothes/etc from marginalized cultures, when those parts of their culture are sacred, or only used in certain circumstances, or only meant to be used by certain cultures or even certain people from the culture. Westerners just stealing those things is incredibly disrespectful at the least.
This article explains it well: https://everydayfeminism.com/2013/09/cultural-exchange-and-cultural-appropriation/
EmilyG 09:31 on 2020-07-30 Permalink
And here’s an article specifically about the song from the opera that I mentioned, which also explains cultural appropriation and mis-use well: https://www.coc.ca/coc-news1?entryid=19315
JaneyB 09:36 on 2020-07-30 Permalink
@EmilyG – thanks for those notes. Though it might be difficult for profs whose training was purely Eurocentric to become expert in the heritage of other civilizations, it’s helpful to know that even just referring to the original cultural context (of the inspired composition, for example) could help open up space for discussion and be invitational for students of that heritage to share their experiences. That’s definitely do-able and also enriching.
I have some trouble with the notion of cultural appropriation though because I see culture as dynamic and artists as constantly inspired by their experiences – some of which will include exposure to other people and their heritage. For cultures that are more restrictive and/or use art in a highly codified, ritualistic way, seeing any influences of their culture expressed by outsiders will probably be understood as theft. Maybe just referring to that different way of seeing culture would be more sensitive but at the end of the day, artists in less-ritual cultures will likely not stay inside their ancestral influences. This is especially true with the mostly mixed people of the Americas who are constantly interacting with other mixed ancestry people and also typically cannot reconcile genetic heritage with their embeddedness in another location. Really, as a mixed North American, which heritage is actually mine? Or even more profound: Is heritage even possessable? (In many Indigenous cultures, stories are often strictly owned but land is not, for example). Or…maybe making just noting those differences would create a less exclusionary atmosphere. A huge topic, for sure!
EmilyG 09:59 on 2020-07-30 Permalink
JaneyB –
Yes, artists can, and will, be inspired by other cultures. The important thing is doing enough research on the context, and asking permission (especially when there is some doubt as to whether it’s okay to use something.)
Western art and music and culture, for a long time, hasn’t really thought much about the ramifications of just taking things from the cultures it colonized/marginalized/oppressed. This is a large factor in many Westerners/white people today not realizing the harm that cultural appropriation can cause.
White people/Westerners have had the privilege and the luxury of being able to ignore the issue of cultural appropriation and the harm it causes. Other cultures don’t have that.
JaneyB 10:34 on 2020-07-30 Permalink
Emily G – I’ll agree with you that marginalization has been/continues to be a problem. Still, I don’t see how a Western artist could ‘ask permission’ because (from another perhaps feminist or marxist discourse of power) who speaks for that other culture? Likewise, who articulates ‘harm’ has been done and what is it? The notion of ‘harm’ is not as definable as one would hope. ‘Harm’ in the West is often a legal thing and has the potential to be quantifiable and compensated for. If it means something more like obnoxiousness or contempt, for Westerners, that’s just a fact of life in a pluralist society and not manageable in any way. Few people would argue that no damage has been done by colonization or that marginalization is over but these are huge and likely unsolvable issues that express real limitations within these discourses of anti-oppression. I think it’s important to engage challenges to the status quo but there are likewise oppressive structures and relations within the oppressed (and within the oppressors!) that are relevant. The White as bad, Other as good is another binary opposition that needs unpacking, imo.
EmilyG 10:52 on 2020-07-30 Permalink
As to who speaks for other cultures, culture-bearers can. They can be sought out if Westerner artists want to be respectful and ask permission or ask/learn about the culture.
Who articulates that “harm” has been done? Not all cases of cultural inspiration, borrowing, or appropriation are alike (and note that those terms are all very different from each other,) but if non-Western cultures* speak out about this harm being done to their own culture, I think settlers should listen to them, especially settlers who have benefited from the appropriation of their culture.
*I understand that people who don’t want to acknowledge harm often try to use the argument that “well, one person from another culture expressing their opinion doesn’t speak for the whole culture!” The people arguing this point often also don’t want to listen when it’s many members of a culture talking at length about how a thing is harmful to their culture.
And the concept of “intangible cultural heritage” is important to learn about.
Colonizers continuing to think they can use whatever they like, without permission or context, continues the harm of colonization.