scholarly journals Telling Lies, Telling Tales and Telling (and Doing) the Truth: Racism, Moral Repair and the Case for Reparations

2021 ◽  
pp. 095394682110511
Author(s):  
Michael Banner

First, in the section ‘Telling Lies’, this article attempts to illustrate recent everyday racism. Racism has a history and takes many different forms. I describe a particular practice of racism (found in Britain, circa 1970), which relied, for its doctrine, on supposedly scientific assumptions about biology and breeding—and received a confirming fillip through the celebration of monarchy, empire and rose-tinted history. Second, in ‘Telling Tales’, the story of Zacchaeus is taken as exemplifying a form of moral repair in which telling and doing the truth are intimately related. Third, in ‘Telling and Doing the Truth’, I contend that telling and doing the truth in relation to racism requires not only a clear naming of racism’s lies but also the making of reparations, for the reason that the lies of racism subtended manifold injustices, of which Atlantic slavery and the exploitation of colonies are notable instances. I take the history of the West Indies as providing a clear case where moral repair is (over)due, and I consider the form that reparations might take.

1982 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
David D. Mays

On Monday, October 16, 1758., Hugh Gaine reported a novelty. “Friday last,” he told his readers in the New-York Mercury, “arrived here from the West Indies, a Company of Comedians; some Part of which were here in the Year 1753.” This brief notice, which went on to assure its readers that the company had “an ample Certificate of their Private as well as publick Qualifications,” marks the beginning of the most significant event in American theatre history: the establishment of the professional theatre on this continent. The achievements of the Company of Comedians during its sixteen-year residence in North America are virtually without parallel in the history of the theatre, and have not received sufficient recognition by historians and scholars.


Author(s):  
W. J. Rorabaugh

‘Drinking and temperance’ describes the history of alcohol consumption in the United States and the introduction of the temperance movement. From the earliest European settlers to the fighters of the Revolution, Americans were among the world’s heartiest drinkers, producing their own corn beer and importing rum from the West Indies. The British blockades during the war meant access to rum was lost. Americans began to distill whiskey from corn instead, which became the country’s patriotic drink. Problems associated with heavy drinking resulted in reformers creating the temperance movement, a cause that was then taken up by Protestant preachers. In the 1850s, evangelicals lobbied for statewide prohibition laws, but there was no viable system of enforcement.


1894 ◽  
Vol 1 (10) ◽  
pp. 448-451
Author(s):  
J. W. Spencer

There have been many suggestions respecting a continental connection of the West Indies, but this is the first attempt made to restore the Antillean lands. It is based upon the slowly accumulating evidence of great systems of submerged valleys, or fjords extending from the commonly buried lower reaches of all the great rivers, upon the terrestrial deformation involved in the changes of level over large regions and upon the distribution of the characteristic forms of life. The present investigations confirm and amplify the history of the coastal plain of the northern continent.


2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Barber

AbstractThis article recreates the lives of two settlers in Antigua between the years 1690 and 1740. As such, it is a key addition to the paltry number of studies of the island of Antigua and the other Leeward Islands of the West Indies. It takes as its base point the study of the Antigua settler elite identified by Richard Sheridan in his article, now forty years old, which constructed the institutional systems of landholding, taxation, customs and the Slave Trade which produced so-called Plantation Society. In the years preceding this, however, life for everyone concerned in the West Indies was uncertain and insecure. is was as much the case for those at the top of the socio-political ladder, such as island governors and Crown viceroys, as for relatively modest settlers, such as the subjects of this essay, Lawrence and Sarah Crabb. For all of those who were incorporated into the 18thcentury Plantocracy, many more were sacrificed in the struggles of early capitalism, buoyed up not by the level of 'credit' that they were accorded, but by the levels of debt they carried. The construction of a social history of modest settlers is made possible through the survival of documents which were kept by the Crabb's agent, George Moore, and which he would subsequently use in a Chancery case against his late friend's widow. These manuscripts have not been used before, except for occasional references to the legal precedents established by the case, Moore v. Meynell, and, given the paucity and patchiness of manuscript survivals for the Caribbean in the seventeenth century, show what can be reconstructed from otherwise overlooked sources. The result is a study of the measurement of a person's worth, and the increasing elision of God and Mammon in gauging credit, value and trust. In the case of the Crabbs, particularly because Lawrence was himself a man of little initial wealth who clawed his way up through his own ingenuity and his wife's family's West Indian estates, we are able to demonstrate how the language of credit and worthiness applied not only to men of business and politics but also to women.


This Report, and the accompanying Report by Dr. Flett on The Petrology of the Ejected Materials, form the sequel to the Report by Drs. Tempest Anderson and J. S. Flett on “The Eruptions of the Soufrière in St. Vincent in 1902, and on a Visit to Montagne Pelée in Martinique, Part I.” At the time when that Report was published it was contemplated that an account should be given later on of the subsequent changes in the deposits of volcanic ejecta, and also on the petrology of the specimens collected in 1902. In the spring of 1907 I visited the West Indies, but Dr. Flett was unfortunately detained in England by his official duties. I am therefore responsible for the field observations on the topography and geology, and on the return of vegetation, while Dr. Flett’s Report deals with the petrology of the ejected materials.


1960 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 306-307
Author(s):  
Benjamin Keen

Weed Science ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 414-419 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. M. Maddox

The seed weevil (Microlarinus lareynii Jacquelin duVal) and the stem weevil (M. lypriformis Wollaston) were introduced into the United States and the West Indies to control puncturevine (Tribulus terrestris L.) and Jamaica feverplant (T. cistoides L.). In 14 yr these weevils have partially controlled these weeds in most areas where weevil establishment has occurred. However, indigenous parasitoids, predators, and cold weather affect weevil densities. Presently a coldhardy strain of seed and stem weevils has become established in Nevada and promise control in colder areas.


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