‘How deeply have Quakers been involved?’ Photo: by Kaley Dykstra on Unsplash
Come to past: Val Jenner on a new history project
‘Our desire is to support Friends who want to interrogate their biases.’
There will always be Friends who think there is no point in looking backwards, and who want to deal with needs and injustices in the present day – and of course that is what we are all called to do. But how we understand ourselves and the world can be influenced by what we do not know, or have forgotten.
As Oodgeroo Noonuccal wrote: ‘Let no one say the past is dead. The past is all about us and within.’ Those of us who know ourselves as members of the west, or as citizens of the UK and commonwealth countries, or as British Quakers, are products of, and have internalised, an economic and political system spanning 500 years or more. In response to this, Central England Quakers’ ‘Responding to Racism’ group (R2R) is organising a research project into local Quaker involvement in the slave trade and its related industries.
How far and how deeply have Quakers been involved in this economic system, and in the values it has created? Do we carry biases we are hardly aware of? R2R has been asking itself that question in different ways. Our desire is to support Friends who want to interrogate their biases as they work in the world, in the ways we are called to work.
Knowing how we got to where we are helps us to see our strengths and our weaknesses as a nation, and as a very small sub-group within that nation. Historians are now helping us see what we, as a nation, have forgotten, were not told, or perhaps chose never to know. Jeremy Williams writes in Climate Change Is Racist that there is a continuity of oppression that runs from the enslavement of black people for the benefit of white industrialisation, to the stealing of indigenous land for the enrichment of white empires, through to the pollution of the atmosphere for the benefit of modern consumerism. The English Midlands has been at the heart of these processes, and we hope in our small way to be able to shed more light on how Friends were involved in, or maybe stepped aside from, that process.
The research R2R has organised, with support from Central England Quakers and Woodbrooke Learning, is open to all Friends, especially those living in, or with an interest in, the English Midlands. British Friends are not just white English – this we know – and all are welcome to get involved. We also know that white people can feel and be oppressed – class, gender, sexuality and disability all play a part. Even so, white folk (Quakers included) need to do their own heavy lifting when it comes to understanding what we have internalised, and what might cause others and ourselves damage. Knowing where we come from is part of knowing how to speak Truth.
The R2R project will start this month and run initially for a year. If you are interested, whether or not you have done historical research before, email r2r@centralenglandquakers.org.uk.
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