Between The Red Sea and The Promise Land: An Emancipation Service Reflection

On 6^th August, the Methodist congregation and friends gathered for their annual Emancipation Service at the Roscoe Methodist Church in Chapeltown. The Emancipation Service remembers those who have helped and supported the Leeds West Indian Carnival over the years, and ancestors of many that fought to overcome slavery in the quest for liberty, and those that to this day struggle for their equal status and freedom with the rest of society.

Among the speakers at the service was Dr Arthur France, M.B.E. Hon LLd, who spoke powerfully of history and heritage, the journey taken by so many, and the lives they had before and after coming to this country.

Chijioke Ojukwu, an active voice in the Harehills and Chapeltown communities, was in attendance at the Emancipation Service and had some powerful thoughts he wanted to share with the East Leeds community in remembrance and hope.

Remembering is rarely innocent or convenient, but forgetting can be dangerous and costly

This is because forgetting is an act of privilege, which reflects a hierarchy of importance and unanswered questions about status, power, and order. It is easier to forget than to remember, especially for those whose names, bodies and stories are burdened with stigma, poverty, and powerlessness, at the mercy of charity and convenience—those for whom their humanity is considered negotiable or negligible.

However, even the attempt to forget requires work, especially by the powerful: an abdication of responsibility. A wilful ignorance and distortion of history. A personal and political choice.

It is a choice to forget that the Crown, the Church, and Parliament institutionalised in the trading of human bodies and are YET to return the bones of the enslaved and the blood money.

It is also a choice to forget that whilst the benefits of the Transatlantic Slave trade and Colonisation are still being enjoyed by the wider society, many descendants of the enslaved are yet to taste the fruit of liberation beyond symbolic gestures truly:

From the streets of Chapeltown to the urban poverty in the Caribbean.

This is why the importance of the Emancipation Service cannot be overstated, especially in a society that often insists on innocence and silence in matters of Racial Justice and reparation. The service is an opportunity to be still and attentive to the cry of the enslaved and their descendants, which continues to haunt the Western world’s social, economic, and cultural fabric, including our Beloved City, Leeds.

Our Emancipation Service is an invitation to know intimately a history that lives in the flesh and bone of precious people who are still paying the price of the association of dark skin with slave status. It is a call to be both present and pierced by the human cry for dignity and freedom in a way that moves heart, body and soul into committed, sustained and creative action. Such piercing cannot be known, casually or symbolically, regardless of the colour of one’s skin or how many EDI Trainings one attends.

This is because the horrors of the middle passage cannot be imagined safely from a position of privilege: to enter the Slave ship, even metaphorically, is to be willing to cross rivers of blood, prejudice, and indifference. Correspondingly, those who are not ready to enter the slave ship without their shoes cannot know or even begin to understand the depth of inhumanity that flows from the Racial logic, the beauty, texture, sound, and touch of Blackness: or the urgent need of an Anti-racist commitment that has courage and conviction.

This is why the memory of Slavery must be stewarded with tenderness and care; as a way of learning how to be human outside of the Racial and Colonial logic:

To feel, weep, groan, pray and struggle for human dignity and freedom with those still experiencing the harsh reality of second-class treatment.

From precious families of Roma heritage to Eritrean refugees seeking decent housing in Harehills.

Granted, the question of reparation is complex, entangling a web of actors, including African monarchs, Christian missionaries and our addiction to Tea and sugar today. However, the stubborn persistence of Racial inequality and the reality of racism in Britain today cannot be isolated from the Slave ship.

Similarly, the tide of anti-blackness and the Racial logic of white superiority still with us today continues to flow from the poisoned well of Slavery and the Colonial nightmare: reinforced, daily, by the structure of inequality which makes it easy to disregard, devalue and even forget the names, stories, and contribution of the enslaved and their descendants. In this regard, even the debate about the names of our streets, public institutions and statues remind us that the feelings of the enslaved are still taken for granted. Like the lives of their descendants in comparison to the feelings and comfort of those who built the slave fleets on African blood and bones, and a racial logic which assures a sense of superiority.

What is at stake, however, is more than feelings but human dignity and the soul.

How does one compensate those who have been stripped of their mother tongue, culture and a healthy sense of self-image by sword and fire and bullets?

How does one explain to the child called Slave and Monkey on a playground that even the curriculum and the attitude of some of their teachers are implicated in his predicament?

How does one begin to count the cost of all those families forcefully separated by the sword or repair the fractured bond between the African diaspora who are haunted by this bloody-thirsty history?

To wrestle with these questions with integrity is to recognise that reparation is not primarily an economic, legal or even philosophical issue that is tied to the past. The fact that it has been reduced to such is merely a sign of the impotence of Western Jurisprudence, culture, and, in many cases, Christianity to confront a haunting fact: racism is still an open wound that is harming people of African descent and others, every day, everywhere. In Leeds, in London, and in Rio de Janeiro.

Precious dark-skinned bodies of African descent are still being bleached of beauty in the name of whiteness. Precious dark-skinned bodies of African descent are still being overworked and undervalued in the workplace: routinely denied promotion and economic security. The bits of their culture the rest of society like, borrowed and worn like unearned badges.

Like their ancestors in plantations.

Precious dark-skinned bodies of African descent are still being racially profiled and policed harshly in the name of law and order, which is designed to protect white privilege and private property.

Thankfully, the Freedom Songs of the enslaved have also been preserved to help us to wrestle with the Elephant in the room. These songs are treasures which haunt the conscience and the cosmetic commitment of today’s anti-racism: calling us to risk reputation, security, and status for others to enjoy human freedom and dignity: