Some running thoughts as we read this (quotes pulled from the material that Amy quoted):

"...as well as the under-representation of women and minorities in academia."

What under-representation? If you want to play the quota game, women are substantially over-represented in nearly all areas of academia, excluding a subset of the STEM subjects (source).

"At its heart are the sins of Western imperialism and the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade. It is right to explore these subjects. "

Yeah, except that they don't really explore anything. At best, they merely re-state what has already been said and written about the topic. At worst, they pull hot takes out of context and slander nearly everyone who is outside of their own intersectionality tribe.

"the protestors seek to stigmatize members of an entire racial group for the misdeeds of a tiny minority of British aristocrats from centuries ago who share their skin color. Isn't that a form of racism?"

As we've been told many times, it is impossible for minorities to be racist. Except for when they stand up for the rights of scapegoat groups. Then they're racist.

"...endlessly atoning for what we have inflicted on other parts of humanity."

The academics themselves aren't atoning for jack. They are demanding that everyone else do so, preferably by giving more money to the academics.

"Perhaps more telling when it comes to the one-sidedness of progressive narratives about slavery is the complete indifference of the decolonize movement to modern day slavery. "

That's because there is no such thing. Slavery has never existed anywhere except for Amerikkka, and it continues unabated today. Just ask the SJW's. They'll set you straight. Seriously, this is of a par with the post-modern Left's aim to divide the West into warring tribes. Everyone who isn't a dedicated leftist can agree that the continued existence of modern-day slavery is atrocious. Which means that protesting it doesn't divide people, and so it doesn't advance the Left's agenda.

And the P.S.: It was the Western canon that they want to get rid of that developed the idea that slavery is immoral. Once that's gone, what's to stop the practice of slavery from spreading around the world again?

Looks like the Barbary pirates are still at it. But with sub-Saharan Africans, not captured crew of merchant ships.

https://www.newsweek.com/humans-sale-libyan-slave-trade-continues-while-militants-kill-and-torture-855118

That's now, not 160 years ago. And while you should blame Hillary for her role in creating the conditions necessary for this to happen, you also need to blame Teh Lightbringer, who was going to heal our souls and lower the seas.

"Self-denigration is all too clearly a form of indirect self-glorification."

There's your money shot, in 10 (or 12) words says all that one needs to know about the SJW mind.

White slaves were still being bought and sold in the Ottoman Empire,
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I saw a movie that included that fact, when I was very young and living in Spain.

It was:

La folie des grandeurs (1971 - a comedy) aka Delusions of Grandeur.

Starring Louis de Funès - the brilliant comic actor who played a greedy tax collector. With Yves Montand as his valet.

It's loosely based on Victor Hugo's tragic drama "Ruy Blas." I assume they were showing it in school because it takes place in 17th-century Spain.

Anyway, there's more than one scene with white slaves - I think part of it takes place in Morocco - and they're laughing even when they get whipped while cranking a wheel. (That is, they were laughing at something else.)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067108/

You can watch pieces of it on YouTube.

Btw, does any of the above articles explain why the British bothered to abolish the slave trade in 1807 when it wasn't opposed to profiting from AMERICAN slavery for decades after that? What was the point?

It is really precious when intellectuals "discover" that our history is less than perfect. They then act all superior to the rest of us because they have discovered this fact (like the 10 yr old who figures out Santa is not real). The history of humanity is in fact one big horror show, everywhere in the world. At the same time, western culture is rich with wisdom, kindness, beauty, art, philosophy, and noble movements. Throwing out the classics because of these imperfections is idiotic and prevents us from discovering the great minds that formed the modern world.
Other cultures are not absent from the universities. You can major in Chinese culture or Persian culture or Eastern history or african or women's studies at many universities. "Decolonizing" the classics removes the only "white studies" and ungrounds the student from understanding how we got here and what America is about. It is cutting off one's nose to spite the face.
Thomas Sowell points out more eloquently than I the principle that if you could not have prevented a crime (because it happened in the past) then you cannot be guilty of it or owe anyone for it.
Lenona asks why the Brits abolished the slave trade before ending slavery in the colonies--it was about what was politically possible. Not all brit politicians agreed about ending slavery.

Quillette has turned the collegiate whine into an art form like Cosmo did with sex quizzes — with the same tiresome predictability. At least the sex quizzes are mercifully brief, a charge that never will be aimed at Quillette.

"Btw, does any of the above articles explain why the British bothered to abolish the slave trade in 1807 when it wasn't opposed to profiting from AMERICAN slavery for decades after that? "

Not sure I follow... The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves was signed by President Jefferson about a month after the UK adopted the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, and took effect in the U.S. in 1808. Admittedly, this did not stop all importation of slaves into the U.S., but it cut way down on it. Of course, this did not stop domestic trade of slaves, but after about 1802 most such slaves were ones that were born in the U.S. Were there British traders involved in that? Maybe so, but since a lot of the Southern slave owners were of Scotch-Irish descent, it doesn't seem as likely to me.

You are really looking at different groups Lenona. The majority of British society decided that slavery wasn't something they could accept and hence the policy was abolished in their nation. A small group didn't care much one way or the other and continued the slave trade in other nations. Not out of some specific moral claim but mainly profit motive. While the two groups are both british they are not the same people. And as CC mentions, while the one group was very morally opposed to slavery they lacked the political power to enforce a complete ban.

Only the culture actually capable of achieving prosperity can be blamed for not giving to to others.

It is a hoax that everyone with dark skin is "African" American. This is easy to see when an SJW sees someone with dark skin and twists and turns to explain where they're from. "Oh, they're Afro-German!"

Lenona asks why the Brits abolished the slave trade before ending slavery in the colonies--it was about what was politically possible. Not all brit politicians agreed about ending slavery.

cc at March 5, 2019 8:59 AM
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Um, of course the Brits couldn't "end" slavery after 1807 in the U.S., per se - it wasn't their country anymore! (I'm not talking about the abolishment of slavery in the colonies that WERE still colonies...)

From The Guardian:

"It wasn’t until 1838 that slavery was abolished in British colonies through the Slavery Abolition Act, giving all slaves in the British empire their freedom."

So, on average, they were apparently opposed to slavery across the board. But not enough to change the votes of the aristocrats, even 20-plus years later.

I realize, of course, that boycotting cotton wasn't the easiest thing to do, even after the Civil War started.

https://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/uscivilwar/britain/britainamericancivilwar.html

"Even after the War of Independence and the War of 1812, there remained many commercial, social and cultural ties between Britain and the United State. The two nations were also often competitors, suspicious of one another, particularly with regard to the British northern provinces and in relation to Central and Southern America. British investment in the United States was considerable, and the cotton mills of northern Britain and Ireland relied on the Southern states for their raw materials. Industrial developments, notably the railways, were also often financed through British banks and companies. As part of the British Empire, the British North American provinces and the Caribbean formed important markets and sources of raw material.

"Such considerations informed the course of the war. The Confederate states believed that British and other European reliance on their slave-plantation produced cotton would ensure early recognition for their independence, a factor that led to the announcement of the secession from the Union. As the Democratic senator for South Carolina, James Henry Hammond, threatened, 'You dare not make war on cotton. No power on earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton is king'. British mill owners, it was believed, could not risk their machines falling quiet."

And, from Smithsonian Magazine's interview with historian Amanda Foreman:

Q: "What were the most surprising revelations you made about the war by looking at it from a world perspective?"

A: "The first thing I really understood was the limitations of foreign diplomacy in early American politics. It was very much the custom in the 19th century and especially in the mid-century for secretaries of state to consider their role a steppingstone towards the White House. In no way was it a tool for actual foreign diplomacy. When William Henry Seward, who was the secretary of state at the time, took office he just resolutely refused to accept that the pronouncements he made in the U.S. for a domestic audience were having such a crushingly disastrous effect on America’s reputation abroad. His own words served to drive Europe, and in particular Britain, from being willing allies at the beginning of the war towards the North into hostile neutrals.

"By turning Britain into a hostile neutral, it meant that the South suddenly had an enormous leg up in the war. All the actions that Britain could have taken to make life difficult for the South—for example, barring any Southern ship from landing in British ports—never happened. And, in fact, the South began to genuinely believe that it had a chance of winning recognition from Britain of Southern independence, which I believe helped prolong the war by at least two years."

Q: "In what ways was Britain invested or really tied up in the war?"

A: "At the beginning of the war, cotton impacted the livelihoods of one in five Englishmen in some way. Everyone was worried that the cotton embargo would destroy Britain’s financial might. But it turned out that there was a huge cotton glut in 1860. There was too much cotton in England in warehouses, and it was bringing down the price of finished goods. So what the war did was rescue Britain from a serious industrial slump that was about to take place. For the first 18 months of the war, British merchants just used up the cotton that they had stored. Then, finally, when the cotton became scarce, truly, truly scarce midway through the war, there were other sources of cotton coming from India and Egypt. By then, Britain had become completely invested in the war because of the war economy. Guns, cannons, rifles, bullets, uniforms, steel plating of all kind, engines, everything that a war needs, Britain was able to export to the North and to the South. In fact, Britain’s economy grew during the Civil War. So just from a financial point of view, Britain was heavily invested industrially.

"Second of all, Britain was heavily invested because of the bonds. Both the South and the North needed to sell bonds on the international market to raise money to fight the war. The British were the largest holder of these bonds..."

"what we have inflicted on other parts of humanity."

You mean like electricity, air travel, vaccines, indoor plumbing....?

This movement is its own refutation. No other culture worries about the representation of the rest of them the way westerners do. It should thus be celebrated if only for the intercultural conscience it uniquely displays.

"In nearly all states and civilizations (whether the African kingdoms, the Islamic Barbary states, and so on) slavery and colonization have been the norm, not the exception."

Yup, the West was just more proficient at it, just as it was at most other endeavors.

"Throwing out the classics because of these imperfections is idiotic"

That depends upon your goals. If you want to create a totalitarian technocracy based on nonsensical emotional whining, getting rid of logic and formalized rational analysis is brilliant.