Jack Campin wrote:
And at the same time Burns composed his "Slave's Lament", and Tytler wrote the "Petition of the Sharks of Africa" (on my website), both at great personal risk, to oppose the racism their society's elite was profiting from. That is, racism *was* considered. By some it was profited from and by others it was rejected, just like now. Historical relativism is shit.
But those same classes Jack would profit - as they do today - from ANYTHING THEY CAN GET AWAY WITH. Relativism is indeed shit, but our perspective/lack of it does not mean they were racist in our terms, or would have understood the term as we use it. It is possible they did not even consider slaves to be a race. Human kye, maybe.
The Kelso tobacco experiment was run by freed slave who enjoyed, as far as can be told, respect and equality in the town. And when Scott of Harden rescued a small girl 'tumbler' from an Edinburgh patent-medicine show, he was rescuing an enslaved white Scots girl purchased by the (licensed) medicine peddler from a Highlandwoman. The status of the medicine show's two 'blackamoors' is not recorded (though all were run out of Blackfriar's Wynd, and forced to relocate to the Grassmarket, then the Lawnmarket, until finally prevented from staging this show). They might well have been slaves, in 18th c Scotland, or they might have been freed slaves. But there's not doubt the medicine show operator considered the small Scots girl to be an owned piece of property.
So slavery not necessarily racism. They would have enslaved any colour and any nationality, had they been permitted to.
David
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