Michael McDowell: Why stop with Berkeley? Cicero was a slave owner too

That George Berkeley owned a small slave plantation in New England in the 17th century is hardly a startling revelation. That he felt morally justified in doing so is not surprising either. After all, he also baptised some of his slaves with a view to their divine redemption.And even if the library is de-named and renamed, the name of Berkeley is still going to apply to the Californian city and university called after him.

The entire British economy depended for a few imperial centuries on racial subjugation, of which the Atlantic slave trade was just one barbaric example There is a difference, I think, between Americans adorning their cities with statues of Confederate generals and the decision of the Fellows of Trinity 60 years ago to name their “brutalist gem” library after George Berkeley.

But commemorating and glorifying the American Confederacy by monument in the post-Civil War era of reconstruction and Jim Crow laws had – and still has – an unmistakable message and meaning for black Americans. It is about current race attitudes and discrimination.

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