Blood Runs Thicker than Water: Defensiveness and Ancestral Ties to Slavery

• In Event: Reckoning with Racism

Abstract

How do groups faced with information about historical perpetration of harmful acts respond? Do they engage constructively with this history or do they react defensively? This paper explores the extent to which the burden of ancestral crimes is likely to lead to either backlash or constructive reconciliation with the legacies of these crimes. It uses a novel experimental approach to address this question with regard to British involvement in the imperial slave trade. In particular it demonstrates how the family, as a highly essentialised identity aspect, can serve as a locus for the repression of collective guilt among perpetrator groups. Within the context of national involvement in the slave trade, additional condemnation of one’s ancestors is likely to produce a backlash against this identity-threatening information, leading to lower support for reparatory action among families associated with the slave trade. By contrast, an exoneration of one’s ancestors is more likely to produce critical reflection on legacies of slavery as well as willingness to atone for national involvement. The findings establish family identity as a key site of contestation for collective memory, as well as demonstrating a useful strategy for reconciling with the past among groups with histories of perpetration in Britain and elsewhere.

Author

• Joe Kendall, European University Institute