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In reply to the discussion: How Benedict Cumberbatch's family made a fortune from slavery [View all]NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)Should Benedict Cumberbatch say sorry for the slave owners in his family?
A newly appointed city commissioner in New York, Stacey Cumberbatch, told the New York Times last week that she believed British actor Benedict Cumberbatch's fifth great-grandfather owned her ancestors on an 18th-century sugar plantation in Barbados. They "are related," the newspaper noted, "if not by blood, then by geography and the complicated history of the slave trade."
The actor, now playing a slave owner in the film 12 Years a Slave, has in the past acknowledged his ancestors' slave ownership, and revealed that his mother once urged him not to use his real name professionally for fear of becoming the target of reparations claims by the descendents of slaves.
Such parental advice sits uneasily with the notion of undoing past wrongs that lies at the heart of transitional justice, whereby nations move from committing gross and systematic human rights violations to democracy. Typically, the mechanisms involved include retribution against perpetrators through the criminal justice system, and reparations to victims, including the return of property, financial compensation for suffering, or symbolic gestures such as overturning unjust convictions as well as simply saying sorry.
But there is a third dimension to the victim-perpetrator axis that is less often discussed: what of those who were not directly involved in wrongdoing but who benefited from it nonetheless...?
The answer is not about being individually responsible, through our genes, but collectively accountable for the structural inequalities that have passed down through generations to shape today's world. It is one thing to be universalist, anti-racist and pro-human rights when looking back, but it takes a more reflexive attitude to history to account for the structure of the present through past wrongs, and our place within that historical context.
The Cumberbatch case involves two high-profile individuals and so has had media attention, but these questions concern us all. For as long as structural inequalities persist, we cannot overlook how far the tentacles of history might reach into the present. The real challenge is to recognise, and address, how much the privileges of the past continue to benefit some, and wrong others, today.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/02/benedict-cumberbatch-sorry-for-slave-owners-family
Now give me your citation for Cumberbach's totally unneeded "scholarship" if you don't mind. Because his family is wealthy:
Cumberbatch was born on 19 July 1976 at Queen Charlotte's Hospital in Hammersmith, London, to actors Timothy Carlton (real name Timothy Carlton Congdon Cumberbatch)[2] and Wanda Ventham.[3] He grew up in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea... His grandfather, Henry Carlton Cumberbatch, was a decorated submarine officer of both World Wars, and a prominent figure of London high society. His great-grandfather, Henry Arnold Cumberbatch CMG, was the consul general of Queen Victoria in Turkey and Lebanon.[5][6]
Cumberbatch attended boarding schools from the age of eight,[7] was educated at Brambletye School in West Sussex, and was an arts scholar at Harrow School.[8][9][10
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedict_Cumberbatch
I don't see anything about a scholarship.