The row about a Cambridge monument to a slave trafficker shows how far the UK has to go to confront its racist past
In Jesus College, Cambridge, an ornate marble monument to the college’s benefactor, Tobias Rustat, an influential 17th-century trafficker of enslaved Africans, towers above the chapel nave. In 2019, Jesus’s faculty and students decided the Rustat memorial should be relocated to a new space on campus as part of an exhibit on slavery and colonialism. But a few dons and an organised group of college alumni vehemently opposed their plan. The former Spectator editor, Charles Moore, described the relocation as an act of “cancellation” that would imperil “education, religion, built heritage, history and the rule of law”.
When faced with attempts to confront the causes of institutional racism in Britain, conservatives often resort to one key strategy. I call this strategy “ghostlining”. It is a technique long used by the ruling classes that frames public debates in ways that sideline the experience of the oppressed and silence calls for social justice. Ghostlining employs a one-two punch: first, disavow the ongoing effects of slavery, colonialism and racism; and second, play the benefactor and the victim at the same time. Ghostlining removes the experience of the oppressed from the focus of discussion, and instead reframes the debate around the interests of a ruling elite.
Kris Manjapra is professor of history at Tufts University and author of Black Ghost of Empire: The Long Death of Slavery and the Failure of Emancipation
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