Lecture held by Abram de Swaan at the NiNsee Amsterdam, 30 6 2013 at the eve of the celebration to commemorate the abolition of slavery and remember the victims 

Ladies and gentlemen, Today we commemorate the belated, partial abolition of slavery, one hundred fifty years ago. The masters were compensated, the former slaves forced to continue working on the plantations. A century and a half is long ago. An adult descendant of slaves must be the greatgreatgreatgrandchild of the last ancestors to live under slavery. Indeed, it is all so long ago. But slavery lasted for so long, for two and a half centuries. Ten generations lived as slaves from parents to children, in dire exploitation and the utmost humiliation. In fact, all over Russia forms of servitude prevailed until deep in the nineteenth century. In the colonies, there were forced laborers and indentured workers throughout that century and after. In the industrial cities of Europe and the USA factory workers lived under material conditions hardly better than those of slaves. But they, serfs, indentured workers and proletarians, were not robbed of their humanity. They were still recognized as human beings in their own right, even if they lacked all the guarantees and freedoms that are called inalienable human rights.. Slaves did not. Clerics conspired to abuse the Bible in order to deny people of color their humanity. Lawyers twisted the laws to take their human rights away. And in the end, biologists, and social scientists concocted racist dogma that assigned „Negroes‟ to a different race, subhuman, not quite part of human kind. This did not end in 1863, it went on for another fifty years, for another century. Read more..