Scotland’s heavy hand in the colonisation of the Caribbean and the Americas– the massacre of indigenous Americans; the theft of their land; the mass cultivation of their sacred crop tobacco; the slave labour that planted and picked it– should be a key, compulsory part of the curriculum in secondary school. While many schools address modern racial discrimination on an individual level, and some teach modern civil rights figures like Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, and Nelson Mandela, there is minimal accountability for Scotland’s hand in systemic racism and the ways in which we still benefit– Glasgow in particular was built on tobacco, sugar, and cotton wealth. Teaching these difficult topics will help us take accountability for these often-ignored atrocities and raise a generation of Scottish students committed to anti-racism.
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