Two hundred years is not a long time in the sweep of human history. Neither is it all that long in the lifespan of individuals and the development of communities - a mere dozen or so generations.

Viewed in that context, the abolition of the slave trade by an act of the British Parliament, the 200th anniversary of which is being marked today, didn't happen all that long ago. Or, it didn't happen so long ago as to have receded from the collective memories of the affected people, on both sides of the ledger.

The fact is that the abolition of the slave trade didn't mean an end to modern chattel slavery. It would be nearly three decades before that would happen in British colonies, and a civil war and another 30 years before it came to end in the United States. Indeed, it was near the start of the 19th century before the enslavement of black people ended in Brazil.

All this is important, for the transatlantic slave trade was perhaps the most profound movement of people in the history of the world; one that underpinned the creation of societies of transplanted people, as well as the economic relevance of these societies. The transatlantic traffic made black Africans not people, but commodity and even machinery, good for the enhancement of production in plantation society.

This systematic trading of human beings as part of an economic process insisted upon a moral accommodation; the enslaved, black Africans and their offspring could not be perceived as fully-developed human beings, of life and spirit equal to those of white Europeans. This moral accommodation, or more correctly, this immorality, laid the basis for a racism that persists even today. Indeed, it was inevitable that the slave trade and slavery would help to shape, even two centuries on, the perception of, and interaction between, either group in this equation.

Indeed, slavery has had a significant impact on the shaping of the post-slavery societies in the Americas, including how people interact in these communities. A close reading of Orlando Patterson's Sociology of Slavery would perhaps lend a greater understanding to much of the social dysfunction so obvious in Jamaican society.

But the more important issue is what at this juncture the sons and daughters of slaves in the New World, their cousins in Africa, as well as the descendants of slavers, ought to make of this institution. We believe that as with the Holocaust, people should not forget and should say "never again". The descendants of those who perpetuated the system need to admit fully and frankly to the wrongs and social dysfunction it created and which continue to thrive today. Acknowledgement of those wrongs must be accompanied by sincere efforts to eliminate institutionalised racism in their societies and concrete steps to redress the imbalances created in ours.

In the case of Jamaica and the Caribbean black majority communities, while we must not forget, slavery ought not to be a crutch on which to excuse inaction to achieve a deepening of democracy, an enhanced quality of governance and social and economic expansion. Indeed, it is precisely because of this history that we owe it to ourselves to work harder to achieve these goals which our ancestors had no chance of enjoying.

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