European memorialization of slavery remains scarce and marginalizing.

Evidence

The Dutch Slavery Monument, an expressionistic statue commemorating as much the struggle for freedom as the suffering of chains, is hidden discreetly behind a row of hedges in Amsterdam’s Osterpark, a stone’s throw from where Theo van Gogh was felled but a stiff bike ride from the city center. Easy to miss unless you know where to look. Out of sight, cast from national memory save for the item on the national news each July 1 as the anniversary of emancipation is quietly (or sometimes not so quietly) honored by those whose ancestors suffered the chains. Amsterdam’s memorial, revealingly, stands more or less alone across the continental European landscape. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 882 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Consciousness of slavery, of course, was not completely absent from the European public sphere. This is revealed, for example, in the telling façades of many center-city Bordeaux buildings, or the visible presence of the slave-trading market in Liverpool, or in various material signs of the British slave trade in the port city of Bristol, traces of lives lost. But here too the reminders are provincialized within the archite(x)ture of European space, lingering at the metropolitan margins without troubling prevailing conscience at the centers of power. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 842 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Amnesty and concealment, not active remembrance, are the historical norm in Europe — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 1211; Europe’s only significant slavery memorial is physically hidden and marginal — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 882; Europe’s Holocaust-centric memory silences its colonial legacy as race denial. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 826 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Europe’s only significant slavery memorial is physically hidden and marginal #exemplifies (0.95) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 882
• European slave-trade reminders stay provincialized at margins, sparing metropolitan consciences #expands (0.92) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 842