b'Articles Beth Bowden Alex OLoughlinHistoriographical Reflection An extract from an assignment from the third-year Restoration Theatre module.ArticlesAlex OLoughlinFrom the outset it is important to note the limitations offrom anywhere, the term negro can be seen as offensive my ability to reflect on racial discrimination, as a white,or inoffensive dependant on the individual and how they middle-class man I have neither the moral authority noridentifywiththeword.Therefore,potentiallyoffensive theexperiencetomakeacommentaryfromanyotherlanguage is being used by contemporary scholars who live perspective than my own third-person experience.inthemodernworldinwhichsuchlanguagewouldnt normally be socially acceptable. Admittedly, this is me solely In week eight of the restoration module, I gave a presentationconcentrating on the language and not the context. Even so, on the slave tradespecifically the Royal African Company.this article is referencing slaves who were brought over from From my reading, I felt the way in which scholars generaliseAfrica specifically and so by placing the title negro onto peopleofcolourcouldbedetrimentaltothegrowthofAfrican people, our immediate cognition is to associate a our understanding into nationality, race and ethnicity. Byracial observation with a persons nationality. studying this topic and reading references such as blacks (Scott, 1903: 247) a precedent is set for discrimination in ourNearly all evidence and information I have read in regard own society now, forcing the readers impression of whatto people of colour is creating an otherness, reading very black is into a preconceived category.little positive representation from the restoration period in scholarly sources. Such sources remain a root of information Thesourcesfeedtheargumentthatwhiteprivilegeiswhichinfluenceshowweperceivetheworldtoday,thus another way of creating otherness, with colour being used asinfluencinghowthereadersubconsciouslyappreciates an identifier for anyone that isnt white. To a modern readerpeople of colour. Alternatively, it could be argued that by this could provoke outrage as otherness is now ingrainedremoving such words from our recollection of history, we intooursocietysomuchthatobservedcharacteristicsare in a sense censoring history and erasing the authenticity are used as an identifier not just for the race but for anyof the information that we are aware of. community e.g. race, sex, age and sexual orientation. To place the socially acceptable alternative for negro into Inoursocietyotheringprovidesaframeworkwhichhistorical texts could then alter our understanding of that exposesasetofmutualprocesseswhichbreedgroup- writing as the reader would then be gaining a more nuanced based inequality and marginality. This begs the questionrecollection. Elizabeth Shockman wrote an article in which as to whether referring to race in historical commentaryshediscussestheimplicationsofchangingthetitleof is considered as marginalisation or a signifier for personalartwork to remove the word negro. national identity. The idea is to gain a sense of the passage of time and what has happened For example, Ann M. Carlos and Jamie Brown Kruse induring it. And we certainly dont want to pretend, and I mean pretend The Decline of the Royal African Company: Fringe Firms and thein the literal sense of the word, that things that went on in the past were Role of the Charter use the term Negro (Carlos and Kruse,uniformly either good or just OK. We want to see the bad parts too. Its 1996: 301) numerous times in reference to the slaves beingpart of understanding our development as a species. - (McWhorter, brought over by the Royal African Company.2016: 01) I acknowledge that this may be the most accurate term to theShockman quotes John McWhorter in which he explains the reality of the period from which the content is specifying.dangers of altering history, with the argument that by toying However,thearticle-andvariousotherswhichusewith the potential of altering history we then irrevocably similarly divisive denotationsis accessible to anyone andalterourunderstanding.McWhortersargumentisviable 55'