Terry Conway I feel ambivalent about the cultural events that are being produced and/or displayed to mark two hundred years since the abolition of the slave trade.
It's not just that the blockbuster Amazing Grace focuses on a white parliamentarian and has only one black person in it.
Ms Dynamite's journey to Jamaica to find out more about the life and myths of Nanny of the Maroons was a powerful antidote to that, and despite the somewhat overpowering subtitles, had me wrapt and chuckling all the way through.
It was great to see a young black British woman exploring this culture of women's resistance and making it accessible to her peers.
Nor has this been the only positive programme on the BBC's so-called Abolition series. Moira Stewart's programme a couple of weeks earlier also put forward positive images of black people making their own history rather than being dependent on benevolence from their white masters.
Nor is it just in the broadcast media that these issues A Month and a are being explored; visual arts are also taking up the theme. Visiting the Victoria and Albert museum to see how they dealt with the challenge was thought provoking.
There were two aspects to what the V&A has done in its "Uncomfortable Truths" exhibition.
First there are a series of exhibits by contemporary artists: "The shadow of slave trading on contemporary art and design", displayed throughout the museum's permanent collection and other permanent spaces which the catalogue states: "create a visual dialogue between historic design objects, many rooted in imperialism, and compelling, emotive examples of art and the rights of the Ogoni people of the Niger Delta through nonviolent direct action highlighted the barbarous interface between the repressive central Nigerian state and the oil companies -particularly Shell - who leech the resources of the Delta and her people.
Journey of discovery: Ms Dynamite (left) and Nanny Maroon design."
I didn't see all of the exhibits. But I was particularly disappointed that two of the three videos I looked at proved impossible to hear even with the volume up full. Others I found very powerful while a few just didn't work for me. Much like my response to a lot of contemporary art...
Then there are the trails: "Discovery Trails exploring links between art, design and the transatlantic slave trade. Here the museum highlights objects in its permanent colunconventional war, no bones are broken, no blood is spilled and no one is maimed. Yet, men, women and children die; flora and fauna perish, the air and water are poisoned, and finally, the land dies.
The second war is a political war of tyranny, oppression and lection, in five trails each of which tells its own story.
The objects are often "chosen for their hidden and often unexpected links to slavery," but these links are then explored in a very helpful catalogue.
Here the problem is that the highlighting was not easy to follow in the rambling galleries that make up the V&A so I just couldn't find some of the displays and wandering from one trail to the next by accident so losing some of the focus of the particular aspects of the story.
Despite these frustrations, I was glad I made the journey. But I was deeply conscious that all the others I noticed following the catalogues, stopping at the same exhibits, other than myself and my companion, were black.
The catalogue asks: why is Trans-Atlantic slavery seen as a black issue rather than a human one, by blacks as well as whites?
Why does it take arbitrary anniversaries to bring these issues to the fore?"
I don't think I know all the answers, but I have been challenged to think more about the questions by these cultural explorations. identifies, wresting it back is central to the solution.
In many ways this book shows that Saro-Wiwa was an unlikely candidate for execution. His commitment to non-violence at times is shown as a fear of losing control of the movement he heads - when the youth