"'Whaaaaaat? There are black people in Scotland?' Yes. We are everywhere."

That's how University of Oklahoma Professor of African and African American Studies Jeanette Davidson began her Monday afternoon discussion with an audience of College of Liberal Arts (CLA) Africology and African American Studies students in Gladfelter Hall's Weigley Room. And although her tone was sarcastic, the Scotland-born professor was serious about how she frequently gets asked that question.

A guest of the Africology and African American Studies PhD program—now in its 30th year with 100 percent of its 180 grads having secured a job within a year of their respective graduations—Dr. Davidson was visiting CLA to shed some light on the topic of black people living in Scotland. Before she could break down the present day challenges of black Scots, however, she had to shine some light on the country's obscured history of mistreatment of blacks.

"A lot of people don't know about the history of Scotland," said Dr. Davidson, going quiet and letting that sentence hang a moment before inserting another quip. "But don't feel bad about that, because a lot of people from Scotland don't know about it. Because it's been hidden."

Slavery in Scotland

In Dr. Davidson's telling, Scotland only began accepting culpability for enslaving and mistreating Africans in 2007. Before that? Well, Scots mostly just blamed England, according to the professor. But 2007 was the tricentennial celebration of Scotland joining with England to form the British Empire in 1707 and the bicentennial of the Wilberforce Act supposedly ending slavery in Great Britain, though the practice did not fully cease until 1838.

A lot of people don't know about the history of Scotland

Trade was the primary reason Scotland involved itself in slavery. Dr. Davidson explained that the country was "knee deep" in the tobacco and sugar trades. Scots discovered they could fuel the entire thing by placing Africans in bondage and forcing them into work, mostly in Caribbean plantations, although about 80 blacks were enslaved in Scotland itself. In fact, between its financier, plantation owners, shippers and traders, Dr. Davidson suggests that Scotland's involvement in slavery may have been higher per capita than even England's.

Thanks to this forced labor of African people, Scotland transformed from a dirt-poor country to a very wealthy one. So dependent did Scotland's economy become on slavery that by the time it was finally outlawed, reparations were paid—to the slavers. This revelation prompted audible (and understandable) shock from the audience. It seems unthinkable, but the 2018 equivalent of £2 billion was paid to the slavers to offset their economic loss rather than to the slaves to make whole for their unimaginable suffering.

The situation becomes more believable when it's understood that the 80 slaves actually in Scotland weren't in bondage because their owners needed them to work the fields or perform other manual labor. They were merely status symbols, kept in the homes of the wealthy to display their unrestrained opulence.

Even as Scotland attempted to gain its freedom from Britain in 1745, it continued to try and enslave black people. Many ran away, but others stayed under fear of bogus threats of how bad they'd have it if they returned to Africa.

Racism in Scotland

The shadow of these dark times was long. In fact, it's still covering much of Scotland today. Dr. Davidson ran through a slideshow of streets, statues and properties named for or placed in honor of slavers or slavery in general. But while those specters still haunt black Scots, things have improved in some ways since 2007.

Glasgow University, for instance, has made a reparative justice commitment to increase diversity, reduce the degree attainment gap, offering scholarships to students of Caribbean descent and to create a center for the study of historical and present-day slavery and its legacies. Elsewhere in the country, history books and other literature is being written rewritten while historical figures previously called "heroes" are now being subjected to new critiques.

For her part, Dr. Davidson decided to write a book about the history not of Scottish slavery, but of black people living in Scotland today and the racism they've had to overcome in their lives. The book isn't for academics, either—you won't need a PhD to parse it.  Dr. Davidson wants "the stories to be at the heart of it. I don't want it to be all clogged up with theory and jargon. I want the voices to just be heard by themselves."

Many people she's talked to for the book don't really understand what's going on with racism in her home country. They muse that it can't really be that bad, can it? Otherwise, we'd surely have heard more about it, right? Well, Dr. Davidson allows that it's "not as bad in Scotland as it is over in the United States." But that doesn't mean it's not bad. That doesn't mean the situation shouldn't or can't be improved.

Some things have changed drastically, and some things really haven't changed at all

One person she interviewed is a doctor who sometimes has racial slurs thrown at her. White patients sometimes tell her they don't want her as a doctor because she's a different color than them. Her response? Maybe she doesn't want them as patients because their skin is a different color than hers.

Another interview subject is an entrepreneur who regularly encounters racism from elderly Scots and has had eggs dropped on her from upstairs windows and is sometimes treated like a thief in stores.

When it's completed, Dr. Davidson wants to use the book "so that people can understand the history and so that people can understand where the whole legacy of what's going on in Scotland comes from. I want to use the book as a stepping-off point to what's happened in history and what's happening now. Some things have changed drastically, and some things really haven't changed at all."

How do people cope with this sort of hateful treatment? How do they interact with schools, hospitals, churches, communities through it all? Perhaps most importantly, how do they identify themselves and how do outsiders identify them? Hopefully telling their stories can bring readers new understandings and change some of the more hurtful identifications.