US collectors of dugup ancient coins and artefacts claim that they use them to explore and affirm a connection with the roots of their own society. There is however a huge gap in American society between the white population, all too willing to see themselves as children of the Enlightenement and Renaissance with its fixation on the classical world, and a large coloured population who might find it difficult seeing the roots of their own social conditions in a truly Enlightened society. Except that of course like early America, the Classical civilisations were also slave-owning cultures. One is struck by how few coloured coin dealers there seem to be in the US, such as for example visible in photographs of coin fairs and bourses in the US and how many coloured (as opposed to Latino) faces one sees among the clients. So coiney "cultural property internationalists" collecting dugups to promote some vague form of cuddly-fluffy-bunny international "cultural cosmopolitanism" do not seem to be making much headway even in their own society. The same goes for metal detecting in the UK, how many metal detectorists are there from ethnic minorities in UK metal detecting clubs?Troy Davis:
"there [i]s a vast racial disparity in the state of Georgia where 48.4% of people on death row [a]re black males, despite only making up 15% of the population. “As long as the death penalty is applied in a racially bigoted fashion and a class bigoted fashion, this sort of cheating, this sort of legalized lynching this sort of heartless application of punishment will continue. It has to come to an end.” James Crugnale, 'Troy Davis’ Lawyer: The State of Georgia Legally Lynched An Innocent Man', September 22nd, 2011
World shocked by U.S. execution of Troy Davis September 22, 2011
Troy Davis: Last 15 Minutes of the Drama Described by Lawyer
Vignette: Troy Davis
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