The Peculiar Blindness, Part 4: Casual Contempt

Opelousas, Louisiana. May 2015.

"You never know when it's going to come up and slap you in the face,"  said one of my Louisiana acquaintances, an African-American man. "You've always got to be ready."

The "it" is an act, a gesture, a throw-away comment that shocks - not because of its size or its volume or because of physical harm, but because it is so casual in its delivery, and so careless about its effect. It feels very personal, like someone stepping into your intimate body space to slap you smartly across the face, without warning, stinging your skin, raising a flush of emotions to the surface.

Contempt: The feeling that a person or a thing is beneath consideration, worthless, or deserving scorn.

In this post, I share some experiences told to me by several Louisiana acquaintances of color. I've rolled the stories into a composite of a man I'll call "Lem."

What they have in common is a casual and knowing jab by one human being to another. They are not acts of misunderstanding or naiveté. They are intentional and cavalierly cruel.



The cafe

While working out of town one day, but still in Louisiana, Lem went to a cafe for lunch. And, listen, we're not talking about back in the day here; we're talking contemporary times. So anyway, Lem went into a cafe for lunch and ordered his meal. The server brought it. As Lem ate, his eyes wandered over the room, just looking around as one does when eating alone. And he stopped chewing suddenly because he saw. He saw that everyone in the restaurant ate off dinnerware and metal flatware, and drank from glasses. His meal had been served to him on a styrofoam plate, with plastic utensils and a paper cup. He was the only diner eating off of styrofoam and he was the only diner of color.


Too good

A few years back, Lem had an opportunity to buy some used work vehicles at a very good price. They needed mechanical and cosmetic work, and he fixed them up fine. They looked damn pretty when he finished, and Lem was pleased with his investment. He put them to work in his business.

And then he ran into an old, racist line of thinking that kicks in when a person of color possesses something that is "too good."

In Lem's case, while he performed a task in one office, he overhead a conversation of the organization's staff, all white, in an adjacent office. Which went something like this: "You see that vehicle of Lem's out there? If he's doing so good, he obviously doesn't need any work from us in the future."


The school bus driver

Now, this story does go back a bit to, say, 50 years and longer. At least in one parish, African-American children had to walk to school while their white neighbors took the school bus. Lem told me that his parents instructed him to take care that he didn't get his school clothes dirty while walking, by sticking as far over to the right shoulder of the road as possible. Especially on rainy days.

I heard this same experience from several acquaintances.

In fact, their parents' concern wasn't so much about protecting school clothes as it was to protect their children from white students who liked to throw stones at them from the school bus windows when it drove by.

And to protect their children from a school bus driver who, especially on rainy days, scooched over to the right edge of the road for the pleasure of splashing muddy water onto the walking children with his big school bus tires.



The mules

Lem shared a country saying with me: "Don't mind the mules, just load the wagon."

For a number of years, perhaps in the late 80s, Lem worked for a well-known, multi-national company. He often worked outdoors.

One day, a trench needed to be dug. The supervisor ordered the black employees, including Lem, to start digging same. It was a smothering hot day. The supervisor was a guy who liked to throw his weight around. Even so, this task wouldn't be particularly noteworthy in regard to my post today. Except that a white co-worker rolled up to the edge of the deepening trench in a backhoe.

He said to the supervisor: "It is too hot and too slow to have these men dig this hole by hand. It's also unnecessary. I can dig that trench right quick for you with the backhoe."

The supervisor replied, in effect:  "Don't you worry about the mules."

And while Lem and his co-workers continued to slug dirt in the heavy heat, the backhoe stood idle.


Note: This same company later got caught up in a scandalous racial discrimination lawsuit and subsequently settled out of court, agreeing to pay $172 million to the plaintiffs.



The wait

Lem is a business owner who submits competitive bids for work to companies and government agencies.

To write bids that are competitive, business owners must, of course, know what their supplies and equipment will cost them, so this information can be factored into the bids. In an area with a relatively small population such as South Louisiana, there are only a few suppliers who serve the needs of certain project types.

Lem informed a local supplier of the items he'd need for the project he hoped to win; the supplier would give him an estimate of the supply costs so Lem could complete his proposal and submit his bid by the deadline.

Time passed while Lem waited for the estimate and the bid deadline approached. Days, then weeks. Always there was some reason the supplier didn't have the estimate ready for Lem.

Finally, with the deadline almost nigh, Lem went to the supplier. The supplier's employee gave over the estimate. His honor, engaged at last, compelled the employee to tell Lem that his boss had instructed him to withhold the estimate from Lem until it was too late for Lem to submit a bid. But the employee couldn't bring himself to go quite that far.

Contempt.


In Purple Cane Road, Detective Dave Robicheaux relates a story of casual contempt from the 1960s:

The next morning I read the coroner's report ... It was signed by a retired pathologist named Ezra Cole, a wizened, part-time deacon in a fundamentalist congregation made up mostly of Texas oil people and North Louisiana transplants. He had worked for the parish only a short time eight or nine years ago. But I still remembered the pharmacy he had owned in the Lafayette Medical Center back in the 1960s. He would not allow people of color to even stand in line with whites, requiring them instead to wait in the concourse until no other customers were inside.


Related posts

The Peculiar blindness, Part 1: Introduction
The Peculiar Blindness, Part 2: The "Yes, But" Mask
The Peculiar Blindness, Part 3: You Don't See What I Don't See

The Peculiar Blindness, Part 3: "You Don't See What I Don't See"

 

Four o'clocks, Rustavi, Georgia.

"You don't see what I don't see."

The quote is from Ernest J. Gaines' book, A Gathering of Old Men, based in 1970s Louisiana.

From the chapter narrated by one of the "old men," Joseph Seaberry (aka "Rufe"):

[Sheriff] Mapes looked at Clatoo the way white folks know how to look at a nigger when they think he's being smart.

"Isn't it a little late for you to be getting militant around here?" Mapes asked Clatoo.

"I always been militant," Clatoo said. "My intrance gone sour, keeping my militance down." ....

"I kilt him," Ding said, thumping his chest. "Me, me - not them, not my brother. Me. What they did to my sister's little girl - Michelle Gigi." 

"I see," Mapes said, looking at Ding and Bing at the same time. "I see."

Johnny Paul grunted out loud. "No, you don't see."

He wasn't looking at Mapes, he was looking toward the tractor and the trailers of cane out there in the road. But I could tell he wasn't seeing any of that. I couldn't tell what he was thinking until I saw his eyes shifting up the quarters where his mama and papa used to stay. But the old house wasn't there now. It had gone like all the others had gone. Now weeds covered the place where the house used to be. "Y'all look," he said. "Look now. Y'all see anything? What y'all see?"

"I see nothing but weeds, Johnny Paul," Mapes said ....

"Yes, sir," Johnny Paul said. ... "Yes sir, I figured that's all you would see. But what do the rest don't see? What y'all don't see, Rufe?" he asked me. ... "What y'all don't see, Clatoo? What y'all don't see, Glo? What y'all don't see, Corrine, Rooster, Beulah? What y'all don't see, all the rest of y'all?" 

"I don't have time for people telling me what they can't or don't see, Johnny Paul," Mapes said. ....

Johnny Paul turned on him. He was tall as Mapes, but thin, thin. He was the color of Brown Mule chewing tobacco. His eyes gray, gray like Mapes' eyes, but not hard like Mapes' eyes. He looked dead at Mapes.

"You ain't got nothing but time, Sheriff. .... you still don't see. Yes, sir, what you see is the weeds, but you don't see what we don't see." 

"Do you see it, Johnny Paul?" Mapes asked him.

"No, I don't see it," Johnny Paul said. "That's why I kilt him." 

"I see," Mapes said.

"No, you don't," Johnny Paul said. "No, you don't. You had to be here to don't see it now. You just can't come down here every now and then. You had to live here seventy-seven years to don't see it now. No, Sheriff, you don't see. You don't even know what I don't see."  

... "... Do you hear that church bell ringing?" [Johnny Paul asked]

"Are you all right?" Mapes asked him. ... "Church bells, Johnny Paul?"

"Y'all remember how it used to be?" Johnny Paul said. ... "Remember?" he said. "When they wasn't no weeds - remember? Remember how they used to sit out there on the garry - Mama, Papa, Aunt Clara, Aunt Sarah, Unc Moon, Aunt Spoodle, Aunt Thread. Remember? Everybody had flowers in the yard. But nobody had four-o'clocks like Jack Toussaint. ... "

... "That's why I kilt him, that's why," Johnny Paul said. "To protect them little flowers. But they ain't here no more. And how come? 'Cause Jack ain't here no more. He's back under them trees with all the rest. With Mama and Papa, Aunt Thread, Aunt Spoodle, Aunt Clara, Unc Moon, Unc Jerry - all the rest of them. ... Remember the palm-of-Christians in Thread's yard, Glo? ... Remember Jack and Red Rider hitting that field every morning with them two mules, Diamond and Job?" ...

... "Thirty, forty of us going out in the field with cane knives, hoes, plows - name it. Sunup to sundown, hard, miserable work, but we managed to get it done. We stuck together, shared what little we had, and loved and respected each other. 

"But just look at things today. Where the people? Where the roses? Where the four-o'clocks? The palm-of-Christians? Where the people used to sing and pray in the church? I'll tell you. Under them trees back there, that's where. And where they used to stay, the weeds got it now, just waiting for the tractor to come plow it up." 

... I [killed him] for them back there under them trees. I did it 'cause that tractor is getting closer and closer to that graveyard, and I was scared if I didn't do it, one day that tractor was go'n come in there and plow up them graves, getting rid of all proof that we ever was. Like now they trying to get rid of all proof that black people ever farmed this land with plows and mules - like if they had nothing from the starten but motor machines. Sure, one day they will get rid of the proof that we ever was, but they ain't go'n do it while I'm still here. Mama and Papa worked too hard in these fields ..."

[Mapes] was getting tired; he was getting tired fast. Tired listening, tired standing, tired of niggers. But he didn't know what to do about it ... He had already used his only knowledge he knowed how to deal with black folks - knocking them around. When that didn't change a thing, when people started getting in line to be knocked around, he didn't know what else to do. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I have read the above passage many times. Each reading brings a fresh, sharp exhale of emotion.

At our cores, don't we all want to feel that we mattered? That we were seen, our history acknowledged? 

When I entered Mr. Gaines' excerpt into this post, I remembered quotes from a woman and a fictional little girl:

June Carter Cash: "I'm just trying to matter."

Six-year-old Hushpuppy, in Beasts of the Southern Wild: "In a million years, when kids go to school, they gonna know, once there was a Hushpuppy and she lived with her daddy in The Bathtub [in Louisiana]."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In many of the Dave Robicheaux books by James Lee Burke, protagonist Dave describes levees and fields and the banks of bayous that, just under the soil's surface, hold the bones and teeth and scraps of decomposing clothing of forgotten men, women, and children who worked the land as slaves or sharecroppers, and who died on that soil.

When I first stumbled on the Opelousas Massacre, and read of the dozens? hundred? hundreds? of fathers, brothers, and sons killed in the space of a couple of weeks, I wondered, where are they buried? How does a community bury so many people in such a short time? Almost a hundred fifty years later, are some of the dead still out there, laying in the woods, with families knowing they were likely dead, but not knowing the location of the remains?

What's not here that we don't see?



Related posts

The Peculiar Blindness, Part 1: Introduction
The Peculiar Blindness, Part 2: The "Yes, But" Mask

The Peculiar Blindness, Part 2: The "Yes, But" Mask

Cemetery at night. Jefferson City, Missouri.

As a society, we have refused to set aside discomfort so we can really see American slavery and the following generations of systemic racism and centuries-old memes that keep all of us mired in a dysfunctional family quicksand. One way we avoid seeing is to don the "yes, but" mask.  

Common "yes, buts": 

• Yes, slavery was bad, but Africans kept slaves themselves, so .... 
• Yes, slavery was bad, but Africans sold other Africans to the Europeans, so ..... 
• Yes, slavery was bad, but some African-Americans owned slaves in the South, so ....
• Yes, slavery was bad, but the Irish were virtual slaves when they came to the US, so .... 
• Yes, slavery was bad, but look what we did to the Native Americans! If anything, that was worse! 
• Yes, slavery was bad, but there is slavery today, so why aren't we talking about that instead of what happened in the past .... 
• Yes, slavery was bad, but those were different times then ...
• Yes, slavery was bad, but it would have disappeared eventually, without the Civil War ...  
• Yes, slavery was bad, but most slave-owners only had a few slaves ....  
• Yes, slavery was bad, but some slave-owners treated their slaves very well .... 
• Yes, slavery was bad, but at least they had food and shelter and clothing given to them ... 

Some folks think the "yes, buts" are relevant. They aren't.

Systemic mass traumas visited upon a group of people stand alone.

You don't compare them with each other.

You don't diminish a group's experience so you can protect yourself from discomfort.

You don't sneer at a group of people for wanting full acknowledgement of the experience. 

"Yes, buts" shut people down. 


We don't hear "yes, but's" with these events:

• The Holocaust. We even capitalize the historic event to acknowledge the immensity of its horror. We don't say "yes, but," we say "never again!" We honor the wisdom and insights of those who survived, those who made a poignant mark on others before they died, those who saved Jews and other targets from being transported to the concentration camps. There are those who tirelessly sought individuals who perpetrated crimes against humanity during the Holocaust, and we applaud them for it.   
• Native American genocide (and later, cultural oppression) campaigns. We don't say "yes, but," we acknowledge fully the intrinsic wrongness of this ugly history. We lionize the courage and acumen of famous warriors and chieftains. We aspire to Indians' traditional respect for the earth and its inhabitants. We adopt some spiritual Native American traditions and we credit Indians with having created these traditions. (But see note below.)
• Acadian Dérangement. In South Louisiana, the trauma of the Acadian Dérangement is honored in cultural centers, in music, in books, in festivals, in public commemorations. We don't say "yes, but." We embrace the shared hardship of a group of people forcibly removed from their homes, separated from their families, thrust into a foreign climate, where they endured poverty and later, ridicule, as they struggled to maintain their culture and to thrive.  
• Japanese concentration camps. Actually, we are virtually silent about this, which is one way to blindfold ourselves about what we did to a group of people during World War II. However, we don't say "yes, but." 

And let's consider the "yes, buts" from another angle

You have a partner, a parent, or a boss who's an abuser. Each time you get zapped, you do get an acknowledgement, but .... 

• Yes, I did that, but you just make me so mad! 
• Yes, I did that, but couldn't you see I was in a bad mood? 
• Yes, I did that, but I was drinking, and you know how I get when I'm drinking. 
• Yes, I did that, but I'm under a lot of pressure and you're not helping.
• Yes, I did that, but you were asking for it.
• Yes, I did that, but if you'd do it right the first time, I wouldn't have to ..
• Yes, I did that, but if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. 
• Yes, I did that, but you just can't seem to get it right. 
• Yes, I did that, but it seems the only way I can get through your thick head. 

These are classic manipulative ploys used by abusers, designed to place blame on the target of the abuse, to intimidate, and silence the target.

How do we take off the mask so we can look at our history and start to move on? 

We need to stop making and tolerating from others the "yes, but" statements, for one. Trying to debate any "yes, but" comparison is a waste of time because each is irrelevant. Every historic trauma stands on its own.  

I'll repeat what I wrote in The Peculiar Blindness, Part 1: Introduction:

... everything I think I know about individuals, groups, and processes tell me that before we get over it, we must stop our defensive attitudes for a minute and:

1. Acknowledge - without any qualifiers - the grotesque enormity of American slavery and its aftermath; 
2. Express our sorrow and regret for the experience; 
3. Listen to what the other has to say, without interrupting - and without feeling the need to agree, only to understand; and
4. Think and act in new ways to eliminate discrimination in our midst, making it very uncomfortable for Americans to express their prejudices in speech and actions. 

In the 12-step world, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, this is called "clearing the wreckage of our past." It is not good enough to just say sorry - we also have to stop doing what was done in the past, and do things differently in the future.

Catholics have the sacrament of confession, whereby one can confess one's sins to another human being, perform an act of penance, and ultimately receive forgiveness. 

In my experience as a mediator, in cases where an injustice was done, the power of a sincere apology is huge, as is the willingness to attempt to make things right. An apology does not require groveling or humiliation. It does require humility, sincerity, and accountability. It is the authentic expression of regret that another person experienced a wrong, without any "ifs" or "buts."

How many families suffer decades-long estrangement because one or more family members refuse to acknowledge a wrong? They don't "get over it." We all know this dynamic, but seem unable to apply this knowledge in a societal context.

How many families keep certain things secret from the larger community? We don't like to "air our dirty laundry." It is our nature as humans, perhaps, to want to cover over bad things, whether it's domestic violence, incest, addictions, infidelities, or shady family businesses. The victims within the family are pulled into the little society of secrets and shame, as well. 

How many family and larger cultures of those who were victimized quash bad experiences so as to avoid renewed pain and suffering for younger generations? The younger generations never know why their parents and grandparents think and act the way they do. It is common for victims of trauma to feel shame, and that shame can reverberate through generations. If all of our children don't learn how slavery and its aftermath permeated every single aspect of some people's daily lives, from the very tiniest acts of casual contempt to the most egregious acts of violence, it is easy to fall into shame when one's antecedents, living and dead, were the subjects of racism that has been so internalized in our society that it is like the air we breathe.

We know, in theory, how important it is to shine a light on the trespasses we commit in our personal lives. If we really do want to "get over" our shared heritage of American slavery and its aftermath, then we need to bring our dark history into the fullness of light and look at it unblinkingly.

Below is a song by Rhiannon Giddens (one of my favorite artists), called Julie:

*Note about the Native Americans. Our admiration of Indians does not translate into policies and actions that reflect social and economic justice. In other words, we tend to love Indians in the abstract, and not so much in the real.

The Peculiar Blindness, Part 1: Introduction

Slavery Museum, Whitney Plantation, Louisiana. March 2015.

The peculiar institution
 
Before the Civil War, the South used the phrase "our peculiar institution" to refer to the system of slavery in the southern United States.

Slavery Museum, Whitney Plantation, Louisiana. March 2015.

The peculiar blindness

Ever since then, we in the United States have practiced fervently "our peculiar blindness" about our shame of  slavery, apartheid (racial segregation enforced by law), and other past and ongoing, institutional racist practices.

I call it blindness because even though we agree that, yes, slavery and Jim Crow and other injustices occurred, and those were bad things, it was largely in the past and we all just need to move on, and let's not keep talking about it.

Here's what the peculiar blindness looks like to me: 

1. Celebration of the high society and culture of the antebellum South by way of plantation tours and dress-up events, with only a nod to the human misery necessary to support that society.

2. In town squares, visitors' centers, local museums - historical recognition of the achievements, hardships, and tragedies of the white population, while virtually ignoring heroic acts for freedom and justice by people of color, massacres and atrocities visited upon people of color, sites of conscience where, for example, men, women, and children were bought and sold; or landmark legal decisions, such as the Emancipation Proclamation. 

3. Proud acclaim for populist heroes such as the pirate Jean LaFitte and Jim Bowie, without mentioning they smuggled African men, women, and children into the US to be sold as slaves after this had been outlawed (even in the South).

4. In the South, a spectacular disregard for its African-American residents by the relentless idolatry and never-ending mourning of the so-called glories of the Confederacy.

5.White folks who seem able to have "friendships" with individual people of color but who are blind to the ugliness of the assumptions and ignorance they express publicly about African-Americans as a group.

6. Memorials or museums related to the African-American experience that are, for the most part, compartmentalized as historical side bars. Arguably, this might be understood in northern states with a small African-American population, but it's difficult to justify in states where slavery was the law and where a high percentage of African-Americans are residents.   

Missouri state capitol. History museum.

In Louisiana: 

It wasn't until I'd been in Louisiana for a small while that the idea of our peculiar blindness really came home to me. It may have been when I watched the documentary,  The Cajun Way: Echoes of Acadia, at the Acadian Cultural Center in Lafayette, which is one of the six Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve sites in Louisiana.

It's a good movie and the cultural center is nice - worth a visit, for sure.

But as I watched the documentary - a well-told story of the Acadian people being forcibly removed from their homes in Canada, families separated, having to resettle in a land, climate, and culture foreign to them - the absence of a similar chronicle of note in the cultural center, describing Louisiana's settlement by African ancestors, became visible to me. In the exhibit area, there is some reference to the experience in Louisiana by people with African roots, but not much.

The town square in Opelousas has a handsome monument to the Confederacy, but no mention of other historic events of note in the town or St. Landry parish, such as the Opelousas Massacre or the Emancipation Proclamation.


Not far to the north, the visitor center in the village of Washington waxes poetic about what makes a Cajun man, and notes some important historic dates to the white population within, but silence again on the Opelousas Massacre, although it was an incident in a Washington school that lit the fatal spark to the killing that followed. Also in Washington is the national historic landmark, the Steamboat Warehouse, now a restaurant, but in the past, a location where I am told that men, women, and children were bought and sold. This is a perfect opportunity to own that part of our dark history, and make the landmark a site of conscience, but there is silence on this.

In the Missouri State Capitol there is a history museum.  

Missouri state capitol. History museum.

It wasn't until I'd been in Louisiana for awhile that I looked at how we documented our dark history in other places. My home state of Missouri, for example. A bit of the capitol's history museum looks at slavery. But, jeez, it does so in a discounting and distancing way, to wit:

• "Missouri slaves had opportunities to learn more skills than typical slaves in the deep South."

• "Since they could not farm in the winter, many worked part time as carpenters, hatters, cabinet makers, tailors, shoemakers, and blacksmiths. They earned money for their owners and for themselves." 

Missouri state capitol. History museum.

• "The lives of Missouri slaves differed from those in the deep South. ... Some were encouraged to learn skills other than farming. ... "

• "Missouri slave owners disciplined their slaves with the threat of being sold down South."

• "Most Missouri slaves worked on small farms, where master and slave often worked side by side. The average Missouri slaveholder owned no more than four slaves."

It all sounds so ... not so bad. It sounds protective of Missouri's image at the expense of Missouri's African-American residents, past and present. And this is the official story of slavery for the state of Missouri.



Bringing sight to a dark history

When I returned to Louisiana for my second year, I stayed at an airbnb while I looked for an apartment. One of my temporary roommates was a German linguist. She expressed dismay at how we Americans hide from our dark history. 

She said that in Germany, it is required for all students, throughout their school years, to learn about the Nazi era. Every community that has a population that exceeds a certain number must have a monument that acknowledges the Holocaust. Every student, at least once in his schooling, visits a concentration camp. There are lesson plans devoted to the history, the sociology, the psychology of how the Nazis came to power, what happened, and what will keep such a thing from recurring.


But in the US, there is ... not much about American slavery and its aftermath.

Indeed, contingents of us like to say, "Get over it! That was the past! Stop stirring up trouble!"

It would be so much more comfortable to "get over it," wouldn't it? But everything I think I know about individuals, groups, and processes tell me that before we get over it, we must stop our defensive attitudes for a minute and:

1. Acknowledge - without any qualifiers - the grotesque enormity of American slavery and its aftermath; 
2. Express our sorrow and regret for the experience; 
3. Listen to what the other has to say, without interrupting - and without feeling the need to agree, only to understand; and
4. Think and act in new ways to eliminate discrimination in our midst, making it very uncomfortable for Americans to express their prejudices in speech and actions. 

In the 12-step world, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, this is called "clearing the wreckage of our past." It is not good enough to just say sorry - we also have to stop doing what was done in the past, and do things differently in the future.

Catholics have the sacrament of confession, whereby one can confess one's sins to another human being, perform an act of penance, and ultimately receive forgiveness. 

In my experience as a mediator, in cases where an injustice was done, the power of a sincere apology is huge, as is the willingness to attempt to make things right. An apology does not require groveling or humiliation. It does require humility, sincerity, and accountability. It is the authentic expression of regret that another person experienced a wrong, without any "ifs" or "buts."

How many families suffer decades-long estrangement because one or more family members refuse to acknowledge a wrong? They don't "get over it." We all know this dynamic, but seem unable to apply this knowledge in a societal context.

How many families keep certain things secret from the larger community? We don't like to "air our dirty laundry." It is our nature as humans, perhaps, to want to cover over bad things, whether it's domestic violence, incest, addictions, infidelities, or shady family businesses. The victims within the family are pulled into the little society of secrets and shame, as well. 

How many family and larger cultures of those who were victimized quash bad experiences so as to avoid renewed pain and suffering for younger generations? The younger generations never know why their parents and grandparents think and act the way they do. It is common for victims of trauma to feel shame, and that shame can reverberate through generations. If all of our children don't learn how slavery and its aftermath permeated every single aspect of some people's daily lives, from the very tiniest acts of casual contempt to the most egregious acts of violence, it is easy to fall into shame as one whose antecedents, living and dead, were victims.

We know, in theory, how important it is to shine a light on the trespasses we commit in our personal lives. If we really do want to "get over" our shared heritage of American slavery and its aftermath, then we need to bring our dark history into the fullness of light and look at it unblinkingly.


Some related resources: 

Slaveholder and slave populations by state in 1860 and in other years

Reconciliation from Beyond Intractability

What it Means to be Sorry: The Power of Apology in Mediation

Sites of Conscience

Talking circles

Slavery Museum, Whitney Plantation, Louisiana. March 2015.

Below, Billie Holiday sings Strange Fruit: