"Emancipate Yourself from Mental Slavery"

My seven-year-old daughter is learning about slavery.  It is Black History Month, and her second grade curriculum focuses on the Underground Railroad.  Emily is a very bright, empathetic child, and I am watching her process this information in her imaginative play at home.  She talks about helping slaves escape and creates plays with her dolls that feature slaves being led to freedom.  Her impulses are sweet and her sense of fairness is strong.  She aligns herself with those that helped slaves win their freedom.  And I wonder what else she has internalized.

Does she now think, as would never have occurred to her before, that when she sees a black person someone in their family must once have been a slave?  Is she starting to see blacks as needing white assistance to win their freedom and unable to win it for themselves?  Can she imagine herself as the oppressed slave, or does she default to the benign but paternal role of agent of the slave's redemption?  The obvious part for her in this particular version of history is that of the good Northern white person.  What will she make of the far more complex history of race relations in America that does not spare the Yankee any more than it absolves the defenders of Dixie?

I do not fault the school for its simplified, even sanitized 2nd grade curriculum. Seven-year-olds are not ready to look at burned, lynched corpses and smiling white vigilantes.  But my obligation as a parent, as an historian, and as one who knows deep in his private soul that I am not free of the taint of prejudice, prompts me to listen to my daughter and offer additional information, sensitively and straightforwardly, and respect her intelligence as well as her tender years to work through what we share.

There is a Namibian proverb that goes; "You cannot smell yourself; let another smell you."  We become accustomed to our stench.  How do we respond when we are told that we stink? Is soap and water sufficient to cleanse the body, or is it now a reeking corpse? Or is it more the offended person's issue, a pendulum swung too hard the other way? We are on perilous ground, bad enough for adult angst, let alone a growing child. 

Over the next few days, Walking the Berkshires will take a hard look at the narrative of race in our family tree and our minds today.  I am not yet sure where all this may lead, but I do know that it is not enough to deconstruct the myths that we tell each other about our pasts and prejudices, but to build up a new paradigm - more honest, less damning  - if we have any hope of doing better. I do not believe in original sin, though some patterns run very deep and are very hard to overcome. It does not begin or end with the sins of our fathers, nor with personal responsibility though that has its part as well.  It begins by looking hard at ourselves and in some very awkward places, but it cannot end there.  Most of us crave redemption, and tend to project that desire on those we have wronged, but like the song goes; "None but ourselves can free our minds."

Comments

[angelika]

i think its all great writen i am very happey with it and i am so great full about this storey and happey no one can not inmagine this is a great information about slavery in some cind of way and i
kno this is the -beast to open thouse people eyes and see the truth some people stil dpnt like black people but i do not think thats how they or you think i am so proud of this people and ho bleves and haVE the bleve on the black people
how people seys dont joudge me on my skin coular jude ho i am.

[Tim Abbott]

Beautifully said, Thomas. You have articulated precisely what I am after and how I hope to be able to engage with the hard questions such an inquiry will provoke. Many thanks for that.

[Thomas MacEntee]

An admirable project and I commend you for posting about the topic and discussing it. I've done the same over the past few months and from the comments I've received, I've come to this conclusion:

Many of us either had a parent or older person in our family help break the chain of bigotry or somehow we decided on our own not to perpetuate the biases with which we were raised. Personally, it was my mother who did this: we'd come home from visiting a friend or relative who used racial epithets and Mom would set me straight as to how things really should be.

Discussing "ownership" of past offenses and sins against another race or group of people is a heavy topic. With my family going back to the mid 1600s in this country, I am certain that there were slave owners among my ancestors. When I see behaviors or practices that seem very out of place in modern times, putting them in their historical context does not necessarily make them right or help to explain them away. But one of my goals is to thoroughly research my ancestors and their role in the practice of slavery: how did they acquire slaves? is there any evidence as to how they treated slaves? were they part of social or religious communities that spoke out against the slave trade?

But nothing that I do in the way of research or writing can ever even touch the pain or misery that such a practice has wrought - not only upon those enslaved and their descendants but among those of us who involve ourselves in the "looking back" and sometimes don't like what we see.