Slavery is like the hamartia of the United States. It pains some to imagine that a place of great ‘opportunity’ has such a horrid past. America is built on mounds of whipped backs and dead bodies, treated as just another piece of property and to take that aspect out of the American dream is pure ignorance. We see this constantly in everyday black life, but it is rare to see this intentional ignorance in the limelight. When Michelle Obama delivered her powerful speech at the Democratic Convention, there were still some that cringed at the term ‘slaves’. They did not hover on her other many truths about the hardship of an American black woman. No, they used their power to cast ignorant doubt over the First Lady’s words about slaves building the White House. Of course, we -in the black community- knew this to be true, but it’s still difficult to watch public figures attempt to justify slavery.
Slavery is what birthed the America of today. Slavery is the cause of white superiority and privilege, why young black men and women are seen as hostile savages. Yet, although this period of US history is rich in the understanding of why America is the country that it is today,there are some who’d rather forget the tie of slavery.
I’d like to think that tweaking history books to cover up slavery or telling tales of ‘willing participants’ and merciful ‘bosses’ won’t make us forget about the past. That we won’t forget that slaves weren’t ‘migrants’ or ‘laborers’ and that we’ll remember the trials of our ancestors, but it only takes so many subtle changes before our history becomes a warped rendition of the truth. I’d hope that my great, great grandchildren live in a world where they are taught that their ancestors were oppressed, forced to work and raped into submission, but my faith in the accuracy of history books is wavering.
To have your rights and free will stripped from you is particularly traumatizing. But growing up in a society that tells you to forget about the murder of your ancestors and blatant racism is a whole new level of wrong. No one urges the white Jewish community to disregard the Holocaust because it’s a new time now. No one tells us to forget about 9/11 because it will never happen again or because the world has changed since then. But as soon as we begin to correlate white superiority to the times of slavery, the white community absolutely loves to bring out the flawed case of reverse racism (which doesn’t exist by the way, but that’s a whole other story).
It’s a bit ironic when you think about it. A nation that fails to see the flaws in their upbringing, but are so eager and willing to erase the parts of the past that don’t agree with the ‘American dream’. In the age of films that tell the various stories of slavery like 12 Years a Slave and The Birth of a Nation, it seems apparent that the fight to expunge history is not one-sided. The black community will continue to honor the stories of our ancestors and the literature and art that portray such stories. We will continue to advocate for fair representation of history in the classrooms of today. So to all of those that insist that racism and slavery are things of the past, and such horrible sections of American history don’t need to be taught to the next generation, let this be a message that we will not go down without a fight.
