When I wasn’t sleeping last night, I finished reading a very interesting book by Thomas Norman DeWolf called Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in U.S. History.
As a descendent of 200 years worth of slave owners, I’ve been uneasy with the whole subject of slavery ever since I unearthed the fact during my genealogy research 17 years ago.
I discussed this subject on a blog I wrote last winter. You can read it here.
In DeWolf’s book, he and nine distant cousins traveled the triangle trade route their slaving ancestors exploited to such wealthy ends as late as 140 years ago. Their quest was to examine their possible responsibility for the racism and sorrow that continue to plague our nation because of slavery.
I caught a glimpse of understanding as DeWolf and his cousins struggled to come to terms with their family’s past. Arguging about racism, sexism and the effect of privilege got tedious until DeWolf finally recognized how he personally had benefited just by being a white male.
Bear with me.
I, personally, have a lot of problems, angst, dealing with people who do not respect me for whatever reason.
Think what it would be like to live in a society which automatically assumed you were not worthy of respect just because of the color of your skin.
Some of you may be dealing with that because of your size, your accent, your education, your sexuality, or your church-going habits.
It doesn’t feel good to always be on the defensive about things you may or not be able to control.
What would it be like to grow up in a society where your basic quality is excluded from the marketplace?
How isolated would you feel? How defensive? Think about the things that make your hackles rise. How would you like to have to confront folks who judge you for that every time you walk out your door or turn on your television?
Don’t you think you might have a slight chip on your shoulder as a result?
That’s what DeWolf finally caught about the African-Americans with whom he interacted. He did not know many races in his Oregon community, but he finally began to see that what he assumed, usually unconsciously, about those of a different color probably wasn’t true.
Of course it also works the other way. How would you like to have your abilities, motives, and ethics continually judged, consciously or not, by the greater society in which you lived?
In The Autobiography of Malcom X Alex Haley makes the point that the black family unit has been damaged by what Madison Avenue presents as beauty: a small-framed, blond, blue-eyed, high cheekboned woman with a narrow nose. Or, the antithesis of most African-American women (and many other American women–I don’t look like that either).
When that is held up as beauty and a Black man looks at a Black women, he doesn’t necessarily see beauty. (To his credit) he has to look past what a woman looks like to who she is. Unfortunately, according to Haley writing in the 1960’s, this had a very negative result within the Black community.
We lived in Hawai’i for four years. It’s not like being an African-American in a predominately white society, but it gave us a taste for being judged to the negative by our appearance.
I couldn’t buy clothing in the islands–I’m the wrong everything. The blond blue-eyed neighbor boy was beaten up in school and sent to the ER with a concussion in second grade by classmates who didn’t like what he looked like or how he behaved.
My oldest son was afraid to go to his first high school dance–because he was too tall and none of the pretty petite girls would want to dance with him.
Who would have guessed?
DeWolf struggled with bitterness against the institutional church which condoned and abetted slavery out of his family’s home port of Bristol, RI. He told of walking into the dungeon area of the fort in Ghana where slaves were held before being sent out to his family’s ships. When he looked up before going down, he saw the spire of the church.
No wonder, he concluded, Christianity is such a mess. “They” were complicit in enslaving millions of people.
During the Revolutionary War, 83 of 104 Episcopal priests in Connecticut owned slaves. Thomas Jefferson, of course, is the epitome of hypocrites in this arena.
Reconciliation, social justice, and really examining racism in our country, looks different to me now. I’m still mulling this over, but DeWolf has opened a window and helped me catch a glimpse of the underlying sorrow and unintentioned callousness to a deep injustice.
I’m grateful for that.
I should note he did not examine the blood letting expiation of the Civil War.
As you go about your day, give a thought to how you may unconsciously be accepting the privilege of your circumstances at the emotional expense of someone else.
Are we not to love one another as Jesus loved us?
Thoughts? Reactions? Lurker?