So the white man can feel superior, which he has confused with freedom

I finished the book The Burden, African Americans and the Enduring Impact of Slavery, edited by Rochelle Riley. This book is over 20 essays by various black authors refuting the claim that slavery is long gone, just get over it, nobody alive has been enslaved. These essays speak from experience that the reasons why there was slavery still exist and that the effects of slavery live on. People living today very much continue to suffer from it. I won’t list all of the topics discussed, though here are a few. I have taken up my parents’ interest in genealogy and have traced most family lines to their villages in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Germany. A few lines I and my brother have traced back to the beginning of village record keeping. I know where I come from. But for many black people slavery has erased those records and those links. For Paula Williams Madison the best she could do was a DNA test that says her father’s family came from Ghana. In contrast, her mother’s father was Chinese and once connected to her Chinese family she found its known history is 3000 years long. But for many black people they don’t know their roots, they don’t know where they came from, and they don’t know who they are. And that affects them. Kevin Blackstone discussed modern sports. Even though some black athletes are paid millions, it is still a plantation mentality that white owners can do what they want with black bodies. Tamara Winfrey-Harris wrote that on a plantation a black child didn’t have a childhood and many modern black children still don’t. That’s especially true of black girls who, when they approach puberty, are seen as budding Jezebels ready to wield their sexuality as a weapon. Vann Newkirk talked about the school to prison pipeline. T’Keyah Crystal Keymah discussed black women’s hair. White society looks at natural black hair and assumes the person is dirty, and black women assume they need to mimic the hairstyles of their oppressors for their own protection. Michelle Singletary wrote that her grandmother taught her that debt is a form of slavery. Others talked about redlining and the poor quality of schools with black students. Tonya Matthews wrote about Beyoncé’s album Lemonade and pondered why do black men not return home and why do black women continue to wait for them? Part of that might come from the slavery practice that black men were rented out to area plantations to get black women pregnant to produce more slaves. He was taught not to be faithful. An excerpt from the essay by Patrice Gaines:

When the Emancipation Proclamation freed me, it wasn’t the physical bodies and imaginative minds that those white people with economic power feared, it was the possibility that I might rise and be powerful too. That I might be as powerful as them. That they might have to share power and wealth. And so fear said: Make these darker people into monsters roaming the earth, untethered. This is the legacy of slavery. I must be a monster so the white man can feel superior, which he has confused with freedom.

This book presents its arguments quite well. I agree this is a book that white America needs to read. Another book on slavery is The Underground Railroad, Authentic Narratives and First-Hand Accounts by William Still. I bought it at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati when I visited a year ago. The book was first published in 1872. The author was a leader in the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society which was a major link in the underground railroad that got slaves out of the South and (after the Fugitive Slave Act was passed) got them through to Canada. When passengers got to Philly Still recorded their stories, their reason for escaping and method of doing so. This book is about five dozen of those stories. Alas, I didn’t finish it. The stories are important and show a great deal of determination and ingenuity. But this telling was boring. Still had filled out his notes, but with a recitation of facts and very little drama for these dramatic stories. Earlier this week was the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, where Dr. Martin Luther King gave his famous “I have a Dream” speech. I happened to be in Washington for the 50th anniversary event and heard part of President Obama’s address to the crowd. Back to this year’s event. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos included a video and transcript of Sacha Baron Cohen’s speech. Cohen started by asking the obvious question of this speaker at an event promoting black liberation: “Now, many of you are probably wondering, ‘What the hell is a white Jewish comedian from England doing here?’ ” Short answer: he was invited. Though he is known for some mighty raunchy comedies with some highly racist segments, he did a college thesis on the civil rights movement and spent time at the King Center in Atlanta. Here are excerpts from his speech:

There I learned about how Black Americans and Jewish Americans and people of many faiths linked arms together, went to jail together, sacrificed their lives together, and achieved historic victories together for civil rights. The brave alliance teaches a lesson that we can never forget: When we are united, we can hasten the day, as Dr. King proclaimed, when all of God's children will be able to walk the Earth in decency and honor. The power of unity is exactly why those who stand in the way of equality and freedom seek to divide us. They appeal to the worst instincts of humanity, which often simmer just below the surface. ... And so it pains me that we have to say them out loud again. The idea that people of color are inferior is a lie. The idea that Jews are dangerous and all powerful is a lie. The idea that women are not equal to men is a lie. And the idea that queer people are a threat to our children is a lie. ... So as others fuel hate and division, we choose the empathy and unity that allows us to make progress together for equality, for decency, and for democracy. Especially here in the U.S. today.