I am sorry for slavery. Part of the privilege of being white is that I don't often need to

[Ed Suspicious]

Last edited Thu Jul 9, 2015, 03:16 AM - Edit history (1)

think too hard about slavery. My university forced us to take a class that qualified as an ethnic studies class. My Junior year I decided I would get that requirement out of the way while at the same time fulfilling a literature requirement. I chose an African American Literature course. We read selections from the Norton Anthology of African American Literature 2nd Edition. In this course I was exposed to

Lucy Terry - Bars Fight

Phillis Wheatley - Various poems and letters

Harriet Jacobs - A fair bit of "Incidents in the life of a Slave Girl"

William Wells Brown - "Narrative of W.W.B, a Fugitive Slave" and also "Clotel"

Henry Highland Garnet - We read an Address to the Slaves of the USA

Frederick Douglass - Narrative and some other stuff

Booker T. Washington - from "Up From Slavery" and a speech which we compared and contrasted to Garnet's

Charles W. Chesnutt - "The Goophered Grapevine" and "The Passing of Grandison"

W.E.B DuBois - most of "The Souls of Black Folks"

Paul Laurence Dunbar - 15 or so different poems

James Weldon Johnson - We read all of "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man"

Marcus Garvey - "Africa for Africans" and "The Future and I See It"

Zora Neale Hurston - "Sweat" and "How it Feels to Be Colored Me"

Richard Wright - "Native Son" Watched the Movie.

We watched a little bit of Birth of a Nation.

We watched Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Toms Cabin (didn't read it)

Gwendolyn Brooks - read a whole laundry list of stuff from her.

Toni Morrison - Part II or "Song of Solomon"

Then we each had to do an author analysis of some other author in the book who we did not read in class. I chose;

Octavia Butler - and for that I read "Kindred" and "Parable of the Sower"

Probably more, but this was from memory so it's the best I could do. Anyway, this has all served very well to open my eyes to the plight of African Americans, but the crystalizing moment for me was the day when we watched a documentary about the middle passage. They described many horrors of chattel slavery, but the one thing that shook me to my core was the image of "tight packing."





It never really struck home the utter disregard for humanity toward the African people until I saw and considered the mindset it took to rip people from their homeland, stack them in the hull of a ship for months on end lying in their own shit and piss, unable to move with no idea when this hell might cease. African American's might as well have been a box of pencils or a stack of cord wood. Maybe even less than that. What we did to you was unconscionable and horrific. And given that a politician, a leader I admire greatly acknowledged that we needed to apologize for slavery, I wanted to do my part as a white American by acknowledging your forefather's and mother's suffering. I want to say that I'm so, so sorry for slavery. I am unequivocally ashamed for what my "Christian" forefathers did to you and yours. I know it means not much, but I want you to know that this white American is interested in your struggles. This white American can only try, unsuccessfully, but try I do, to empathize with your people's plight. I am ashamed that all these years later, you are still classified by your skin color and suffer the centuries worth of indignities to this day. I am sorry for slavery. I am sorry for racism. I am sorry for my white privilege. I am sorry that cops kill your children while the justice system and our lawmakers incarcerate your brothers and fathers at rates that dwarf those of white people's incarceration rates. I am sorry that over half of your young people go unemployed. I am sorry you are often ghettoized and then forced out/priced out of the homes you manage to make in your ghetto by gentrification. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry and I wish there was something I could do to make amends. I'm sorry for the slavery you've endured at white hands for the last 400 years and still endure today. I'm sorry for slavery.