One of my Great Great Grandfathers owned slaves.
My mother’s family goes back to the beginnings of European settlement in New Amsterdam and Plymouth. The men were whalers, preachers, lawyers, soldiers, mechanics, rum traders, and farmers. The women worked hard and drove the next generation forward. They came from all over Northern Europe to New England, Barbados, and Virginia.
By the early 1800’s the Virginia branch owned a large farm – a plantation. On that plantation they owned slaves. They owned other human beings. They bought and sold them. I have no idea what kind of owners they were – but in the end that really doesn’t matter. They treated their fellow man as chattel. As their descendent I carry the benefits of this sin in the advantages I have in life.
My father’s family escaped Europe in the early part of the last century during the madness that was the First World War. They came to Canada and then to the US and made a new life, an immigrant life. They loved their new home but never let go of a deep-seated resentment at the class system that locked them out. That resentment burned so strongly that two generations later I still carry it, passed on to me by my dad.
Listening to Barack Obama yesterday I heard my whole family’s story. The resentment at the old order – a system that allocates power based on your family rather than on what you can contribute today – is only a fraction of the resentment that the slaves my family owned must have felt and passed on as well. Listening to Barack I connected the dots inside my own family tree to understand the emotional chain of black history.
But does any of that matter? As I have turned Barack’s words over in my mind over the last 36 hours I have been asking about my responsibility in all of this. Do I, as the scion of slavers, owe a special debt to African Americans?
The answer that I have come to is both “no” and “yes.” This comes out of experience in the 12 step world. We have to have the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
In the “no” column I don’t think that I carry a special responsibility to make up for the sins of my ancestors. None of us can undo history. We had family on both sides of the civil war, and many others who only came long after slavery had ended. Our story is not unique – just complicated. None of us would have an end to the work we would have to do if this were the case.
But – and this is the key for me – in the “yes” column I bear specific responsibility for my own part in racism, for my own actions and words that either contribute to the problem or salve the deep wounds it has left in our culture and in ourselves.
We are in a hole. We can make the choice to stop digging.
This is where it gets more complicated for me, because I have been a racist.
Growing up in a small New England town racism was acceptable and commonplace. This isn’t just a southern disease. Jokes about kikes, wops, chinks, spics, niggers, and polacks were part of the fabric of my youth. I laughed at them. I told them.
I absorbed the stereotypes without the benefit of the cognitive dissonance that would have arisen from really knowing Jews, Italians, Chinese, Hispanics, African Americans, and Poles. All that came later.
But it was complicated, nuanced. My parents – good liberals both – put us into cooperative programs that mixed us with black kids from the city. We went to a Seder at a Jewish friends house. We hosted students from around the world when they visited. But racism was just below the surface. They knew the right thing to do, but had trouble breaking free of their own ingrained paradigms.
In high school I had a close friend whose mother was black and father was white. I was so dumb about race that I told some of those jokes around her. Twenty years later when I went back to my yearbook I found the note she had left me – and found a source of burning shame. Her note mixed deep friendship with a deep hurt that I had been blind to.
“We made it! Do you remember last year when we walked out to the bridge to listen to me cry? So much for old memories…If you ever need a shoulder you know where to find me. Take it slow, but take it. Love La.
PS Please be careful who you call nigger. Some one might get insulted and knock you upside the head.”
This note – in a far less eloquent but a far more personal way is the message of Barack’s speech yesterday. We can be friends, we can love each other, but we’ve got to move beyond our histories to work together towards a more perfect union.
My debt is to her. My responsibility is to make up for what I have done to her and others who were hurt by my racism. I owe her an apology, but that is only a start. I have an obligation to help my own children move forward. I have an obligation to fight injustice, prejudice, and ignorance when I see them.
I've tried to find La but sadly I’ve lost touch with her and she doesn’t come to class reunions. No one from the school or class knows where she is now.
And my life is poorer because of it.
In four generations my family has moved forward. We are not perfect, but we are not what we were 150 years ago. Each generation has their own role to play in this – if they choose to.
What is your choice?