Been thinking about slavery again. There was a time when I adopted a nineteenth century attitude: What do I care? I’m still not sure I’d have been an abolitionist – at least not one of the zealots – but I think I might have thought it was wrong and commented on its wrongness. That still wouldn’t make me an abolitionist, just a slightly better human being. A “first rate, second rate man,” as Garrison said of Lincoln.
It’s odd today how no-one wants to deal with the reality of the issue. Everyone loudly proclaims it was wrong! It was evil! It means the nation was founded in evil! Well, I can’t argue that it was wrong. Nor can I argue that we ought to have done something about it well before 600,000 men were slaughtered to stop it. Then again, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone before the 1830s or so arguing that it wasn’t an unavoidable wrong.
I heard a lady on the radio yesterday who is a historian at one of the major Portuguese slave ports in west Africa. She’s descended on one side from slaves and on the other side from the white man who originated the slave trade. Sounds like a contradiction but I don’t think it is, even in this country. Slavery was a social system. It wasn’t just hiring an irish maid to come and take care of the kids. It was like owning a dog, a member of the family. Lives became intertwined and some of the folks screaming for reparations today are probably descended both from the slaves they acknowledge and the masters they want money from. Very complicated. Entirely too complicated to be boiled down into asinine slogans.
My family owned slaves, or at least one. Do I feel guilty? Not in the least. Am I ashamed? Again, nope. Would I like to meet the descendants of the slaves? Sure, they’re as much a part of my family history as my own grandfather. Would I apologize? Maybe, in a general way, but I don’t resent my family for doing so although it would be nice to think they could have seen past economic reality and took a stand on principle.
There are many wrongs done in this world. Some we correct, others we can’t seem to sort out. All books are balanced in the end. Can those of the future be held accountable for the sins of the past? Provided they don’t repeat them I think not. That’s the real trick isn’t it? How to remember and take pains to avoid the pitfalls of the past without enduring shared responsibility for those errors.