Many of my direct line, DNA descended, ancestors were enslavers.

I have known this most of my life. My grandfather was not shy about how our family came to be and who was used to get us there.

But I have chosen to go and find those “slave schedules “on my own. To view in person those lists — lists of people who were not treated as people.

Don’t look away

Be angry at those ancestors. Feel the pain of the people they hurt.
Have YOU learned how not to be like that?

Have you?

Can you learn to accept that white culture is white patriarchy? That your culture is one that upholds and fortifies the current state? Bully culture that enjoys hurting others… will calling it out and facing it help?

Maybe. Bullies don’t really mind being called out, anymore.

But accepting that even as lily white liberals with the best of intentions we are still part of the problem? We could try that.
How will you change if you accept it. How will you face the world differently once you have faced your own family’s atrocities?

Here are some of mine. Some of my ancestors were Harrisons and Sayers. The patriarchs of these families held many people in enslavement. The pages of the slave schedule based in one county in Missouri turns up many of my family. Here are 2 pages. On one page, the first column is nearly full of just one ancestor’s “holdings”

Shame is the overwhelming emotion. Anger, too. How? How how how how. How do you look at another person and think “I can own them” and give them nothing in return. I do believe it is a flaw, a major flaw, not just in character but in our basic form of humanity, our DNA that carries this trait of not just the ability to hurt other people but feeling like you won because someone else is broken. And that somehow that makes you safe.

Of course, an organism must look out for itself and its own safety. But there are humans in the world capable of doing this within community. White culture is corporate, though. Gotta have a big daddy head to follow.