BitterSweet: Linked Through Slavery is trying an alternative form of posting. For the first time, we offer a compilation of five people’s responses to a single question. We hope you enjoy the post, give it comments, and feel inspired to respond to the next question. Note: The authors’ names are shown as they requested.
Question: Why is it important to write and talk about the US history of slavery today?
It is necessary to talk about the history of US slavery today, because without truth there can be little or no reconciliation. Some of us learned that from people in South Africa.
It helps all of us, on both sides of the color line, to talk about the truth of slavery, as experienced by the enslaved, and as experienced by the slaveholders. By taking personal responsibility for our own feelings, and sharing them, by talking and perhaps by also writing about them, we are helping to create a healing of this deep wound that still lingers in this country. By listening to each other we increase the healing. And we don’t generalize or stereotype; we speak from our own truth, one by one.
