![]() ![]() There are still people in America who believe that slavery was a gift to African Americans and that two and half centuries of horror were a small price to pay to escape Africa - a continent they feel was so much worse that slaves’ descendants should be honored by the capture. Why don’t we talk about it? Because talking about it makes it real, makes it impossible to ignore. Our rules, our policies, our attempts at equality have all been just a series of poor attempts to hide the origin of this country’s poor race relations when the world knows that origin was slavery. ![]() That is the year the British Parliament passed the Race Relations Act making it illegal to refuse housing, employment or public services to a person on the grounds of color, race, ethnic or national origins - and created a Community Relations Commission to promote “harmonious community relations.”Īmerica did neither, instead passing, over time, a series of civil rights laws that do not mention race in their titles and that black Americans still must fight to get the government to enforce. ![]() The unheld conversation is woven into the fabric of 1968, arguably one of the most important years in history as far as race and slavery are concerned. Talking about slavery “would require us to embrace a completely different American narrative,” he said, “and we’re not ready to let go of the old one.” “It forces us to then commit to structural changes that the country has not yet gotten ready to address, changes having to do with discriminatory practices - an unequal education system, unequal employment, unequal housing and how we teach our history without including all Americans.” “There are two reasons that we don’t talk about slavery: The first is it’s a subject that makes us have to face the ugliness of our history against the beauty of American history,” says Michael Simanga, adjunct professor of African-American studies at Georgia State University. No amount of complaint or discrimination has led to a real discussion of slavery and its aftermath - and of what is owed to a people who helped build America. Slavery’s long legal existence created the American caste system that endures today, one that maintains a false white superiority and black inferiority built on an unfair education system, unfair employment system and social institutions that support this notion while appropriating black language, music and fashion. Its very name evokes emotions so strong that many Americans demand that we no longer speak of it, while others - those who live with its enduring impact - cry it aloud in hopes that America will finally have the conversation about it that it has refused to have for nearly 400 years. It is the painful injury that a third of America lives with and the rest of the country attempts to ignore because, for them, it is an ancient scar and, well, hasn’t it healed by now? ![]()
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