Black History Month

(from an unfinished older post)

Today I was talking with my friend, Maya. We were exchanging family history. You know, how my Great Great Grandfather Hans Christiansen emigrated from Denmark for religious freedom and how on my mom's side, my one extra-great Grandfather Forester was one of the merry men of Sherwood Forest (i.e. Robin Hood), and even helped to coerce King John to sign the Magna Carta. Of course, I never know how much of this is true and how much is the master storytelling of my grandfather. It's all in good humour, though.

Then it was Maya's turn. On her dad's side her linage can be traced to Jamaica. Her mom's side, though, can only be traced back four or five generations. Slavery. I don't know why it hit me so hard. It hurt me to know that my own blood relative would own

I think that moment was the first time I really understood racism. Not the racism of those days, but today's racism.

It's like this song we're singing in choir about how wrath of God. It's a fun song, and it usually doesn't have much meaning for my skeptic self. "For he the Lord our God / He is a jealous god / and he visiteth all the fathers' sins / on their children to the third an the fourth generation of them that hate him." Happy stuff, eh? I definitely don't think that there's a god spanking the sinners and all their kids for everything they and their fathers have done wrong. But it is true that some wrongs just don't erase themselves, even after several generations.

Slavery is one of those wrongs.