Casual Slavery

Today I want to share a story from my life that happened this past weekend. It served as both an example of how white privilege and supremacy have blinded white people into a casual understanding of the racism endemic in our country and a reminder that we all have a lot of work to do, no matter how much understanding and empathy you have. The story starts with horses.

I was out to dinner with a few friends on Saturday night. They are a lovely couple with two beautiful daughters who had spent some of the day at a horse camp. This prompted me to bring up my experiences as a kid being sent to my aunt’s horse barn during the summer to work. In describing my time at the barn, I casually mentioned that my brother and I were like “slaves”. This prompted a response from one of my friends that honestly shook me. She, rightfully so, stopped me and took issue with the idea that I was ever like a slave.

In my mind, I wasn’t thinking about American slaves. Or any slaves in particular. I was only trying to relate the idea that we worked hard without compensation. Casually using terms related to slavery isn’t uncommon, at least in my experience. It was a hyperbolic statement that had no offense intended.

At first, I can say I was a little annoyed and uncomfortable being called out like that. Especially by a friend who knew me. Shouldn’t I be afforded some benefit of the doubt? She must know I’m not a capital-R Racist. I found it deeply troubling and it lingered with me for the next few days. I was at turns angry, feeling that using a common turn of phrase to describe my experience wasn’t a big deal. Inelegant, perhaps, but not worthy of being chastized for. The wound suffered to my ego festered and it wasn’t until I began to explore it did I realize that the answers lay within me. While my hurt feelings initially focused on the outward source, the truth was that my friend merely held a mirror up to me and said “look at this”. It wasn’t the mirror that upset me, it was the reflection.

Do you see it now? Do you see the privilege afforded by white supremacy and how it infects every aspect of our collective American experience? No? I’ll continue.

Over the weekend, I found myself arguing internally. I’m sure you’ve all done this after a disagreement with a friend. You think about what you should have said, what they would have said back, etc. When I said slave, I wasn’t talking about Black people. I wasn’t really referencing anything specific. Jews have been slaves. All manner of people have been slaves at one point or another, I’m sure. Who was she to regulate my speech over this ethereal mentioning of slaves? Well, I’ll tell you: she’s a Black woman who’s lived in America her whole life.

You see, when people talk about microaggressions and subtle, casual racism, this is part of what they’re talking about. Flippantly mentioning slavery is a convenience afforded to white people in America. I would have to go back centuries to find an ancestor who was ever enslaved. Maybe even further. Slavery is a concept to me, not a reality. The closest I’ll ever get to it is that someone two hundred years ago maybe owned slaves. That’s about it. That’s my whole experience with it outside of what I’ve read or seen on TV and in movies. I can hyperbolically say “slavery” for the same reasons I can say “I’m starving” when I’m really just hungry. Starvation and slavery are distant things that I know about, not things I have experienced. And it is easy to be casual with things you do not really know about.

Imagine doing one of those Ancestry.com things and finding out that your great-great-grandparents were slaves. Imagine seeing a photo of people who have your face, your hair, or smile, and thinking of the horrors they endured so you could even be here. Now imagine that your ancestry only goes back a few generations because your lineage and history were intentionally destroyed by the slave trade. This is a real thing and a part of what informs Black identity in America.

I am not Black, and while my family has its own sordid history, it pales in comparison to the systemic and intentional destruction of culture, history, family, and identity that our fellow citizens of color have been subjected to. White supremacy and privilege affords me emotional distance from these tragedies. I can say “we were like slaves” and not think anything of it because I do not have that pain within me. I know that my family was never owned or treated like property. But for many Black folks in our country, they know intimately that their ancestors were enslaved.

Last week, Marjorie Taylor Greene caught a little heat for saying that forcing people to wear masks was like the Holocaust. She was rightfully called out for such an insipid and disrespectful comment. The extermination of 6 million Jews (and others) is not the same as being asked to wear a little piece of fabric when you go out in public for a year. I’m sure that 100% of people in the concentration camps would have gladly traded places with MTG. She could speak so recklessly because she isn’t Jewish. The Holocaust never touched her personally. It was merely a concept, something she learned about at one point and time, no different than Narnia or The Land of Honah Lee. But for people whose families were decimated by the Holocaust, it is very much real.

I’m sorry for being so casual about slavery. It literally never occurred to me that my words could be hurtful, or at best inappropriate because no one had ever pointed it out to me before. I am grateful that my friend felt comfortable enough with me to say something. In fact, earlier when I said I should have been afforded the benefit of the doubt, that was precisely what she was giving me. She believed (perhaps, I haven’t spoken to her about this) that she could say something to me and I would understand and recognize how my privilege allowed me to be so relaxed about something so horrific and painful.

It took some time to let my defenses down and have some introspection into why her calling me out bothered me so much. In spite of everything I have learned and written, I still have such a long way to go. And that’s OK! Supremacy was built into this nation over some 400+ years. It’s going to take a while to dismantle it. That’s not an excuse to sit on our hands and do nothing but shrug, though. White people need to stop getting their backs up every time one of our fellow citizens of color takes us to task for being insensitive. I wasn’t being censored. I was being asked to consider what slavery really means and if it was a thing to be casual about. That’s it. But the privilege given to me by white supremacy told me a different story. It was only through confronting my role in that did I finally find peace.

I hope that I don’t do something like this again. No matter what, I will never forget how it felt to be shown my own ignorance in such a simple and glaringly obvious way. It is beneficial to white supremacy to consider slavery a distant, theoretical concept, not specific to anyone in particular. This is not reality though, much like how the Civil War has been repainted as a fight over “state’s rights” and not slavery. And if I do show my ignorance and racism again, I would also hope that the people around me trust me enough to point it out. It can be a hard pill to swallow but a necessary one.

Listening and learning aren’t punishment or censorship. It’s an expression of love. I intend to do better.