My friend and cousin Derry sent this to me this morning commenting on my recent blog on GenealogyWise.com (Professor Gates, Michelle's Great-Great-Great-Granddaddy and Mine) and it echoes what I have been thinking. This is what she wrote:
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Hi Sally,
Glad to hear the article led you to create a blog. What a good idea.
We lived in Germany for several years during the 1960s. I was very interested in the way the Germans went about educating their people about the horrible events of WWII. Their newsreels and documentaries spared no one's sensibilities. Not much room for denial.It seems to me that admitting what the consequences of legalized slavery might be to later generations is difficult but necessary if we are ever to get our heads straight about what it is to be American. It is really hard for me to admit that slavery is part of our heritage. And the too common attitude that Aw, shucks it wasn't so bad, is really shabby. So, good for you girl. You are facing it with facts. And most important they are facts that will be valuable to other people.Love, Derry
The reference to Germany is relevant and we Americans are in need of a national conversation about our greatest shame. The Gates article is a good start. But after the summer of screaming, gun-toting, Obama hating protesters, and a "You lie" yelling Congressman, in a climate like this who could possibly imagine a group of people who could go about gently, kindly, compassionately, peacefully doing something positive and useful toward healing our wounds?We can. Genealogists: amateurs, professionals, corporate, religious, academic, local, international, etc.
Sometimes people have to be told the obvious. Not just told. They must be stopped from doing what they sincerely, deeply believe is right and good with a capital R and a capital G. For some unexplainable reason they can’t see what others clearly see.
My great great great grandfather, a preacher, fathered a daughter with a slave woman in 1816 and kept the child as a slave her whole life. She grew up and had ten children of her own. He kept them as slaves, too, never educating them, never freeing them.
Apparently, he didn’t see the harm.
Alan Greenspan was similarly surprised that bankers were greedy, would cheat their clients and that that was a bad thing.
Sometimes people have to be stopped. People had to be told they couldn’t hold slaves, period. Apparently bankers and financial manipulators must be regulated. No more trying to explain to them why. They will never see the obvious. The only thing to do is to tell them what they cannot do anymore.
The War Crimes Trials of the George W. Bush Administration may never take place in the fullness of the Nuremburg model, but on January 20, 2009, the public indictments in that never-to-be-realized trial were issued by President Barack Obama.
With the two principal defendants sitting immobile only several feet to his left, and with the former President’s parents and Mrs. Cheney sitting close by the accused, President Obama metaphorically stepped forward and for the whole world to see, delivered a public and long-deserved humiliating slap in the face to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and all of the Neo-Con criminals who will never be formally tried and convicted.
But if the slap was symbolic, the indictment was real. The criminals were identified and their crimes were described in an Inaugural Indictment that will hover in the air forever over George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
The Inaugural Indictment Speech will be studied in history and civics, and in public speaking and English language classes all over the world in perpetuity. And in every context, every time it is read or recited or analyzed, every day forever, Bush and Cheney will stand accused; indicted for crimes against democracy and humanity.
It is a fitting Hell. Always to be harshly accused, never defended, nor rebutted, nor acquitted. Never. A virtual, rhetorical Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp that can never be escaped, denied or closed.
