Picking Up the Pieces
by Racialicious special correspondent Wendi Muse
“Eh, you don’t really have a culture.”
It stung to hear that, all the more so to hear it from my boyfriend at the time, who is also a person of color. Though he identifies as ABC (American-Born Chinese), my ex was considerably privileged. He had a history to speak of, ancestral accomplishments to go on, and the written records to prove it.
The month of this discussion? February. Black History Month. The 28 days of the year that “my people” are celebrated for their accomplishments on a national level. Given, “his people” had a month too, but for the most part, he personally was never accused of having no culture, no past, no history. Quite the opposite. Americans were still fixated on an Asia of the past, and one very far away at that. Though my ex was a student at the same college as I, was completely “assimilated” (read: no accent), and defied pretty much all stereotypes about Asian-American males (including his body type), he was still mistaken for the take-out delivery man on occasion as he waited for me in the lounge of my dorm. That’s how much history he bore on his skin, I suppose. So much history that peers my age failed to notice the glaring differences between him and the thin, middle aged men who brought them cheap Japanese food in the middle of the night on bikes.
But there we sat, having a discussion that would nearly lead to a break up. One that was a reminder of how so many people elsewhere felt about the miniature chunk of time given to celebrate the same few brown-skinned people we come around to every year. You know, MLK, Rosa Parks, and Frederick Douglas.
“Black people don’t really have a history,” he said with a straight face.
It wasn’t a new revelation. I had heard it somewhere before, though not as bluntly put. It came in the form of the motivation for late middle school/early high school angst, a time when I was really discovering my otherness. As the only black student in my class of 47 at my predominately private white all girls’ school in the south, let’s just say that my hair got touched a lot. All the residue from being treated as a social experiment had begun to build up, and every day was becoming a struggle to avoid putting all those young ladies in a mental compartment set for Siberia and jumping ship to start the first chapter of the People of Color Panthers (I had to find an inclusive term to incorporate my Asian-American friends somehow). But I held back and channeled my frustrations into working myself to death, each day becoming a test, an exam, some sort of demonstration of my self-worth, through which I could outshine the people whom I knew would one day get ahead because of their connections or the last name they had inherited from their fathers, but who, in that historical moment, were my equals.
This sense of overachievement was not exactly forced upon me by my family (my mother always encouraged me to simply do my best, and my family, while proud of my accomplishments, cared more about the new boy I was asking to the spring dance than the college scholarships I was wracking up). It was a reflection of the pressure I put on myself. It all started with the infamous 9th grade “Family History Project,” sponsored by my English class, for goodness’ sake, the very same class in which Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness was discussed via literary devices, no mention of characters’ use of “nigger” or the mistreatment of the black Africans until I raised my hand and asked (colonialism was discussed only upon provocation).
We called it “FHP” for short. The acronym was penciled in at the top of all our in-class writing assignments about the progress we were making on the project. It was the name of the special segment we had dedicated to genealogy software during our computer class. It was on the binder I had devoted especially to the discovery of all the people who had come before me. But they also evolved into three letters I dreaded to hear. They were a reminder of the complex that had begun to form long before the project existed to prove it on paper: that black history was one of slavery.
When FHP was officially under way, I recall that the first big problem I encountered was that the genealogy software was useless for me. As my fellow classmates traced their history to William Shakespeare, Lao Tzu, and Queen friggin’ Elizabeth, I hit a serious dead end at my maternal great-great-great grandparents, whom I already knew about from family discussions but who were not even listed in the virtual directory we had consulted. I also couldn’t pinpoint a place of origin. The best I could do was assume West Africa, as additional information was nowhere to be found. My family tree was more like a porch-front shrub. Needless to say, I spent the first few weeks of that traumatizing little project with a severe sense of insecurity because my ancestors’ names had been changed, erased, lost at sea, beaten out of them. As opposed to being bestowed upon their offspring as a gift, last names were a reminder of a past as human property. The white people in my family’s history, though they may have had some connection to the same European greats to whom my classmates found links, would remain phantoms, their liaisons with my black ancestors having been illicit. The Cherokee family members, while mentioned in a hodgepodge packet one of my distant cousins had put together for one of the enormous family reunions we had every few years, were equally as difficult to trace due to migration, name changes, things not being recorded. History has been passed by word of mouth, and someone with the telephone had cut the cord along the way.
It was an early lesson privilege before I even learned what to call it.
Beyond the three “super blacks” I mentioned earlier, my U.S. history books only mentioned us in three chapters. Chapter One: Triangle Trade. Chapter Two: the Civil War. Chapter Three: Civil Rights Movement. My group’s past was punctuated by death, rape, war, and struggle. Honors World History and Ap European History repeated more of the same – a study of the world from the view of European eyes. Africa was rarely mentioned, nor were global indigenous nations (I only learned about *some* of those during Spanish class).Until college, I thought that only black people and American indigenous groups had this problem, especially considering that’s all that had ever been said about them. Learning about the diasporic peoples of other parts of the world taught me a lot about the meaning of written history vs. a shared past. I was exposed to the historical fiction and BBC interviews of Guyanese author David Dabydeen as evidence that African and indigenous slaves (throughout the Americas) as well as the South and East Asian laborers in the British colonies of the Caribbean and South America had quite a lot in common when it came to recovering their past. Records and names had gone missing or were poorly cared for, deteriorating in storage rooms in the sweltering tropical heat. Families were divided and displaced. And, of course, the luxury of re-telling stories to pass history via oral tradition, a practice upon which many enslaved/indentured peoples had to rely, only belonged to some. In some cases, people were so traumatized by their experiences that they chose not pass anything along, and others died before they could bear children, reducing their lives to fragmented anecdotes retold by acquaintances, their family oceans away.
Dodai over at Jezebel touched on this issue in a recent post on a British woman’s heirloom wedding dress, inserting some social commentary along the way:
For her recent nuptials, a U.K. woman named Charlotte Middleton wore a wedding dress that had been in her family for 97 years — and she was the sixth bride to wear it! The embroidered silk dress encrusted with pearls was made in Hong Kong and first worn by Charlotte’s great-grandmother Pauline in 1910. Charlotte’s mother Lucy wore the dress in 1975. We’re not so jaded that we don’t recognize this as awesome. Although rather privileged. If your great-grandmothers were slaves, for instance, like some of ours were, you don’t have these kinds of stories. But congrats to Charlotte!
Though the final remarks in this short piece were said somewhat tongue-in-cheek, it’s clear that bitterness about one’s lost history finds its way into the lightest of subjects for some people, myself included. I was reminded of it every time I struggled with my multi-textured hair, looked in the mirror, was asked about my background, and even, at times, when I wrote my last name, which I love, though knowing that it is of British origin makes it seem more like the tag in the back of a piece of clothing or the stamp on a product than an “honorable” surname. I was also reminded every time I was told to “just get over slavery” or that “racism doesn’t really exist anymore” or asked “when will black people just be happy?” As insensitive and incensing as such questions and statements may be, they are included within the content of some of the comments on Dodai’s piece. Readers questioned her decision to have a last word on the piece, to make them swallow the bitter pill of reality alongside a story of one woman’s joy.
Their thoughts reminded me of the complete and utter discomfort we as a nation have with discussing the truth about our history. While people of color are accused of being overly sensitive, jumping to conclusions, and incredibly regressive in our obsession with the past, those accusations could not be projected towards us if there were no catalyst to compel such alleged behavior. While we are expected to take the literal lashings of the past and the figurative tongue lashings of the present, modernity has given way to a society that is anesthetized, temporarily asleep with lies as its lullabies, comforted by its own ignorance and shifting of pain to those who are forced to remember. There is a privilege in having a charted history, but even more so in the ability to assert that what little remains of history for others is not worth your time because it’s too painful to acknowledge.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come full circle—now less embarrassed by my family’s completely muddled history and more proud of the mess that fate has dealt us. Like the child who smiles after sullying his Sunday best after a run-in with the wet lawn, I have learned to worry less about the arbitrary significance some assign to things and gained the ability to make fun of myself, minding, still, not to trivialize my history, but to turn it on its head to place value on the positive aspects of the pain.
I feel that we should acknowledge that slavery and other forms of oppression have left many of us with permanent scars, even if we may not have been the direct recipients of such abuse. The experiences of the past express themselves in the present, whether we want to acknowledge them or not. As many people can attest, the dark past manifests itself in words, in art, in science, and in almost every other facet of daily life, sometimes as a surprise and sometimes as expected, so it only reinforces the darkness when people pretend that its some sort of paranoia they should dismiss. It’s not just collective unconscious occurring when people who have been historically oppressed feel that it’s still happening today. It’s very real.
But the question I am left with as I try to pick up the pieces, to reassemble the history I have been told by so many is worthless, not important, or simply a case of mass misfortune, is how does one reach those with their eyes shut and their ears covered? As Paul Gilroy (author of The Black Atlantic) and other academics who study diasporas have asserted, the arts offer one opportunity to confront the past and share it with those with little to no experience or involvement therein. But as art can be so easily dismissed, exploited, or improperly interpreted in the artist’s absence, I wonder what else is out there. I feel that best option I have, especially as an American (as we are often told we are a young country with no history), is to be a part of making my own history. Now that I have the opportunity to undo some of the damage that has been done to my sense of self due to greater social ills, I hope that it can continue with others after I am long dead, a butterfly effect so that a girl like me in the future will be able to look back with pride and the privilege to acknowledge that her past IS important and have no one left to tell her otherwise.
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
gatamala wrote:
While we are expected to take the literal lashings of the past and the figurative tongue lashings of the present, modernity has given way to a society that is anesthetized, temporarily asleep with lies as its lullabies, comforted by its own ignorance and shifting of pain to those who are forced to remember. There is a privilege in having a charted history, but even more so in the ability to assert that what little remains of history for others is not worth your time because it’s too painful to acknowledge.
I love this. Great post Wendi!!
I know both sides of my family have only been able to go back to the last generation of slaves. I have 2 pictures of my grandpa’s grandparents and they were 1/2 white. I know that he found some of their white(? )descendants in Clemson, SC. To my knowledge, grandpa found a gentleman of the same last name who was a professor at the University.
It’s bad enough that the mechanics of geneological research are stymied by our past. However, the lack of cooperation from the “other” side is unforgivable. Our family history is their family history, like it or not. Meeting them is only a small piece of the puzzle. Hopefully, I can use their branch to get more insight on mine.
Posted 06 Sep 2007 at 1:25 pm ¶
Anonymous wrote:
“As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come full circle—now less embarrassed by my family’s completely muddled history and more proud of the mess that fate has dealt us.”
I’m glad to hear that it doesn’t embarass you so much. I would say to not let it embarass you at all.
I am not African-American but Asian-American. I’m fortunate enough to be able to trace back my ancestors pretty far. But I would like to say, if any black American might feel “embarassed” because their family tree looks more like a “porch-front shrub”, I wouldn’t agree in the slightest. There’s should be no embarassment reflected upon the black person or family themselves. Its truly embarassing and shaming of the oppresive (white) power structure that made it that way. That’s my take on it, anyway.
Posted 06 Sep 2007 at 2:35 pm ¶
Kai wrote:
Wendi, it’s a stunning, stirring, gorgeous, deeply considered post. Nicely done, you’ve hit the next level.
Posted 06 Sep 2007 at 3:21 pm ¶
Wendi Muse wrote:
btw, hat tip to latoya for sending me the jezebel article!
Posted 06 Sep 2007 at 3:32 pm ¶
maia wrote:
Wendi, I think that you spoke beautifully for the many of us who share this tangled and sordid history. We may not know from which set of arbitrarily drawn lines (ie “country”) our ancestors came from, but we can still take pride in Africa as a whole.
While others can trace their last names to an ethnicity or specific place of origin, I feel as if my last name is not my own. I always wonder what language my African ancestors spoke and what they called each other in that language.
Posted 06 Sep 2007 at 4:04 pm ¶
Mike wrote:
With DNA testing it’s easier then ever to construct your familly tree right to the tribe your ancestors came from in africa. It all depends on how far you want to go.
Posted 06 Sep 2007 at 4:09 pm ¶
Yori Kim wrote:
wow, that was an amazing article wendi, I’m totally inspired.
Posted 06 Sep 2007 at 4:15 pm ¶
kimi wrote:
Wendi, that was very touching and brings back a lot of memories for me. Ones that I have grown to embrace and some that I have not yet found a way to deal with. I am never embarrasses by the fact that Blacks are unable to trace their history back as far as our other fellow Americans, I am usually ANGRY, never embarrassed. I am angered at the fact that others may use this fact to assume (a very large assumption) that because of this we have no history. That is ridiculous. It is as if ppl are waiting to right us off. How can a ppl have no history? That doesn’t make sense. It is only that Black history is staring ppl in the face on a daily bases. Black history is American History it is “White” history, and that makes ppl uncomfortable. I can trace my families history back ~ 200 years, and I know that that is a privilege. But most of it is in fragmented pieces some written and some oral. I have runaway slaves on both sides of my family, who changed their names and therefore we can’t find their original identity because of it. My family is also very mixed so I can definitely identify with the Native American ancestry issue; as well as other mixed heritage. Some of my ancestor’s didn’t speak English and were considered nameless anyway…….But I try to focus on what we have done since slavery. Because that is only part of our story. Slavery was not our beginning and it was not our ending. SURVIVAL, that is our greatest historical legacy.
Posted 06 Sep 2007 at 4:48 pm ¶
eric daniels wrote:
I am sorry Wendi but Black Americans do have a history in every sphere of influence, I always knew this because I read books and couldn’t be conned into that type of thinking that “Blacks had no history except that of Slavery. Slavery is a part of our history but how are we the only minority group to create all Black Colleges many are still in existence, also I am tired of the white majority and others saying we have no geniuses in our community.
I say tell James Baldwin, Paul Robeson, Duke Ellington, Harriet Tubman, Charles Drew the news. Black History is ongoing and happening every day. When I hear people like your ex- boyfriend and others say we have no history, intellectuals or anything except playing the victim I get insulted first by the person who makes that assumption but the black person who internalizes it, I can understand if this was a person in the “hood” they are facing basic survival issues but it still does not excuse them because there is always the library.
But middle and upper class blacks who are educated and their children still act like uneducated losers to me is the ultimate shame. I would always stand up for myself, maybe I was different because I grew up in the 70’s during the ‘Black Is Beautiful stage and our history was ‘forced on us’ I hated it when I was 6-10 y.o. but thank god for those brothas and sistas and truly ‘liberal whites’ who mentored us unlike today.
Posted 06 Sep 2007 at 5:29 pm ¶
LM wrote:
Wendi,
Excellent. Thank you.
LM
Posted 06 Sep 2007 at 5:37 pm ¶
FrancesM wrote:
Oh Wendi, this post is the best of Racialicious yet! Bravo on sharing in not only an honest way but in a clear yet beautifully written way.
The Jezebel post was a perfect example of the current effects of past inhumanity. You’re right about those scars that we who don’t get to piece our histories together fully have.
Recently I found out there are companies who help African Americans trace their African lineage. I got excited & wanted to do this despite the monetary costs. Then I found out I’d either need to be a man to get my DNA tested or I’d have to have my mother be of African descent or have my father’s DNA tested.
None of those are options for me as my mom is of European & Native Canadian descent & my father has passed & I have no connection to his family. I felt like I had been slapped when I found out I wouldn’t probably ever know where my African people are from.
But as you said I’m creating my history and do the best I can to un-do the damage done to me & others who have do deal with such scars. Thanks Wendi for your words!
~F
Posted 06 Sep 2007 at 6:11 pm ¶
Wendi Muse wrote:
here is the link to the jezebel article to which i refer. i think it’s worth taking a look at for those of you interested in seeing the tone of some of the comments:
Something Old
Posted 06 Sep 2007 at 9:23 pm ¶
B wrote:
This is another great post.
I grew up in a similar situation in New England, and saw some familiar issues in your essay. That said, I think your post is an important read for all of us. I would have loved some of my former teachers to have read it.
Thank you for putting the political, ethical, social and historical into the personal and sharing it with us.
Posted 06 Sep 2007 at 10:21 pm ¶
B wrote:
eric daniels ,
Not to speak for Wendi, as I’m sure she’s more than capable of doing that herself, but did you read all of the post?
Unless I’m not understanding it correctly, I *don’t* think that Wendi says *she* believes that Blacks don’t have a history. Rather, I think she was, in part, expressing her exasperation over the fact that her education before college told her that this was the case.
In the last paragraph, she says, “But the question I am left with as I try to pick up the pieces, to reassemble the history _*I have been told*_ by so many is worthless, not important, or simply a case of mass misfortune, is _*how does one reach those with their eyes shut and their ears covered?*_” (emphasis mine).
As I read it, she’s frustrated with the (mis)education she had about Black people, recognizes that such a lacking education wasn’t fair, and wonders how to explain to people who have no personal connection to the history of African-Americans and who have not learned anything about us besides what’s in mainstream textbooks that they weren’t told the whole story.
Do you see the difference between that and your response, which, if I understood it, suggested that the writer remains unaware of Black history? (I hope I didn’t come off as patronizing; it just seemed a shame to miss the nuances of this post. I apologize if I misunderstood your response, and hope Wendi doesn’t mind my 2 cents.)
Posted 06 Sep 2007 at 10:39 pm ¶
KeVin K wrote:
Magnificent post.
Early on my wife Valerie and I considered putting together an album for our children, depicting their heritage. Nothing came of the half-formed plan, but one thing we felt we shared was the lack of history. Her family came as slaves unable to bring their past with them. My grandparents were penniless immigrants shipped from the ghettoes of Europe like so many cattle to feed the factories of America. We found not a rootlessness, but a cleanliness in this shared absence of past. A sense of simply moving forward from where we are. It’s what our grandparents did. Perhaps that’s heritage enough.
Posted 07 Sep 2007 at 12:13 am ¶
Michelle wrote:
What I love about Black people, the history of being Black in America, is that we truly are the world’s people. Our music, our looks, our style, our politics, our struggles, our leaders, our literati, our swagger, our prose…all of it has been adopted in some form by almost every culture and nation in the world. The story of our people, in many ways, is the story of all people. The shining example to the world that we are all one people. We have shown the world that we, a bouilabaisse of African, European, Native American and little bit of everything thing else thrown in for good measure, are triumphant in the face of adversity, we can lift ourselves up out of the ashes. I think that the story of us inspires many throughout the world to be better, to do better, to live better. If we had a history, one that was traceable and predicatble, without the struggle, oppression and adversity, perhaps we wouldn’t be such a shining example of what it means to survive for years in the face of such horrible circumstances. And to forgive those who have committed the crimes against us. That is the trade off, and that is what we have come to teach the world.
Posted 07 Sep 2007 at 1:59 am ¶
Michelle wrote:
I forgot…
Wendi, amazing as always!
Posted 07 Sep 2007 at 2:00 am ¶
jessabean wrote:
Wendi, I always love your posts. This one was beautiful as usual.
I am an Asian-American, and my family tree dead ends at my white great-grandparents. I don’t know most of my family in Asia as I don’t speak Korean and I haven’t been there since I was 3. So I too often feel like I don’t have a history.
But it’s amazing what this unique experience does for our sense of identity rather than our lack thereof, isn’t it?
Thanks for sharing this!
Posted 07 Sep 2007 at 11:11 am ¶
wendi muse wrote:
B, thanks for the follow up to eric”s comment. Your summary of my points was accurate. Thanks again.
Posted 07 Sep 2007 at 5:14 pm ¶
Free wrote:
“we are often told we are a young country with no history”
Don’t believe the hype. The United States has plenty of history. To say that it has no history, and to take that myth to heart provides a means to abdicate responsibility and hands privilege the easy way out.
Posted 07 Sep 2007 at 9:28 pm ¶
NancyP wrote:
Wonderful post. Storytelling (blogpost!), novels, theater/other performing arts, visual arts, film are all ways to reach the not-very-conscious person, if that person has some spark of curiosity. I am a “somewhat less clueless than before” white woman “of a certain age” (ahem) who didn’t really think at the time about how it must have felt to be the one black girl in a class of 44 prep school students. Although I just can’t imagine someone asking to feel hair – have they no manners? The white person with no curiosity just can’t be reached, despite their appropriation of the latest fads and music from the urban black trendsetters. I am thinking of some of my dim-about-this relatives, stuck in their own narrow world.
Posted 07 Sep 2007 at 9:56 pm ¶
NancyP wrote:
P.S. Why do people believe that they can trace their lineage for several hundred years, without very good record-keeping not commonly found? It takes considerable effort to trace genealogy even a few generations back. And as all good medical geneticists know, there are always those secrets in the family tree (~10% incidence) that come out when DNA testing is done on pedigree members and … someone doesn’t match.
I am adopted, so I don’t really care about bloodlines, just about people my parents actually knew or heard of. And the main point is to understand my parents better.
Posted 07 Sep 2007 at 10:03 pm ¶
LM wrote:
Wendi,
What became of your relationship of this gentleman, at least vis-a-vis the discussion that helped spawn this piece? Did he hold the same view the next day, the next month, etc.?
Posted 08 Sep 2007 at 12:57 pm ¶
Several. wrote:
I’m not sure how to express how much I love this. Just, thanks for writing it.
Posted 08 Sep 2007 at 1:14 pm ¶
Wendi Muse wrote:
thanks, everyone, for your feedback! i have the following to say with regard to some of the comments/questions:
for one, i don’t have a sense of shame or embarassment about my history as a descendant of slaves. it was always a given fact, pretty much, considering i was an american-born black person with a ton more that came before me (meaning we only called america home). HOWEVER, you must remember that the project i discuss in the piece was one that took place when i was in 9th grade. i was 14 turning 15 in 9th grade, meaning that i was still figuring out a ton of things about my identity, and feeling different not only because of my skin color but then my family history too was angerings as much as it was awkward. think back on your early high school days, and i am sure you can think of one or more things that made you lack confidence, especially if you are trying to establish a sense of self when you have very little in common with your schoolmates.
the piece was written for the sole purpose of discussing that turning point…the process that one must undergo to accept their history for what it is, whether one is a descendant of slaves, adopted, or has a fragmented family history.
it’s still frustrating, however, when i have to prove my self worth and speak for people who share my ancestry because others don’t understand that there is more to my history than slavery, and even then, that the slavery section of it is still not a period to be ashamed of, but one to be proud of because my ancestors survived it.
speaking of people to whom i feel pressed to prove myself, the ex boyfriend to which i refer to, LM, grew up in a very racist household, his parents having threatened to disown him if he continued to date me (because I am black), even though they had never met me. with that said, i think when he said things like that, even though they were insensitive, i think they were a reflection of his upbringing. dating me helped change a lot of that, but in the end, i am not sure how much of it was really taken in, accepted, and made permanent vs. considered for that one moment, then fading.
as far as that specific conversation is concerned with which i open the piece, i simply explained to him that while i did not share the luxury of pointing to a documented history in say, africa, as i did not know from what nation my ancestors came, unlike him, that i DID have a history and was a living, breathing part of it every day. i was angry with him, but again, i recognized that he was a product of his environment, and that this would be an opportunity for me to add a different perspective and one that would broaden his mind a bit.
Posted 09 Sep 2007 at 1:16 am ¶
Wendi Muse wrote:
oh also, please note that my criticism here is more of the history lessons to which i was exposed, more than my internalization of them. it was a huge problem that i had to look outside of school to learn anything about black history beyond slavery and the super three. and i don’t think blacks are the only ones with this problem. high school history is told from a very western, christian perspective most of the time, so it’s not surprise that other ethnic/national/religious groups get the short end of the stick in this department. it’s really an issue of needing to see something positive. i had come up with an empty canvas for the fhp, read little to nothing about or written by blacks in english classes, then learned very little about them in history class…there were few places to turn (besides independent study or sometimes my family) to see a positive image…and it was inevitable that those things would come to affect my sense of self and how i thought about my history and worth. it took time, but i eventually began to see through all of that in order to find the truth on on my own. yay college.
Posted 09 Sep 2007 at 1:23 am ¶
Latoya Peterson wrote:
Wendi –
Great post.
It makes me think of a time this strange wound was revealed. I was on a company sponsored trip to New York, and we went to Ellis Island. While the white people in our company eagerly hit the stacks to try to find their families, the African Americans (and I say this because at the time of the trip, there were no APIAs and one Latino employed by the company) just killed time outside.
I heard later that some of the African American employees complained about Ellis Island, as they said it was disrespectful to the shared history of the Americas. The white people at our company were offended by that claim, saying they were embracing history.
Personally, I saw both sides. I don’t feel as though going to Ellis Island was intended to be a slight against the African-American minority in the company. However, planning culturally inclusive activities was asking for some problems when minorities were not included.
I feel like a lot of discomfort with African-American history comes from the ugliness of the shared history and lack of knowledge around that history, as you mentioned Wendi. I use the term “Shared history” because that is precisely what it is – a shared segment of history that fills one side with anger and another side with shame – and leads to a lot of the racial issues we had now.
Sorry I’m so late to the discussion. As always, excellent post.
Posted 09 Sep 2007 at 7:35 pm ¶
Arnita Seals wrote:
A friend of mine sent your link to me. I am glad – no I am beyond glad. She however sent it to me about a week or so ago, why I read it tonight is beyond me.
I work in a bookstore and I have for about a year or so been trying to track down books or software that is strictly directed to finding ancestry for african americans-black folk if you will. One book came in, for lack of finances, I missed it. That was about 6-8 months ago. I’m not claiming that their aren’t others I could go in search of but my experience with attempting to ‘track’ my ancestors passage(s) has left me feeling quite inadequate. My great-grandmother has Alzheimer’s and my grand-mother has talked about what she knows, as far back as she knows. Ihave not written that information down-I should.
I feel as though you spoke a tremendous amount of letters forming relevant words that explain damn near exactly how I have felt and am feeling now. I begin a journey, within a few more months, that I hope will begin a permanent historical (herstorical) importance for my nieces, my nephews and so on and forth. I plan to travel-put my feet into action, on a long journey to finding out who I am-where I came from and be more thankful for those who died in order for me to seek. I’m rambling….uh, thank you for this, thank you for sharing, for being open.
Posted 16 Sep 2007 at 10:10 pm ¶
Gunfighter wrote:
“I feel that best option I have, especially as an American… is to be a part of making my own history.”
Perfect.
Posted 11 Oct 2007 at 8:19 am ¶
arnita seals wrote:
As the times have changed.
Again, thanks for the post. NancyP, you said it right “Why do people believe that they can trace their lineage for several hundred years, without very good record-keeping not commonly found?” for I have been wondering the same thing since I’ve been here.
It is very difficult doing so, and my realization is I am thankful to come from such strong and courageous ancestors. Beneath my skin and my skin itself are my roots and though seeing Africa is/will be a wonderful journey in my life, I am no longer in search but am grateful all the same.
Posted 06 Aug 2008 at 4:18 am ¶