“Africans enslaved other Africans” has become a common refrain these days in discussions about the African Slave Trade. People usually invoke this phrase to make an argument that Africans themselves bear responsibility for selling their own people. I also hear this a lot from the descendants of slaveholders, which of course comes across as a […]
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Category: Thoughts About Things
The Invention of Race
Race is an idea that was invented in the 17th century in the American colonies. Because race is a social construct and not a biological fact, we have to look to the society where it was invented to understand it. Seventeenth Century Virginia Many kinds of people were in the colony of Virginia in the […]
Teaching the Hard History of Slavery
This will be another long post. Sigh. The Southern Poverty Law Center released a report last week called “Teaching Hard History: American Slavery.” The Atlantic ran an article about the report. It’s a sobering read. For me, it was deeply disturbing, though not surprising. So much of what we suffer in this country is *directly* […]