Once again the underscore of an article on identity and race is asking, "What is Black?" "What is an African-American?" It is a perpetual question asked not of white people who define the rules, set the limits, and control the images. White privilege means something wholly different with a deep understanding of the sadistic nature of American white's histories, and the dark nature of their conquests. Very deep dark powerful forces rule this country while naivety is adorn with praise, and trivia is the myopic tone and approach to so much of American life. What is my responsibility to the knowledge, and information and insights I have on the core values and issues of American culture? Not new to my consciousness are these questions. What is new is the new year!
The last day of last year we, of the Empowerment Center, took a small group of children ranging from seven to seventeen years of age to the Black Wax Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. It deeply moved and affected me. The museum is in an old unadorned, but adored building in a city of the most broken Black people I have seen in my life on the East coast. It is not as death-like as New York city, but it is a city of broken spirits and people. It is an old slave port with ghosts of its path chained and walking the streets with the living. In the midst of this the wax museum stands as conduit, and a cache of hard facts, painful truths, and for those inclined a means of reigniting the fuel to agitate for personal and collective change from within on so complex a range of subjects: race, slavery, sadism, torture and terror white American style.
The historical experiences rent my heart, my sensibilities into pieces. Twice I left the group to allow my tears. I wasn't the only one. The youngest child had to leave the group twice hearing the stories, and seeing the images. Seeing the wax replicates of eyes, a penis of a Black man, and other body parts of Black people white people tortured and cut off to become the good luck charms they would physically carry around rocked every sense of decency with horror. There was more about the depth of the evil done during and after slavery to Black people by whites. It is profoundly embedded within American citizens, families, legacies, wealth, poverty, and law. It all took a toll on me, and added further dimension to what I already knew, and understood on this subject.
It is a tremendous weight.
As a healer what is to be done to lose weight and gain momentum in a healing process for the land, the soul of a people, a culture, but not for a way of life? - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 1.02.14
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| actress Troian Bellisario who plays a WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) in Pretty Liars is not a white woman. She is the daughter of a Black TV producer (not named in the article) and white actress Deborah Pratt. |
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