That Could Be Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates, an African-American writer for the Atlantic, has an interesting perspective about the brutality involved in slavery and the cruel residue of racial prejudice never completely eradicated.  He is, of course, against it, appalled, but he doesn't take it personally and cites other instances of the human capacity for cruelty.

[During] the last years of the Thirty Years War…eight million people died, and the population of "Germany" (to the extent it existed) was reduced by a third….ten million Russians died in the first World War, and then 15 million more died in the second.

These examples are not comforting but offer a useful insight into human nature.  It reminds us that we all have to beware of a dark human potential for cruelty, especially if that cruelty is promoted by our culture.

The book Slaves in the Family came out in 1998, and I read it soon after.  In it Edward Ball examines the volumes of documents his slave-owning ancestors left behind including inventories of “property,” both material and human.  To me, one of the most shocking documents he found was a record of sending a woman slave to be beaten by a professional who punished slaves if the owners were unable to do the job themselves.  It was a terrible and shocking idea, and yet, something hit me when I read it:  if I had been a member of Ball’s ancestral family, there is a good chance I would have accepted this as normal and a much smaller chance that I would have had the courage to fight what was a deeply embedded cultural system.  It was a chilling insight.

Coates says “…I am subject to the same whims as any slaveholder. I don't feel that there is anything in my bones that makes me any more moral.”  It’s not just racism, but this human potential for cruelty.  He also says, “There is very little that "white people" have done to "black people" that I can't imagine them doing to each other. America's particular failings are remarkable because America is remarkable, but they are not particularly deviant or outstanding on the misery index…At some point you tire of yelling about the evils…and you settle into a much different frame. I believe…that I am subject to the same whims as any slaveholder. I don't feel that there is anything in my bones that makes me any more moral.” It requires a lot of contemplation for Coates to see that he is not totally different from those who would oppress him. It is knowledge both frightening and profound.  He concludes, “The question hanging over us though is this: Is this what we will always do?”