http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/402172/the-only-american-museum-about-slavery/
“If you don’t understand the source of the problem, how can you solve it?” – Ibrahima Seck, Director of Research, Whitney Plantation in Louisiana
We all need to try and visit this museum called the Whitney Plantation or at least revisit and be intimate with this part of our history regularly. John Cummings, the Whitney Plantation’s owner talks abut how we as white people need to “own” this part of our history to better understand our current reality. He discusses how building the museum opened his eyes about why, “they can’t just get over it” referring to Black Americans and draws important connections to our current reality. We forget that this just wasn’t so long ago.
He discusses how he better understands how looking up a statues of Confederate “heroes” is painful for Black Americans and how slaves need a voice, how these brave Americans who came here naked and confused built our country with their bare hands. We have not even begun to do enough to thank them for their sacrifice and acknowledge the horrors they endured at the hands of our white ancestors.
So when we have the urge to say we all know what it is like to be discriminated against, or say all lives matter, or why can’t they get over it, or why are they so mad, or we whitewash feminism becaue we are so fragile – watch this video or pick up a history book, visit the Southern Poverty Law Center‘s website or Facing History and Ourselves and reflect and think before you speak.
Black. Lives. Matter.
