The president says the Smithsonian Museum is too focused on “how bad slavery was.” I’m sure you all saw his comments. For the president to suggest that we shouldn’t stare into the darkness of our history is an urgent cry to do just that, to know it, to share it, to understand what this country officially chose to do to human beings. We cannot, we should not look away. The lie has gone on for far too long. 

You were probably not taught the extent of the unbearable truth of enslavement. It isn’t in the Smithsonian, at least, not to the degree that the president alludes. History is written by the winners, right? And yet, we lost the voice of the formerly enslaved. Theoretically, they won their freedom via the Civil War; but they didn’t get to tell their story in any national way, certainly not to school children. Hell, when I was a child, we were taught that many of the formerly enslaved stayed at the plantations where they’d previously been owned, presumably because they were happy there (it was their “home”); but that’s grossly, egregiously false. Sure, some stayed; as children we never learned WHY. Maybe, as adults, some of us still don’t know, still parrot the “they were happy at the plantation” falsehood. 

Most of what I’ve learned has come from active searches for the details that teachers didn’t provide. Believe me; I don’t want to know. Once you see an image of a human muzzled, there’s no promise that it will ever leave your mind. Nonetheless, choosing not to know is an indulgence I don’t feel comfortable with simply because I’m a privileged white woman who would never have been enslaved. When I read Beloved, I had to research some of the punishments Toni Morrison wrote about. I’d never been taught in school about speculum oris, tongue restraint, iron muzzles and bits. Maybe that’s a horror we don’t want children to know. And yet, many children literally experienced that horror, those punishments. Why is it okay for them to have endured it, for us to have DONE it, but not for us to teach about it? 

Books that will break your heart – Beloved by Toni Morrison; 12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup; Never Caught by Erica Armstrong Dunbar; Slavery and Public History edited by James Horton and Lois Horton; Bullwhip Days edited by James Mellon. 

There’s a great quote from a fairly silly move, Ever After. In the movie, Dougray Scott’s character, Prince Henry, says, “I used to think if I cared about anything, I’d have to care about everything.” In times like these, it’s worth remembering that you get to choose how much you pay attention to. You get to choose what you care about. People, like me!, will shout at you from every platform that you are a monster if you don’t lie awake at night, thinking about…. Well, you name it: Gaza, Ukraine, voting rights, marriage equality, the Smithsonian, mail-in ballots, the unhoused in DC, ICE kidnappings, vaccinations, the Epstein files, climate change, and every other critical thing that has momentarily slipped from my short term memory but will wake me at 2AM. 

Rationally, you and I know that we can’t, we simply can’t put enough emotional energy into all of the things that matter. They all matter. That’s why we feel such rage and grief. And that’s why we have to give ourselves the grace to breathe. You don’t have to cry about marriage equality today to care about marriage equality. You don’t have to think TODAY about babies starving in Gaza to know that it’s wrong and to want it to stop. You can give yourself room to process the grief that you feel, the exhaustion. You personally will not stop what is happening but staying fighting fit will enable you to stand up when you are ready to.

And if you want to borrow a book, you let me know. 

Much love.