I'm an Ivy Leaguer!

Actually, I just spent a couple of days at Yale for a symposium on Slavery and Public History and realized that if I won the lottery, I would SO just take classes at any school I could. It was wonderful to be around scholars who are laser-focused on a certain topic. As a high-school teacher, I can use a small fraction of what they talked about, but it was just so great to absorb it all. I really had my eyes opened to the realities of the slave trade and slavery and its impact on ALL of American history. When you consider that much of the wealth of this country between the end of the Revolution and the Civil War was due to cotton, rice, and tobacco, you can, without too much effort, see how the contributions of the slaves made it largely possible. It has made me rethink my position on reparations. I don't mean that the slave-holder's great-great-great-grandson owes the slave's great-great-great-grandson a check, but industries that are prosperous today because of the wealth they accumulated through the production of those slave-intensive crops, not to mention the unpaid labor in the cities, owe a debt to the underclass that was created upon emancipation - millions of people turned out with skills that were not transferable to other industries, little or no education, and no "nest egg" to get them started. And let's not forget the pervasive racism that prevented them from getting jobs they WERE qualified for. I know it has been almost 150 years since slavery was abolished. But let's stop kidding ourselves: until we make people remember not only the past they WANT to remember, but also that part of the past they NEED to remember, there will never, ever be the kind of reconciliation and healing this country so desperately needs. I think we need to take a page from South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. They are making their countrymen face what happened and thus gain some closure. We believe that if enough time passes, people will forget what a terrible stain on this country slavery was and continues to be.

My kids want to know what we keep reading about slavery and racism - they read Frederick Douglass and shake their heads about how awful it was, but they don't see how the fact that slaves were kept deliberately ignorant helped set the stage for some of today's social problems. They read Kaffir Boy, about apartheid in South Africa, and they don't think it has anything at all to do with them. How do I get them to see that it is THEIR history, too?

Enough preaching. New Haven is a very cool town and Yale is a great old campus. Didn't see Rory Gilmore, though - but I did pick up the Yale Daily News.