Facebook posted by me on July 1, 2015 8:07 pm

Irina Renfro, a professor at CBU, stood up in her Early American Lit class and said, "No one knows what it's like to come from a family of slaves." I damn near got up and walked out (and she must have known that). Here I was, the only Black student in this class, which has a syllabus full of the most regional and racist literature in the American canon, and this white, Russian woman wants to tell me how to feel about slavery. She went on to explain that her grandfather was a slave in Russia before the revolution and that in Russia, a family never escapes their social lot. They are always slaves and see themselves as such. She carried the mantle as well.

From that moment, I understood what I was feeling when I saw footage from demonstrations and pictures of former slaves. I swear I could hear the screams of Denise McNair and her friends that Sunday morning; I could feel the stinging water from the hoses and hear the snarls of the police dogs. Those ghosts travel thru time and settle right along with you. This is why Jews, as an example, have such an intense connection to the Holocaust; it is not something they can forget because it it a part of who they are, no matter how much time has past. So, to tell people that they should "get over it" "learn from it" is ridiculous! It is impossible.The struggle of your ancestors did not exist in a vacuum. You don't have to be the person that experienced the tragedy or even know someone who did for you to empathize with them. No one tells you to forget a family member who has passed on, just because it's been a decade since they've died (that would be insensitive). No slavery isn't new. It was in the Bible (we still read that book). But slavery and what remnants that remain, still hurt and instill fear. History is, indeed, events of the past but history is not silent.