Garreville

We live in a world of clichés and sound bites. Where’s the beef? Black Lives Matter, Make love not war…And while these verbal snapshots can encapsulate moments, movements and meanings, they also tend to reduce those very things to nice little sterilized packages. History is lost. Nuance muted. Lines blurred. Details forgotten.

Too often American history is sanitized to the point of becoming unrealistic. This has happened most egregiously in the telling of America’s racial history. Whites don’t know the history visited upon Blacks and Blacks are often unaware of their own history. Both happen because those who underwent the history were largely unable to document it, and those who documented history rarely wanted it shown for what it was.

 

As American society is arguably more racially diverse yet racially fractured, understanding is necessary to create a climate of unity, peace and “we the people”. Understanding requires knowledge. Knowledge requires truth. Truth requires honesty.

 

A battle lost or won is easily described, understood, and appreciated, but the moral growth of a great nation requires reflection, as well as observation, to appreciate it. Frederick Douglass