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Date: | Fri, 22 Feb 2008 12:01:26 -0500 |
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The Museum of Slavery is under construction
in Fredericksburg, VA.
Elizabeth Whitaker
Independent Scholar
Alexandria, VA
[log in to unmask] wrote:
> Ah well. Reparations is another matter entirely.
>
> In a moral sense, I am responsible for my own actions. I do not, and should not, feel guilt that many of my ancestors owned slaves; nor, for that matter, should I feel shame that at least one of my ancestors was enslaved. I am responsible for my actions and my choices.
>
> Disentangling the economic benefits that have accrued to me in the present because slavery was for so long a central element of the United States economy is an extraordinarily difficult task. In a practical sense, I don't know how one would do it.
>
> It certainly does seem possible, however, for us to memorialize this element of our collective past. I find it striking that we have a National Museum to memorialize the Holocaust, an event in which the United States was tangentially involved, and nothing at all to memorialize slavery and segregation, in which we as a nation were profoundly implicated. What does that say about our collective priorities, or for that matter about the way we fashion our public sense of our own history?
>
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