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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