Traces of Trade - A Good Intention, but wrong decision

Like others in the class, I was certainly struck by the dependency and extensive involvement of the North in the slave trade. It is sad how much we are still unaware of the slavery of this country, even though we may think we know and understand the events.

I also agree that Brown's intentions and desire to do something is certainly something to be respected. Just the facts that the group of descendants gathered to confront the problem at all is surely a good thing. However, I think they went about it in the wrong way. The whole trip and most of the discussions seemed very self oriented. Over and over, they spoke of looking for closure, loosing their guilt, etc., but that is not what needs to be done. It seemed like they were making this problem about them.

Something that stuck out to me was when they were in the discussion room and an African women said that whites need to learn about African culture. This is what I think needs to be done. The DeWolf descendants traveled all around the world, when what they should have been doing was exploring the communities in America and gaining an appreciation and understanding for African culture. I don't see this happening though. Other people have already blogged about how privileged they all are...it seems like they want to "confront" this problem, then get on with their lives where they most likely have little to no meaningful involvement with the culture from which they are seeking forgiveness.

This is obviously not an easy fix, and even growing up in western Pennsylvania I saw a disgusting amount of racism and expressions of white superiority. I think white people in general need to take their desires and motivations out of the picture and instead listen to and learn from African American culture, so that some day we might actually be able to comfortably live together.