Traces of the Trade

After watching this film I have a lot on my mind. I feel like everything I've ever learned about slavery is different from the way I learned it. To me, the most unsettling aspect of the film was how large the scope of slavery was to the birth of this nation. Slavery seems to be at the root of all production. I have a different view of the North and the Civil War. In my mind, the Civil War has always been about the good and fair North against the bad and racist South, but this was not the case. It seems silly to say it, but I didn't realize that slavery existed in the North as well.

Another point in the film that stuck out in my mind was in the beginning when she Katrina mentions the stone walls of New England being built by slaves. My mother is from Massachusetts and I would spend my summers there as a kid. She always commented on the stone walls and mentioned how she loved looking into the woods when we were on the highway and seeing them there. She told me they were built by settlers. I will always have the incorrect image of pilgrims building walls all over Massachusetts. It was shocking, to say the least, to learn that the walls my mother so loved were actually probably built by slaves.

I have a different view of slavery after this film. I felt the movie was very powerful and I have never seen something quite like it. It's unsettling to think that even the abolitionists in the North were fueling the slave trade they were fighting against just by buying sugar or coffee. I have been thinking about slavery reparations and after this film, they seem more necessary. I don't know what they would look like, but I think a public apology and acknowledgement of the far-reaching effects of slavery is a good place to start. Racism can never be eradicated if whites in this country refuse to take responsibility for a system which they are supporting by being passively racist.