Photograph by @kaci_marie

If you're Black and you grew up in America you probably remember the single paragraph that explained African American history, located in the lower left-hand corner of your high school history book.

 

Because I do. 

 

Then and now, I find myself questioning the audacity of America. In Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, author Dr. Joy DeGruy writes, “The worst thing you can do to a people is to rob them of the memory of themselves. We can’t possibly know where we’re going if we don’t know where we came from. We can’t possibly embrace who we are, if we can not honor the shoulders upon which we stand.”

 

If you take away a person's identity, it is easier to mold that person into who or what you desire them to be. This is why most descendants of Enslaved Africans in America can not tell you where their family is from past their third great-grandparents. It is extremely rare that an African-American knows what part of Africa their family is originally from, let alone the name of their African tribe or it’s native tongue.  

 

I encourage phrases such as “40 acres and a mule” or “three-fifths compromise” into my work because while it was intended to be degrading, I believe it can be used as a tool of empowerment. 40 acres and a mule refers to “The promise was the first systematic attempt to provide a form of reparations to newly freed slaves”

 

Too often I hear degrading generalized statements about African-Americans. To list a few, “Black people are lazy,” “welfare queen,” “Black people are uneducated and poor,” or simply “those people.” These statements aren’t limited to people of color either. I think people who live in America have a backwards fixation with white privilege. Some individuals in minority groups imitate how white Americans treat African Americans because they subconsciously believe that white is right. 

 

While uploading these images to instagram I found myself stuck trying to find a caption that would express the dept I felt. If you’re like me, you double-clicked your home button and navigated to your notes where you keep a list of captions for a time like this. I scrolled down until my thumb stopped on “40 acres and mule.” It was perfect. It represented something that was intended to feel small and worthless, but on the contrary it made me feel an overflowing sense of resiliency.