She was born to a rich plantation family in the American South during the time of slavery. She owned a slave, Hetty, a girl her parents gave her when she was a child. She was absolutely the sort of person whose racism you could justify as being āof her timeā and ājust the way she was raisedā.
And she cited the injustices she saw growing up on the plantation as the motivation for her becoming an abolitionist as an adult.
When she was a kid, she tried to give bible lessons to the slaves on her Dadās plantation, and taught her own slave to read and write. As an adult, she and her sister campaigned for the end of slavery. When she found out that one of her brothers had raped one of his own slaves and gotten her pregnant three times, she welcomed her nephews into the family and paid for education for the two that wanted it.
This was a woman who was raised in a culture of slavery, looked around her as a child and said āhey, wait a minute, weāre all assholes!ā and spent the rest of her life trying to put things right.
It absolutely was a choice.
This is something Iāve been forced to learn in the past two years. The world around me is turning into something I was raised to believe could only happen in history books, or maybe in other parts of the world that sort of belonged in history books.
The more I see this happeningāand the more I learn about the past and how hard people did fight to stop Hitler from initially rising to power, or to point out the humanity of slavesāthe more apparent it becomes that we have always had these choices, and theyāve always been the same.
And weāre always going to have genuinely appealing opportunities to make the worst possible choices again, no matter how much more modern the world appears.
George Washington owned slaves right? Most of the founding fathers did, and in grade school, to smooth over that abuse of humanity by an American hero, we as children were told āYes, George Washington did own slaves but he freed them when he died.ā And you infer that he didnāt like slavery but it was an economic necessity.
And then youāre in your mid twenties watching a food show on Netflix and you learn that because Pennsylvania was a Quaker colony, they led the nation in emancipation and if an enslaved person was in Philadelphia for more than six months, they automatically became freed. And the young nationās early capital was in Philadelphia, where Washington brought his household of enslaved people with him. And he took them back to Virginia every five months for a time so as to start that clock over and keep them enslaved.
Thereās a trend with historians to want so badly to maintain the prestige of George Washington and an exceptional and morally pristine figure. And true, there are many instances in his writing where he sounds like his opinion on slavery as an institution is turning and that he knew slavery was wrong. But his actions. He literally had to do absolutely nothing to free his household staff, and took great pains to keep them enslaved.
Itās important to remember that too. That there were people in positions of enormous power, who know what theyāre doing is wrong, and choose to do it anyway.
Do not let anyone tell you his teeth were made of wood.
thinking about “you haven’t met all the people who will love you” and like!!! you also haven’t found all the things that will make you happy!!!! there will always be new authors and musicians and artists whose work you will one day discover and love!!!! there will always be new hobbies and skills for you to learn and feel fulfilled by!!! there will always be new things around the corner that will bring sudden and unexpected happiness!!!!!!!!!!!
To all my non-native English speakers and y’all are insecure about how well you speak English. Y’all are doing a wonderful job and I can perfectly understand you.Keep up the good work and know that I will never judge you for your English.
You speak at least two languages! That’s amazing! I can only speak the one! Keep it up, you fantastic human being!
Also if i can’t understand you perfectly, so what? You’re trying! You’re learning! That’s amazing! Speaking a second language imperfectly is still an incredible feat!
