Howard,

No one with a sense of history can ignore the trans-generational grief of slavery.

For the purposes of most dialogue on Medium, discussions on slavery are often limited to North America and the pre-and-post Civil War US South in particular.

It’s a no brainer. It’s legacy is poverty, disportionate incarceration and voting irregularities like gerrymandering and disenfranchisement to name but a caustic few.

Another is the continuing lack of equity in terms of the sharing of the incredible wealth America has accumulated…and that permeates through all classes and all colours of people.

What I fear is that some believe that the stain of slavery should be transferred to all those people who lack melanin…regardless of their ethnicity or connection to the slave holders of the past.

That can lead to stereotyping or over generalizations, the kind of absolutism that allows others to point out that all peoples around the world, with few exceptions, engaged in slavery.

What I was trying to point out was not meant to diminish the legacy of crippling pain your ancestors, and by extension you yourself now feel right now, right here in North America.

But, there’s got to be a way through this current cultural morass without reverting to the stereotyping and dehumanizing epithets that allowed slavery to be embraced, condoned and monetized in the first place.