Look through my eyes: Musings inspired by ‘Harriet’
Last Friday, Juneteenth celebrations across the nation commemorated the ending of slavery in Texas on June 19, 1865, nearly 2-1/2 years after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.
Yet, slavery lived on in Black Codes, Jim Crow, and segregation (apartheid) because the nation did not strike down the slavery mindset, rooted in the narrative of white supremacy and racial difference, that maintains the system of racial inequity and division in the nation today.
Today is Forgiveness Day, a time to forgive and to be forgiven.
I invite you to look through my eyes and see, from the movie “Harriet,” the opportunities we have to give and receive forgiveness for consciously or unconsciously believing and acting in alignment with Discourse 1 (Blacks are inferior, lying, lazy, dangerous animals) instead of Discourse 2 (all people are created equal with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness).
Created human
“Minty” (Harriet Tubman) believes she is free even though she is trapped in the American chattel slavery system that made it legal to buy, own, and sell people as property while working them without payment.
En route to freedom aboard the Underground Railroad, a network of antislavery activists (abolitionists) and safe houses, Harriet runs into her slave owner at a bridge. Her options: return to slavery or move toward freedom. Before jumping into the river, she says to him, “I am going to be free or die.”
That matters because, as Nelson Mandela put it: “To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.”
Truth telling
The movie “Harriet” takes place when America was a slave society where slavery was factored into how people thought about each person.
Let us be the generation that tells the truth about racial inequities in America so the healing and reconciliation can begin. America has created countless laws and policies to sustain the narrative of Whiteness, white supremacy and racial difference. These false narratives — extending to housing, education, employment, healthcare, law enforcement, and environmental protections, including clean drinking water — have disproportionately harmed Black Americans and other communities of color in order to sustain racial division and white dominance.
Healing through forgiveness
Said Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Institute:
“Slavery has compromised our health. Our psyche health, our political health, our social health, our economic health. It’s all been compromised by our history and the damage of slavery, lynching, and segregation. We won’t get healthy or be free until we address this problem honestly.”
Quote of the Day: To err is human, to forgive is divine. On this Forgiveness Day, let us help America change course and move on to forge equality and justice for all.
What do you need to forgive yourself for doing?
What do you need to forgive yourself for not doing?
What do you need to forgive others for doing?
What do you need to forgive others for not doing?
Know Justice, Know Peace
After Harriet escaped the unjust slavery system and helped others to do the same, she settled in peace with family and friends on land she owned in Auburn, N.Y.
“True peace is not merely the absence of tension. It is the presence of justice.” — the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Retrain your brain. All people are human and are created equal.
Speak truth. Receive healing through forgiveness. Be reconciled to your neighbor.
Demand a national apology to Black American descendants of kidnapped African kings and queens.
If not us, who? If not here, where? If not now, when?
Dr. Karen A. Johnson (Dr. J) (she/her/hers) is a servant leader, and a member of The Olympian’s 2020 Board of Contributors. She may be reached at drjcolumn@gmail.com.