They and We

Recently I attended a Zoom panel hosted by Coming to the Table, the racial justice organization that brings together descendants of enslavers and descendants the enslaved to share family stories.  The session was called “How Researching Family History can be so Emotional.”  Among the panelists was a woman named Leslie Stainton, whose Georgia forbears were slaveholders.  As she talked, the outlines of her story were familiar to me.  She’d inherited boxes of family papers which she had avoided for years.   Once she finally opened them she could no longer ignore their contents and she began researching the enslavers in her family.  She described in specific detail the treatment of the men and women her family had enslaved.  “We were major slaveholders,” she said.  “We” did this, she said, and “we” did that. . . .  

Readers of this website may notice that the way I refer to the enslavers in my own family, even as I am deploring their actions, is as "they."   An astute editor pointed out my resistance to taking ownership of certain parts of my heritage.  “It is you and is a part of you," she reminded me, "no matter how uncomfortable.” I believe she must be right.

Leslie Stainton at Coming to the Table panel.