History

I just finished reading the Book of Negroes by Lawerence Hill. Sad to say it took me months to finish. I would read a section and become engrossed and then become tired of the words, the emotion, the story- could there not be good news? But now that I have finished, somehow I am nourished by the words of fiction intermixed with the truth of history. It was the fiction that kept me going, but it was the facts that fascinated me. The reminded me that the story of injustice is not one that happened thousands, hundreds or even tens of years ago, but injustice happens each day. Without the truth of history we will repeat the offenses of the past, even with the truth of history we repeat versions of our past sins.

Somewhere in the book it spoke about how the slave trade was eradicating the barbarity of Africa- bringing Christianity to the heathens. I remember hearing that growing up- reading it in these fundamentalist text books. What an interesting notion that God needed slavery to demonstrate himself to an entire continent. Interesting, but hard to swallow.

Injustice is the one thing that makes my skin crawl