Black

The Slave Coast, watercolor, 7" x 10"

 

Roadworks slowed us. The iron-rich earth was a brilliant red.
The red was apt. On these lands people had warred and sold people to people.

 

On the long narrow track to the beach we passed a field of
decapitated palms, the stumps in serried ranks. A sadness fell.

 

To travel is to look and fail to understand what one is looking at.
We went to the Door of No Return.

--Teju Cole

 

I'm deeply moved by Teju Cole's unfolding series of tweets and photographs, in real time, of the journey he is taking today from Lagos to Ouidah along the Slave Coast.

More than anything I have read in this sad week, these restrained, short sentences, each word carefully chosen, speak powerfully to me about the origins of racism in America. Can we -- so many of us white and privileged -- stop and try to put ourselves in the place of our African brothers and sisters, sold into slavery, held in chains in coastal slave forts, and eventually packed into ships bound for the western hemisphere? Can we allow ourselves to consider our parallel but enormously different subsequent histories, as well as the many ways in which we continue to deny and turn away from the truths of persistent, endemic injustice and inequality?

 

Comments

[Jean]

Yes. So glad you made me go and look at this. I'm not a big fan of Twitter, but this was indeed kind of the perfect use of it. Both he and you remind me - feeling ill from the news and from the heat this week - that art is a place to go.

[Rachel Barenblat]

Beth, is the painting yours? It is really striking.

The heartbreaking poetry of Teju's tweets moves me deeply.

I'm reminded of a visit to Cape Coast Castle in Ghana many years ago -- one of the places where Africans were stored like cattle before passing through the door of no return into the waiting ships. And of course I was there as a white woman of European descent. My ancestors came to this country willingly, in the early 20th century. What an inconceivably different history that is.

Did you watch the video (or read the transcript) of President Obama's remarks about this yesterday? His acknowledging that every African American man -- himself included -- experiences casual racism (being followed in department stores, car doors being locked when he walks by) kind of gutted me.

[Vivian]

One thing I noticed in the US South is that while local white people generally drive between 3 and 20 miles over the speed limit, local black people--regardless of how spiffy their cars or gender or age--tend to drive 2 or more miles BELOW it. This is not because they are less incined to get where they are going.

[magnolia]

haven't visited you in awhile. ;-[ the intro words caught my attention. love the watercolor. love the information. Thank you, for sharing.

[Mary McPhee]

Glad to see you are still blogging. It's been a while for me. Yes, lovely picture. Just wanted to say hello.