We try not to think about it, our time in bondage, but it shapes who we are. I’m convinced of this. We worked for free for four hundred years while our self-worth went down the drain. We learned to despise ourselves—not white folks—because our failure, we think, was having been captured at all. And we know that some of our own people participated. We know that. We’ve never forgiven them either. Perhaps that’s why some of us hate us. When they look in the mirror, all they see is contempt for someone unforgivable.
