By David Duane, WTIG Board Member
Sitting on a white washed wall of Elmina's St Georges Castle above the crashing Atlantic screams for reflection, tears, emotion, and peace. This colonial era fortress on the coast of Ghana is a crime scene. Crimes against humanity were perpetrated here. Elmina and the near-by Cape Coast Fortress served as a portal for the middle passage for which more than 12 million souls perished. They were epicenters of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the sentence for the crimes against humanity perpetrated here are still being served by our society today.
The weight of places such as Elmina or the Cape Coast fortress is crushing. Shuffling though dank pitch black dungeons coated with the centuries-worth of accrued human excrement, you feel that weight. You feel that burden. You can smell it. You’re forced to breathe it. You can hear the muted cries of the innocent souls that suffered and passed through. Unlike the spectacular white of the forts that contrasts the deep blue sea, you’re not allowed to white wash the history you confront. It is in your face. It is real, and it is brutal.
It is in this cauldron that humanity made a definitive statement. Black lives do not matter. It’s been hundreds of years of struggle to counter those sentiments and elevate black lives to the status of mattering. As that struggle gains strength, recent events suggest that societal structures and systemic racism still impede that progress, and the elevation to “mattering”.
There is a connection between the slave forts of the Ghanaian coast to the police brutality and the systemic racism that stubbornly persists in this country. Those events also connect to the travesty of the Charlottesville white supremacy gathering of a few years ago. Threads from the slave forts of Ghana cross the Atlantic and are entwined in our society’s collective fiber. We are as much Elmina Castle and Cape Coast Castle as we are George Floyd as we are Charlottesville. That is an uncomfortable truth we are challenged to reconcile.
Battles still rage. A recent battle occurred in the public spaces of Charlottesville. On one side are white supremacists, Neo-Nazis, and Ku Klux Klansman – remnants of a twisted Confederate ideology that glorifies a past that was racist and never served all. It was an ideology that sought to preserve crimes against humanity. Additional skirmishes occur each day, as predators both inside and outside the system prey upon innocent souls caught in history’s cross hairs. George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Ambery are just a few of the many names of the souls we need to say out loud.
In a previous era, the crimes against humanity perpetrated by Nazi Germany found sustenance nourished by themes of false-superiority, exploitation, insecurity, fear, and de-humanizing that buttress white supremacy. Those misplaced emotions and tactics marched, fought, and killed at Charlottesville. Those misplaced emotions put a knee to George Floyd’s neck. Those misplaced emotions sprayed bullets into a woman’s apartment in Louisville. Those misplaced emotions make it so much harder to breathe… to sleep.
There is a Ghanaian Akan proverb that speaks to this moment – “Tete wo biribi kã.” (The past has something to say). We need to listen, and we need clarity and clairvoyance while we do. It is imperative to drown out voices of obfuscation, of hate, of distractions that only serve those twisted feelings and misdirected anger. There needs to be a definitive closing to this ugly chapter. It has gone on for far too much time.
Charlottesville, George Floyd, and all the names to say out loud are reminders of the prison that confines us. By conveniently “forgetting” and selectively ignoring lessons of the past, our sentence for past crimes against humanity continues into perpetuity. Reconciliation continues to remain elusive. We desperately hope for a parole. To be granted such, we must listen and remember and confront a history in an honest and truthful manner. We must see through the white washed exterior of places like Elmina and Cape Coast and gaze into the abyss of the brutal darkness below. We must definitively reject the false equivalencies espoused by enablers and exploiters. We must embrace humanity in all her stripes. In short, to vanquish hate, we must love. It is our responsibility to do so. It is our duty.
At Elmina Castle and Cape Coast Castle and the other fortresses that dot the Ghanaian coast, there are memorials and statements of regret carved into the walls. The most poignant words written on these memorials are crafted by local African chiefs. It is striking that the words of other perpetrators, Europeans and Americans are absent. Where are the words, consoling sentiments, and regrets of my ancestors? Where are the words of apology from those nations that benefited from exploitation and crimes against humanity? Is such an omission an accident or intentional? Such an omission is tragic and irresponsible and obfuscates the truth.
Into that void, the voices of contemporary African Chiefs echo:
In Everlasting Memory… Of the anguish of our ancestors. May those who died rest in peace. May those who return find their roots. May humanity never again perpetrate such injustice against humanity. We the living vow to uphold this.
How can we find reconciliation if we are unable to memorialize definitively and acknowledge the atrocities of the institution of chattel slavery and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade as elegantly as the African chiefs declared? How can we find reconciliation when leaders of our nation demonize advocacy groups like Black Lives Matter and mythologize a false equivalency that buffers the gripes and grievances of dis-affected racists clinging to a lost cause?
Humanity likes to think that we have evolved beyond the atrocities of the slave trade or of Nazism in today’s world. Americans in particular cling to the myth that the civil rights advances of the greatest generation solved all our racial challenges. Events over the past four years and then some remind us that that is not so. Embers of hate still glow. And enablers are all too willing to throw gasoline onto those embers. It is time to douse those flames. It is time to fully atone for our original sin. It is time to heed the words of the African chiefs.