Clint Smith, Black man, talking to Krista Tippett. He is best known for his 2021 book, How the Word Is Passed. He talks about going to places where horrible things happened to Black people. He wants to know the truth of what happened and he wants his children to know it too.
“I want my children to recognize that. I want them to hold that. I want them to sit with that, not in a way that’s meant to overwhelm them, not in a way that’s meant to cause them despair, but in a way that is meant to help them accurately situate themselves in this sort of long lineage [of slavery]
“And that does not come at the exclusion of or the expense of joy, and love, and laughter, and levity, but part of what I think about all the time is the simultaneity of the human experience, how our lives are both defined by that love, that joy, that laughter, but also defined by anxiety, fear, despair. And somewhere between those is, I think, a responsibility: both recognizing the truth of our past and all that has preceded us, not in a way that’s meant to paralyze us or overwhelm us or trap us in a sense of despair, but in a way that is meant to help us recognize and remember our own agency.
“I want all of us to understand that what our lives look like are only because of people who’ve created the circumstances that have given rise to our lives today in ways that are generative and wonderful, and in ways that we’re grateful for, and in ways that we recognize are profoundly unjust, and in ways that are profoundly unfair, and in ways that should not exist in the way that they do. And I think it’s about holding and recognizing and sitting with both of those and figuring out how we move forward collectively.”
Krista and Clint talk about their travels in Germany, and visiting the sites of Concentration Camps. She talks about what he says about Angola:
“I want to just raise up this very stunning and shameful reality that you also have lifted up in the context of this discussion — that Angola prison, which is also a place of pilgrimage for you, I would say, is built on the land of a former plantation. You have pointed out in the book, if in Germany today there were a prison built on top of a former concentration camp, and that prison disproportionately incarcerated Jewish people, it would provoke outrage throughout the world. This is not something that is in American awareness.”
Being very moved by this conversation, I thought about my own history. There’s so little I know. I think my great-grandfather died defending the city of Richmond, Virginia in the Civil War. He may well have owned slaves. My parents were upper class and wealthy, but they were also alcoholics. I was the oldest of five children and was given far too much responsibility for them. I felt like an unpaid servant. What happened to me had more to do with the systems we all live in. I believe I was traumatized because I was born in 1942, my father was a soldier in World War II, so my mother was alone and utterly unprepared for the 24/7 care of a baby. I think she left me alone too often and too many times, and a baby can be traumatized by being left alone. Both my parents were alcoholics. My father was probably medicating PTSD from the war. AA had just barely started, and my parents’ social set all drank. My parents failed to teach me many important things like social skills, but fortunately they also failed to teach me prejudice against Jews or Black people. Fortunately I was able to go to good schools, I learned that I was intelligent, and began to see that I might be able to do good in the world. In fact my first motivation for majoring in physics was so that I could teach “them” — meaning poor people — so they could get good jobs and improve their lives. I never believed that people were poor “because they were lazy.” Unfortunately the early damage made that plan impossible. I started seeing a therapist in my 20’s, and spent most of my life in therapy. Fortunately inherited money paid for therapy and also helped me get into Kendal, or I would probably be dead. Sometimes I feel like a Fortunately-Unfortunately story.
Clint Smith talks about “love, joy and laughter” with his children. Something I never had with my parents.