Last Thursday I decided to surprise my wife with a date in downtown Atlanta. Jen and I share a passion for African-American history and literature so we went to the "American IAM" Exhibit at the Atlanta Civic Center. Presented largely by Tavis Smiley and any number of corporate sponsors, the exhibit (which may more rightly be called an experience) features countless artifacts that chronicle the African-American imprint on American society--culturally, socio-politically, spiritually and economically.

I didn't know what to expect at the time, but I was struck by the entrance to the exhibit. Above the plexi-glass case bearing the garnet and emerald graduation hood of W.E.B. DuBois were the words quoted above. There were other quotes etched in glass panels on the three opposing sides, each foreshadowing a shadow side to the history I gleaned from the white-paged textbooks of my primary education--and yet, I was captivated by DuBois' words--the fact that George Washington owned (maintained and by many accounts fathered children by) slaves.

This would, perhaps, been far less remarkable had I not seen a billboard heralding the "leadership" of our first President.

As I read the words of DuBois in well-lit Lucite I suddenly became aware of two competing historical narratives. The first is, arguably, well-meaning--it paints our founding fathers and their compatriots along the way as national heroes--the kind that you celebrate and wear funny wigs and take state holidays for. They are portrayed in art as men and women of absolute tenacity--eyes fixed on the horizon, despite the freezing Delaware river. 

As quickly as I saw the billboard, it struck me that the picture was incomplete--it was not war-weary patriots that drove Washington's boat--at least not metaphorically. It was the backs of male children and domesticated teenagers--each ripped from their land by slave traders or warring tribesmen and pushed through the doors of Elmina Castle in Ghana. If they managed to survive the heinous Middle Passage, they could look forward to working at the beck and call of such a "patriot" as Washington or comparable British ex-pats, holding on all the while to what little might be left of their souls.

Yes, my history books spoke of the horrors of slavery--there was even an obligatory viewing of "Roots" (or at least 50 minutes worth during class one day). There were "breakout boxes" that told of the courage of Sojourner Truth or the tenacity of Harriet Tubman.But  there was no mention of Washington slaves, of Jeffersonian slaves, of John Quincy Adams slaves, of Alexander Hamilton slaves--there was no explanation that, as the great Cornel West says "Woven around the legs of the desk on which the Declaration of Independence was signed is the great serpent of slavery and white supremacy."

To be clear, this is more than a sudden realization of the grisly nature of slavery in the 1800's. As we meandered through the exhibit...past the silver ink stand given to Harriet Beecher Stowe upon the completion of Uncle Tom's Cabin to the silver goblet given to a Southern senator for "courage" after cane-whipping an abolitionist Senator on the floor of the Capitol...past a handmade drum banned from the plantation for its power to communicate through rhythm to Dizzy Gillespie's trumpet...past the key to Martin Luther King Jr's Birmingham jail cell to the pen he used to sneak past those bars and unlock the minds of the minister of Birmingham...past the white shirt of Frederick Douglass and its many indistinguishable stains--equal parts wine and blood...past the thirteenth amendment that made slavery illegal and the "Whites Only" parking sign that made it institutional...as we made our way through, it became very clear that we weren't just seeing something, but we were moving through something.

Two weeks after the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the most filmed meeting-over-a-beer in history--we are still moving through something. As human beings, we find ourselves so thoroughly entrenched in our own human experience that we cannot conceive that another human being could see history any differently.

And this is not just the kind of conversation that merits civil conversations over dinner or a drink--it's the kind of systemic, deep-rooted, cancerous force that undermines the legitimacy of this or any democracy. While apologists defend the actions of a white police officer against a black, highly-educated, suit-wearing sixty-year-old, the data shows the depths of the problem. According to the March report of the Pew Center on the States, 1 in 31 adults are currently incarcerated--among African-American men, that ratio increases to 1 in 9. Two more or currently paroled meaning that one in three African-American men are incarcerated or under judicial constraint. In the state of Georgia, from whence I presently write, for every dollar spent on education, fifty cents--half--is spent on maintaining correctional facilities. In many predominately African-American communities there is, as the civil rights pioneer Marion Wright Edelman has said, a "cradle-to-prison pipeline".

And yet, there is a sense in which many perceive such data as an "us/them" dilemma--maintaining that races/families/communities must tend to one the needs of one another. To do so is maintain historical ignorance by refusing to acknowledge parallel narratives. Good history books survey the depth of human activity unilaterally across time, recognizing the accomplishments of cultures contemporaneously.

I was shocked to find that on that particular Thursday, Jen and I were the only two Anglo-American individuals in the entire exhibit. I am still trying to process the implications of this. On the one hand, maintaining one's history and exposing future generations to the stories--many of which will not be heard in classrooms and textbooks--this is a critical and noble task. But if we find ourselves celebrating only our own experience, then we commit the sin of my youth--venerating and lauding as history an incomplete and cartoonish caricature. I am glad to say the exhibit showed the triumphs and travails of the African-American experience. I am grateful for the way in which it fundamentally changed how I see the world. I am grieved by the fact that by my unscientific experience, more Anglo-Americans and Asians, Hispanics and Native Americans have yet to come to the table--to weave from our individual strands a truer tapestry of human experience--even of the birth of a nation.

To embrace such a task requires acknowledging theft of land, person and property, genocide and forced labor. It means recognizing that the perceived wealth of the free-market was built on the shoulders of kidnapped Africans. It means acknowledging that our Founding Fathers may not look so good when all the lights are turned on or hoisted on billboards. It means coming to grips with all manner of hatred and envy seeking forgiveness and restoration. It means that it happens around conference tables and around dinner tables. It means that we must all commit ourselves to the sacred task of reconciliation recognizing that across all religions and spectrums of belief that love for neighbor is always, implicitly holy.