By Chloé Richards
AframNews
https://aframnews.com/
They tell us to “get over” slavery. That it’s in the past. That we’re using it as a crutch. But here’s the truth: slavery
is a crutch, just not for us. It’s a crutch for the very systems that still benefit from our oppression. A crutch for the people who refuse to ac- knowledge that 400 years of brutality didn’t just disappear because President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. A crutch for the idea that we should be satisfied with nothing, while America still owes us every- thing.
very Black person in this country deserves their 40 acres and a mule. Deserves reparations, pensions, and restitution for generations of unpaid labor, stolen wealth, and systemic destruction. Slavery wasn’t just physical, it was psychological, embedding a trauma that never got the chance to heal. And that trauma? It has been passed down like an unwanted inheritance.
It’s in the way that Black children have been raised, in the fear we’ve been taught to carry, in the habits were never questioned. The whooping’s that were normalized? That’s not just discipline; it’s a legacy of slave masters using pain to control. The generational anxiety about stepping out of line, playing it safe, not speaking too loudly? That’s survival mode, passed down from people who had no choice but to obey.
But our generation is choosing. Choosing to unlearn. Choosing to break the curse. And the thing about unlearning is that it makes people uncomfortable. It forces conversations that disrupt relationships. It exposes the ways we’ve been harming ourselves just to keep the peace. And most of all, it demands accountability, from us, from our families, and from a country that still refuses to pay its debts. Slavery is a crutch, but not for Black people. It’s a crutch for those who want to ignore the damage, silence the truth, and move on without making things right. But we’re done carrying that weight.
