Sometimes it hurts to look back, but we have to. Because the world we live in today did not just happen. It was shaped by choices—by conquest, by greed, by stolen land, by stolen people, and by generations of pain that were never fully repaired.
When Europeans came to the Americas, they did not find empty land waiting to be claimed. Families were already here. Children were being raised here. Elders were passing down stories here. Nations, cultures, languages, farms, ceremonies, and whole ways of life were already rooted in this land. Then conquest came with violence, disease, forced labor, broken promises, and stolen homelands. Entire communities were torn apart. And the pain did not end when the history books moved on.
At the same time, European powers wanted wealth from the land. They wanted gold, sugar, tobacco, cotton, rice, and power. And to get it, they kidnapped millions of African people from their homes, their families, their languages, and their futures. Mothers were separated from children. Fathers were sold away. People with names, dreams, skills, faith, and love were packed onto ships and treated like cargo. Their labor built plantations, ports, roads, businesses, banks, and entire economies—but their humanity was denied.
That kind of harm does not disappear just because time passes. The wealth created from stolen land and stolen labor was passed down. It became property, businesses, inheritance, schools, neighborhoods, and power. But the people who were robbed of land, freedom, wages, safety, and basic rights were often left with little or nothing to pass on except survival, strength, and memory.
And maybe one of the deepest wounds is that these systems taught lies about human worth. They taught that some people mattered more than others. That some people were born to rule, and others were born to serve. Those lies became laws. They became customs. They became stereotypes. They became neighborhoods divided by race, schools divided by opportunity, prisons filled with the same people society once pushed aside, and families still fighting to be seen as fully human.
So when people ask, “Why are we still talking about this?” I think the answer is simple: because we are still living with it. We see it in who owns land, who has generational wealth, who gets believed, who gets protected, whose neighborhoods are invested in, whose history is honored, and whose pain is brushed aside.
This is not about blaming every person alive today for what happened hundreds of years ago. It is about having the courage to tell the truth. If pain was passed down, then healing has to be intentional too. If systems were built to take from some and give to others, then justice means being honest enough to rebuild them.
I believe we owe it to the people who survived, to the people who were lost, and to the generations still coming after us to face this history with open eyes. Not to stay trapped in pain, but to understand it. Not to carry guilt, but to carry responsibility. The past is not really past if its consequences are still shaping lives today. And if we want a better future, we have to be brave enough to tell the truth about the foundation we are standing on—and loving enough to build something better.
Minister A Francine Green I July 2026
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Bibliography
Todorov, Tzvetan. The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other. Translated by Richard Howard, Harper & Row, 1984.
Library of Congress. “The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record.” Library of Congress Web Archive.
Library of Congress. “Beyond 1619: Slavery and the Cultures of America.” Folklife Today, 28 Aug. 2019.