White Like Me: Reflections on Race From a Privileged Son Read Online Free PDF Page B

often become tethered. And so, in the McLean family history, compiled by a cousin of mine several years ago, slave-ownership is discussed in terms that strive mightily to normalize the activity and thereby prevent the reader from feeling even a momentary discomfort with this detour in an otherwise straightforward narrative of upright moral behavior. So we learn, for example, that Samuel McLean, my fourth great-grandfather, “owned much land and slaves, and was a man of considerable means.” This is stated with neither an inordinate amount of pride nor regret, but merely in the matter-of-fact style befitting those who are trying to be honest without confronting the implications of their honesty. Say it quickly, say it simply, and move on to something more appetizing: sort of like acknowledging the passing of gas in a crowded room, but failing to admit that you were the author.
    A few pages later, the reader is then treated to a reproduction of Samuel McLean’s will, which reads, among other things:
    I give and bequeath unto my loving wife, Elizabeth, my Negro woman, named Dicey, to dispose of at her death as she may think proper, all my household and kitchen furniture, wagons, horses, cattle, hogs, sheep, and stock of every kind, except as may be necessary to defray the expense of the first item above.
     
    In other words, Elizabeth should sell whatever must be sold in order to hold on to the slave woman, for how would she possibly survive without her? But there is more:
    I also give the use and possession of, during her natural life, my two Negroes, Jerry and Silvey. To my daughter Sarah Amanda her choice of horses and two cows and calves, and if she marry in the lifetime of my wife she is to enjoy and receive an equal share of the property from the tillage, rent and use of the aforesaid 106 acres of land and Negroes Jerry and Silvey, that she may be the more certain of a more comfortable existence.
     
    Furthermore, if Sarah were to marry before the death of her mother, she and her husband were to remain on the property with Elizabeth so as to continue to benefit “from the land and Negroes.” However, if mom were to die before the wedding of Sarah, then the daughter was instructed to sell either the land or the slaves and split the proceeds among her siblings. Either way, Dicey, Jerry, and Silvey would remain commodities to be sure. Choosing freedom for them was never an option, for in that case, the McLeans might have to learn to do things for themselves: they might have to wash their own clothes, grow their own food, nurse their own wounds, make their own beds, suckle their own babies, and chop their own wood, all of which would make them less “certain of a more comfortable existence,” so it was out of the question.
    To his son, Samuel D. McLean, Sam Senior bequeathed “a Negro boy named Sim,” who would then be handed down, not unlike an armoire, to his son John, my third great-grandfather. Then, according to family legend (and in what can only be considered the Margaret Mitchell version of the McLean’s history), Sim went happily off to the Civil War with his master. What’s more, we even have dialogue for this convenient plot twist, as Sim exclaims (and I’m sure this is a direct quote, transcribed faithfully at the time), “I’ve taken care of Mr. John all his life and I’m not going to let him go off to war without me.” Cue the harmonica. For his loyalty, we learn that “Sim got a little farm to retire on because the McLeans knew he would not get a pension of any kind.” No indeed, as property rarely receives the benefit of its very own 401(k) plan.
    To his daughters, Sam McLean gave the slave woman Jenny and her child, and the slave woman Manerva and her child, and in both cases “any further increase,” which is an interesting and chillingly dehumanizing way to refer to future children. But we are to think nothing of this subterfuge in the case of the children of Manerva or Jenny. We are to