“And so, the idea that we would suggest that this history was a long time ago, and that it has nothing to do with the contemporary landscape of inequality, that it is not deeply embedded in our social, economic, and political infrastructure to this day, is profoundly morally and intellectually disingenuous.” “There are people who are alive today who love, who knew, who were raised by people born into chattel slavery,” said Smith during the event sponsored by the Presidential Initiative on Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery, a University-wide effort housed at Harvard Radcliffe Institute, in collaboration with the Royall House. In conversation with Kyera Singleton, executive director of the Royall House and Slave Quarters, in Medford, Massachusetts, Smith said his book is a recognition of our physical and temporal proximity to the system of slavery. ’20, during a Harvard discussion Tuesday about his new book, “How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America.” “But embedded within that are a whole host of complexities that inform how we understand. That’s a clear binary: It was bad and not good,” said Smith, Ed.M. “There can be moral clarity, which is to say, slavery was a horrific institution. America prefers tales based on simple binaries - good and bad, black and white, red and blue states - that can be easily digested and understood, said Clint Smith, author, poet, and staff writer at The Atlantic.
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