The American story of slavery

WASHINGTON — Hollywood has finally taken an unflinching look at slavery. It’s past time for the rest of the country to do the same.

I wanted to wait a few days before writing about the best picture Oscar for “12 Years a Slave” to see if it still felt like an important milestone. It does. Academy Award recognition for one well-made movie obviously does not make up for a century of pretending that slavery never happened. But perhaps the movie industry’s top prize can give impetus to the efforts of artists and scholars who are beginning to honestly confront this nation’s Original Sin.

We tell ourselves that we know all about slavery, that it’s ancient history. But we’ve never fully investigated its horrors, which means we’ve never come to terms with them, which means we’ve never been able to get beyond them. Where slavery is concerned, we are imprisoned by William Faulkner’s famous epigram: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
The success of “12 Years a Slave” may be a significant step toward our collective liberation.