Crying At The Cape

I wanted to ask the White girl why she was crying. I wondered what sadness she remembered, longed to know who she saw in chains when the tour guide gave his descriptions. We were standing, feet on cracked and not-so-ancient concrete, beneath us the foundation of the Elmina Castle, on the Cape Coast in Ghana. I saw my mother there, naked, wet, and used - my mother in distress usually gets me going - but I had no tears, none. I thought of this for several days after, blaming myself at first for a lack of connection to the grief of my people, but then it hit me that I was not in the wrong for not crying, this history was not news to me; then I hated her for crying. What was this salty theatre display? Was she entitled to weep for this pain? Is this my pain alone?

There come many times in this life when one is asked to put his theorizing to test. I was standing in one of those times - in theory I believe that this history of racism, fear and mistreatment is a stain on all humanity - and I could not seem to escape her red-blue-green eyes dripping with salty redemption. I scorned her in my glare but she did not notice. Soon there were gatherings of wailers, as sadness tends often to breed itself in quick succession, and I noticed them to be mostly White. There was a silent reverence with most everyone else, and maybe this says disconnection to some, but to me it acknowledges the true magnitude of the evil surrounding you - the chains, the stench, the darkness - crying is an attempt to make yourself feel better, within the moment. It is a vehement refusal to imprint on your soul anything longer lasting than the last tear wiped from your face with your handkerchief. Crying is a cop out.

I didn't cry because crying says 'this is a catharsis, this is the end, and oh how long we've carried this burden! We can now lay it to rest.' I am not an unemotional person, just to give some perspective, I have cried at ridiculous things; when Adam Sandler took Emily Watson's hand for the first time in 'Punch Drunk Love,' when, to protect her from a horrid machete death, Don Cheadle tells Sophie Okonedo that she has to commit suicide with her children on his death in 'Hotel Rwanda,' and every now and then when my sister's voice cracks on the telephone and in her sadness I cannot hug her - so yes, I am a softy, but I did not cry at the Cape. I refused to join the show, here a sniffle, there a sniffle, mostly from pink noses in distress, running from the truth of the moment, as plain as the sore noses on their faces - some will not now, or ever, understand the true tragedy that was and is slavery. And here I am, all of twenty-four, and an elitist in the shouldering of this pain, but maybe it will be different tomorrow, maybe tomorrow I will understand why she cried, maybe tomorrow I will believe that we can all cry, tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow...