You have to be in a situation to know how you would deal with it.

What were we thinking back in the days of slavery? While in school, slavery is a topic that everyone will encounter. What’s remarkable is that everyone says that they would have known better than to have a slave if they lived in the south during that era in American history. I refuse to say the same.

Before people criticize me for saying that I MIGHT have had slaves, let me clarify something. I also am not saying that I WOULD have had slaves. I also do not believe in slavery. I am simply stating that I was born in a different time with different influences and a different environment. I would like to think that my insistence that I think for myself would have ensured that I would have seen slavery properly and done the right thing. I just can’t be certain.

What this really comes down to is that it is absolutely impossible for me to know how I would have handled that situation since I have never been in that situation. The reason that people overwhelmingly insist that they would have been above slavery is not because people are smart enough to know better. It’s because they know better in our current culture and want to believe that they would have known better in the slave-tolerant culture of our past.

While I can’t say for certain how I would have dealt with slavery, I can say that this is not an isolated component of my belief system. There is no situation that I can know how I will handle if I haven’t been in it before. If I grew up in a household that smoked, would I smoke? In a natural disaster, would I be more likely to panic or to bring people a sense of calm? I can take a look at who I am and guess, but guesswork can’t mimic the situations.