'Trash Doesn't Lie' but Reveals All

     As we enter Black History month, I recall discovering this pottery shard when Duane and I explored the ruins of a sugar plantation on St. Croix Island in the Caribbean. With the push of a shovel, this piece of history rose to the surface.
     Notice the finely tailored people on this fragment from a dish? They are like the Danish family that once lifted silverware to eat from this plate. But if anything broke, their slaves buried it along with other garbage at the edge of the plantation.
     “Trash doesn’t lie,” archaeologist Michael Prouty says. This particular piece reveals a time when there were ten slaves per each white person on St. Croix. These slaves rebelled in 1848 and gained their freedom, while some American whites still maintained their “Gone with the Wind” fantasy of plantations run by “happy” slaves.
     We’re more evolved and enlightened now, right? Maybe not. Racism still unearths its ugly head when new fringe groups embrace white supremacy. When anti-Semitics terrorize Jewish neighborhoods. And when some folks label all refugee seekers, including women and children, as crooks. I don’t embrace these beliefs. Yet sometimes to elevate myself, in my mind I subtly put down others who differ from me. Isn’t that the essence of racism?
     Evolution and enlightenment haven’t worked. You’d almost think we have the shards of a broken nature to deal with.