Walking the Wall

I finished Testimony of an Irish Slave Girl by Kate McCafferty tonight, and it was certainly a piece of quiet power. It doesn’t have the high emotional impact of some full blown novels, but its power lies in the quiet litany of the process of dehumanization and the long, gradual attempt of Cot Quashey to find her humanity when the entire world around her categorized her as nothing more than stock.

You would think that being raised in the circumstances of slavery (and historians can use the words indentured servant all they want, just another term for slavery) would strip a person so completely of humanity–why would they even want to be human if this is how "fellow" human’s would treat them? Yet Cot notes, "You search for something to belong to that is high–that can make you mean more than on your own you do mean to the world around you" (48).

Sometimes that search for belonging is a search of affirmation, for becoming a part of something larger than self, but sometimes it can be taking the easy way out. My favorite television lawyer made an excellent quote (rather, the writer of the episode did):

No one looks at an issue and struggles over the right position to take anymore–and yet our ability to reason is what makes us human. Lately we seem so willing to forfeit that gift of reason in exchange for the good feeling of belonging to a group–we all just take the position of our team. ~Alan Shore. Boston Legal character

In Cot’s life story we see both ways of seeking for belonging, we see her at her lowest, identifying with her master’s simply because they had white skin and the same religious background–and we see her at her highest, finding out that skin color and religious history were shaky grounds to us for belonging and that something deeper can be found. 

I don’t think it is wrong to look for connections and a sense of belonging with people of like minds, I think it is human to want that connection and it is something to cherish if you have it. If, however, we have to forfeit the gift of reason in order to belong, then we are no longer part of a group but are simply following the crowd, and that is the danger of the team mentality.