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of america is built on slavery. is that an over statement? >> it's not. slavery was essential to the rise of american capitalism. it made people wealthy in the 19th century. it allowed folks, their folks, descendents to accumulate wealth have security stability and opportunities that weren't available to the enslaved population or oh descendents. >> yet is ben affleck right that we don't deserve credit or oh blame for our ancestors? it occurs to me that part of how the finding your roots series is set up from the beginning is the idea that we'll find stories and the stories will reveal something about who you are. so if you have someone this the past who was great then you are meant to feel good about that. well, if you have shn in the past who participated in the peculiar institution of slavery then aren't you also meant to then somehow feel responsible for that? >> i don't think we have to feel responsible for our ancestors.
they made choices in their particular moment. we should be responsible for the world that they gave us the legacy they bequeathed us. for someone like ben affleck it means coming up in a moment of opportunity. it was made possible by generations of wealth opportunity, prosperity. it essentially allowed him to become the person he is. it's not just individual talent or gumption. it's the result of generations. >> who we are is cumulative from the history from which we come i wonder how much we don't know about slavery. and not just oh the white folks -- i mean us as americans. our inability to contend with it. when you think of what we know what don't we know that we should? >> that's a big question. >> i know. >> can you explain slavery in
institutional, private individuals who benefitted from slavery. the question ben affleck at least provides us is how do we wrestle with the founding contradictions and how we wrestle with ongoing legacies of in inequality you show with the wealth gap and families. shg like fleet bank. these are corporations that didn't exist in their time. they inherited wealth from their original corporations. i think it is so systematic and an epidemic and unreconciled. >> it's not -- i believe it's misguided to solely focus on slavery. to be honest i think many americans think slavery was a long time ago. we have an african-american president, equality. anti-discrimination laws. >> that's always the sentence. >> that's the way. so let go of it. it's possible to look at the past with curiosity and humility and be open minded about the
guilty for the past. you can be guilty for how you live in the present. you can't be guilty for the past. one thing that was disappointing about the episode is it was a huge lost opportunity to tell a story of trance fortrancer for haitian. he is mother was a freedom rider. you go from slave owner to freedom rider to a liberal activist. to me that's a stand-in for this american story. we can transform. the idea that we haven't, i think is not a reality. we need to transform more. >> this point you make about the deaf thigss of whiteness and blackness, i want to tom coyou on that. i was looking at edward baptist writing about slavery and the making of american capitalism. he writes ideas about slavery's history determine the ways in which americans hope to resolve the long contradiction between the claims of the united states
progress. but that shrinking away is a barrier to our collective ability to tell the whole painful unvarnished truth of oh our past and how it affects our present. to participate this the american project at any level is to stand knee deep in the legacy of slavery. our contemporary social political and economic realities are built on the broken backs of those whose unpaid labor lays the tougs on which we stand. slavery is not the shame of individual families. it is the collective reality of american life. that discussion is next. why do we do it? why do we spend every waking moment, thinking about people? why are we so committed to keeping you connected? why combine performance with a conscience? why innovate for a future without accidents? why do any of it? why do all of it? because if it matters to you it's everything to us. the xc60 crossover. from volvo.
admitting he pressured the pbs show "finding your roots" to omit news about one of his ancestors who held more than two dozen people inry. on facebook he wrote we deserve neither credit nor blame for an ses tors and the degree of interest suggests we are grappling with the terrible legacy of slavery. it is an exam first nation worth continuing. i'm glad my story, however indirectly will contribute to the discussion. i don't like that the guy is an ancestor, but i'm happy that aspect of history is being talked about. here to talk about it ses yat professor of english and africana studies. also thomas seg are ru professor of history and sociology from the university of pennsylvania and raul reyes, attorney and contributor for msnbc.com. i made the claim at the end of the last segment that the political economic social life
we with wouldn't have the wealth that the united states has. we wouldn't have industrialization. we wouldn't is have just charlottesville, but detroit, charlotte, new york. >> when you say we wouldn't have the wealth. if you would like to see, you can look at the existing wealth gap. le the median household wealth for white households being 13 times that of black households. $141,000 to $11,000. you can close the gap but they grow on themselves. is that the argument for reparation? >> i was going to say it's not just individual families. part of the early 24th century reparations movements was to get damages from private corporations. now we have universities that have financially benefitted from slavery. so it's the systema tirkstic,
racial reconciliation. there is so much we don't know about slavery. it was astonishing to me when the film "12 years a slave" came out and people revealed how little they knew. the ways in which black families are literally broken. basic tinges we should understand about slavery. most americans have either been denying or that there ises a collective amnesia that's structural educational and intergenerational. >> i think one of the beggest things we as a nation don't know about slavery, we think of slavery based on what we learned in school certain movies. >> 1970s "roots". >> we with think of oh slavery as an institution that benefitted the south and perpetuated their culture. think of et this way. slavery drove the economic performance of the north. at that time it fuelled -- >> of the world. >> in the northeast at that time massachusetts, rhode
mind sets that persisted. we look at the creation of social security. it left out most african-americans because it excluded agricultural and domestic workers. later onnen when we were creating unemployment insurance and the g.i. bill that was left to the states. this the south, again, many african-americans were discriminated against and left out. we saw it perpetuated with housing district manager thagss throughout the '60s. it's not just the institution of slavery. it's a mindset that's persisted in the country when we have codified into law anti-discrimination policies. >> slavery, we think of segregation of the offspring of slavery. if you think about slavery end ending 1865 and seg fwrags being codified in the law they are directly linked of the off spring. i don't know how we want to say it. but you are pointing to the long history of racial oppression and also the responses on behalf of african-americans to fight that. it does start with slavery.
one minute? >> i want to follow up and bring it together. >> sure. >> tom said about the legacy of slavery. what's interesting about the response by ben affleck is who owns the property of slairy meaning who owns the ep memory? an african-american descendant of enslaved african-americans can't shrug off the legacy of slavery the way in which somebody like ben affleck can. it was disowning he is own family legacy and also not acknowledging both the privilege he inherited by bu the way in which white privilege works in the present and black disadvantage works many the present. that's the bigger issue. there are other models like edward wl ball in his investigation of his slave holding family in his book and the whitney plantation. there are way this is which certain white americans are trying to understand the link between blacks and whites americans, slavery as a project of reare kovry recuperation and