#relg102 Medium Post 4

I honestly had no clue what to expect in the “The Wake” reading or Ms. Hartman’s podcast, so I tried to approach both with an open mind. One idea that stuck with me from both works was what the host of the Hartman podcast called “the ghost of slavery” and what Ms. Sharpe called “the wake” of slavery. Boating is an important part of my life (I sail and I fish), so the analogy of the wake of a ship in particular resonated with me. I expanded on the analogy in my mind as a I read: a large boat that doesn’t slow down can flip the small dinghies that I sail as it goes by. In much the same way, the “ship” of slavery did not slow down for or pay any attention to the small dinghies that it passed, and ultimately it left them flipped over in its wake.

While the institution of slavery may not exist in the same way or to the same extent it did in the ante-bellum period, its consequences are still resonating with us today. Since its abolishment, slavery and antiblackness have taken on different forms, the most notable example of which was Jim Crow. As I read Ms. Sharpe’s work, I couldn’t help but connect this idea of living “in the wake” of slavery to Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow. The problem of mass incarceration that Ms. Alexander describes is one modern “wave” from the “wake” of slavery. The wake of a boat becomes less prominent as time goes on; that is, the waves get smaller. But, even though they are less noticeable in what Ms. Alexander calls the “age of colorblindness,” the waves can still cause serious harm.