Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019

“There is no better word than we.”

Kendi explains the editors’ approach to the 90-writer format. The voices assembled in the book form a community. It takes a community—or a choir, as he also states in the introduction—to tell a more comprehensive version of the global Black experience. The word “we” reminds African Americans that they always have a community, even in a society that might wish to ignore, neglect, mistreat, or displace them.

“He was whipped in front of an assembled audience of Black and white Virginians, to show everyone what the punishment would be for “abusing himself to the dishonor of God and shame of Christians, by defiling his body in lying with a Negro.”

Hugh Davis receives a court-mandated punishment for having sex with a Black woman. Oluo believes this to be the first time that a man was punished for degrading—and possibly diluting, by siring a child with a Black woman—whiteness. Rather than speaking of his exploitation of her, the conversation focuses on how he defiled himself. Oluo traces this event to the white supremacy movement today.

“The United States was indeed built on chattel slavery, which deemed people of African descent inferior to white people and defined Black people as commodities to be bought, sold, insured, and willed. That was certainly evil. It was not, however, "necessary" or inevitable. The system of racialized slavery that is now seared into the American public consciousness took centuries to metastasize and mature.” 

Many scholars and historians describe slavery as a necessary step in America’s creation. They imply that the reward of having a country as rich and free as America was worth the terrible cost of slavery. This point of view abdicates responsibility for the evil of slavery and diminishes its impact on modern America. The racial injustices of today exist on a continuum, as an extension of systematic choices and policies, not because of an inevitable force.