How should we reckon with the institution of slavery in our history?

Question

The New York Times has recently published a massive digital journalism project called "The 1619 Project." It is available here: Link (Links to an external site.)

It commemorates the 400 year anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans to the English colony of Virginia, which most historians trace as the birth of American slavery. The project is a work of journalism, not history, so you should analyze and critique it differently than a work of history. The contributors to the project are interested in ways that slavery may have shaped the world today, so they write about topics such as criminal justice, power, segregation, politics, etc. 

Inspired by the NY Times, USA Today produced a mapping of the arrival of slaves in 1619 and charted slavery's growth in the US. Please view that project here: Link (Links to an external site.)

To get a sense of the scale of the international slave trade, Slate Magazine produced an interactive timeline mapping all of the recorded voyages of slave ships. Please view that project here: Link (Links to an external site.) 

Explore both the USA Today project, and the Slate Magazine interactive map. The NYT reading is optional. How should we reckon with the institution of slavery in our history?

Answer 1

We should reckon with our own history, however bad it was, by at least comparing it to how other countries dealt with slavery, to put it into some historical perspective. Today we impose our perspective into an earlier less enlightened era, which may distort our judgment. Also, consider how other countries today deal with racism and Afro-(fill in the blank for the country)s.