The Greatest Lie They Want You to Believe: Slavery Was Not That Bad

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” – Frederick Douglass

When I was growing up, my mother often told us stories about her scars. She had many. One was a deep, straight line across the middle of her foot. I cannot remember if it was the left or the right, but I remember the dark mark that sank into her calloused skin. She grew up in Mississippi, the daughter of sharecroppers, and one morning while working on the farm, her foot was nearly cut in half by the fence at the chicken coop. There was no doctor to call, no hospital to visit. Her family filled the wound with cobwebs and alcohol, and somehow, miraculously, it healed. She carried that scar for the rest of her life.

I think about her hands too, fingers swollen and tipped blue-black. She explained that picking cotton did that to you. The sharp burrs cut her skin until it bled, hardened, and callused over. Her hands were living proof of survival.

When I think about the story of American descendants of slaves, I think about my mother’s hands and feet. Wounds that should have broken her body but did not. Scars that told the truth about survival. That was her generation. That was their fight.

But we are no longer the same people we were in the 1940s, 50s, or 60s. Now that we are standing up for ourselves, proclaiming loudly and proudly that ADOS built this nation, white America is scrambling to figure out how to silence us to rebrand themselves.

A New Power

One of the biggest differences between then and now is power. We have more power now than our grandparents did, and a large part of that comes from social media. Our voices are amplified in ways unimaginable fifty years ago. We can speak truth to power on a scale that cannot be silenced.

That is why we hear so much more unapologetic Black pride today, especially among American descendants of slavery. Our voices have grown strong enough to drown out the old lie that “white is right.”

A Turning Point in Alabama

We saw that power in Montgomery, Alabama, when white men tried to attack a Black dock worker and the community stood up in his defense. That moment was more than a brawl. It was a declaration. It said, “We belong here. This is our America too.”

Black people are no longer willing to sit quietly while being told we do not belong. That power has been simmering for decades, but now it is boiling over into action.

The Irony of Disdain

What is so ironic and frankly sickening is the disdain people still carry toward Black Americans. A few days ago, I watched a protest in Trenton, New Jersey. ICE and Homeland Security had come to arrest an undocumented immigrant. It was not clear whether the man had committed a crime or was simply here illegally, but protesters immediately gathered. Most were white and Hispanic. They shouted at the officers, demanding IDs and warrants, livestreaming the encounter, trying to block the arrest.

At one point, a woman turned to a Black officer and hurled the insult I have heard too many times: “Your ancestors would be rolling over in their graves.”

So when I hear someone say that, I know exactly what it really is. It is not honor, it is insult. It is outsiders weaponizing our history to shame us, while ignoring the fact that our ancestors did not fight and bleed so we could live chained to guilt. They fought so we could stand free, to live, to work, to choose. My ancestors are not rolling over. My ancestors are proud I am still here, still standing, and still building on the soil they watered with their blood.

And that is the point: we are not the same. We are not the broken people they imagine us to be. We are the living proof of survival and transformation, the very answer to every grave they thought would hold us down.

And I am tired of it. On the far left, Black Americans are expected to sacrifice our individuality and stand for every cause, as if our own struggles are not enough. On the far right, we are painted as criminals, using “per capita” statistics to distort reality while ignoring that white Americans are arrested in numbers three times higher than Black Americans. Both sides reduce us to stereotypes. Neither sees us as full citizens of this country we built.

We should not have to fear deportation. We should not have to fear mobs. We should not have to defend our place here again and again.

Yet even in spite of all this, we still survive. We still show up. We still build. We walk through doors that are closed to us and refuse to give up. And that is what unsettles people the most, that after everything, we still rise.

The Divide in America

Meanwhile, white America itself is splitting. Conservatives are marching openly in hate rallies. Liberals are fractured and uncertain of their own identity. In that divide, Black voters remain the deciding factor. Time and again, we are the ones who tip the balance in national elections.

Some talk about a third party, but history shows those efforts collapse under division. The reality is this: Republicans cannot win without our votes, and Democrats cannot govern without them. That is the leverage we carry.

The Jillian Michaels Race Card

When Jillian Michaels sparred with Abby Phillips on CNN, she tried to play a race card of her own. By turning the conversation toward racism, she leaned on something unspoken: the fact that she has an adopted Haitian daughter. That was her shield, her belief, “I cannot be challenged on this because I have a Black child.”

But let us be clear. Proximity to Blackness is not the same as living it. And there is a difference between Jillian and Abby that matters. Jillian adopted a child. Abby birthed one. Abby’s daughter is her blood, her legacy, a Black child born of a Black mother. That is not the same as adopting a Haitian daughter and quietly using her existence as a prop in an argument about slavery.

Now let us talk about Haiti. Haiti was the first nation to successfully rise against slavery, paying for that victory with both blood and gold. After independence, France demanded reparations that bled the island dry, and foreign powers continued to exploit Haiti until it was left in poverty, corruption, and gang violence. What happened in Haiti was proof enough of “white people bad.” That history matters.

When Jillian tried to silently weaponize her adoption against Abby, she revealed something deeper about how white America thinks about race: that having a Black child, even a Haitian one, is enough to speak over us, enough to dismiss our experience. But it is not. Abby Phillips, as a Black woman and the mother of a Black daughter, can speak to the ADOS experience in ways Jillian Michaels never can.

I pray her daughter is treated well. But having a Haitian child in your home does not absolve you of blindness, arrogance, or privilege. And it certainly does not give you the right to throw Blackness in someone else’s face.

Erasing History and the Politics of Collapse

It is through lived experience that certain things come into focus. As a child in the 1970s, I was too young to understand all the politics shaping the world, but I do remember the gas shortage. I remember America having to ration fuel, and my aunt would say she could only buy gas on certain days depending on the last digit of her license plate. My mother did not have a car, but I remember taxi prices going up. We would take cabs from our apartment building in New Brunswick, New Jersey, to the laundromat and the grocery store, and my mother would complain about the rising fares. A jump from $3.50 to $5.50 was a big deal in the ’70s.

Back then, the crisis was tied to the Middle East, and I saw it only through the eyes of a child. But looking back now, I can see the larger picture: America has always had to navigate global energy politics.

I agree with Jillian when she says America did not directly cause the collapse of nations like Venezuela or Cuba. That is true, but only to a certain extent. It was capitalism itself that fueled their collapse. When you tie your entire national economy to one system—in this case, oil—you have to be prepared for the risks that come with it, especially in a global market.

It reminds me of slavery. Enslaved labor became the biggest economic driver taken out of Africa, and when that system was disrupted, Africa suffered devastating losses. In the same way, Venezuela’s dependence on oil left them vulnerable. When prices crashed, their economy collapsed. That was Venezuela’s own fault, just as Africa’s leadership failed to adapt when the slave trade ended.

Cuba was just the same for me. I can remember the chatter of Cuba and the Bay of Pigs. Whenever I think of Cuba, I think of JFK. My mother often said she was walking down the hall in high school when his death was announced. It always struck me that my mother, who could barely spell though she could read, carried such strong thoughts about a politician.

When I was in my early twenties, I was being radicalized by the news and even by some school teachers. I can remember Cuba being portrayed as America’s enemy, but at the same time many from my community celebrated Cuba for sheltering Assata Shakur. I remember feeling torn.

It was only much later, after hearing about the socialism that destroyed a nation, that I began to see the fuller story. When I learned about Cuba seizing American-owned land after the revolution, I understood that nations rise and fall not only because of foreign pressure but because of their own economic decisions and the alliances they choose to make.

Still, I do not believe history should ever be erased. The story should be told. We should look honestly at Venezuela’s and Cuba’s history and tell the truth about their demise, so Americans do not fall into the trap of believing that Venezuelan or Cuban migrants entering the U.S. illegally are here only because “America caused it.” That narrative is false. The deeper reality is that both nations collapsed under the weight of their own failed systems.

And that is where Jillian Michaels, once again, misses the point. Yes, she is right that America did not cause these nations to collapse. But when she tries to equate capitalism with slavery, she erases a truth that cannot be ignored. Slavery was not just an economic system — it was the forced labor of Black people whose blood, sweat, and genius built this nation. That story belongs to American Descendants of Slavery, and it must never be buried under attempts to rebrand white America as innocent.

Greed and Reparations

White America has been greedy since 1619. Every system they built, every law they wrote, and the “perfect union” they dreamed of was designed to benefit white Americans, even if it meant enslaving Black Americans.

And that brings me to reparations. Black Americans were promised reparations. That promise was broken. Not because the debt disappeared, but because racist political systems stripped it away. America knew it owed us, and then it flipped the script.

ADOS have been lied to. During Reconstruction, 40 acres of land along the Georgia and South Carolina coasts was set aside for freed Blacks. Some had already begun to settle there under Special Field Order No. 15. This was America admitting her guilt — repaying former slaves not just for themselves, but for the generations of enslaved people who had already died in bondage.

But then Lincoln was assassinated. His successor, Andrew Johnson, rescinded the order, took the land back, and returned it to white Confederate owners. What was promised as repair was stolen back in betrayal.

When people argue that reparations are “welfare,” I reject that outright. Reparations are not welfare. They are payment on a debt, a debt for 246 years of slavery, followed by generations of terror, exclusion, and exploitation under the guise of Jim Crow.

And let us be clear. We are not talking about taking dollars out of individual people’s pockets. Reparations are not about “Johnny giving up one of his two dollars.” Reparations come from America itself — the same America that finds money to support immigrants who have no loyalty to this nation, the same America that funds other nations and even international agreements like the UN’s Global Compact for Migration, which uses climate change and other crises to justify endless flows of aid and resources—fueling the illegal migrant crisis. Everyone profits while ADOS continues to struggle to survive in the very land we built.

Far right pundits will say, “Well, you were not a slave, and I was not a slave owner.” That is the same as saying to the families of 9/11 victims, “Well, you did not die in the towers.” Nobody said that to them. Their families were compensated, because the loss was real. The same was true for Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, or Japanese Americans interned during World War II. Nobody told them their claims were invalid because their descendants carried the wound instead of them personally.

Some people look at me and say, “You own your own home, you drive a fancy car, and worked for major corporations. That proves racism no longer exists.” But no, it proves the opposite. It proves the tenacity and ingenuity of a people who have survived the most dispiriting and oppressive systems and still found ways to build, to create, and to endure. My success is not evidence that racism is gone. It is evidence that we refused to be crushed by it.

And because of that, I feel even more responsible to speak up for the ones who are still enslaved in different ways today. Mass incarceration, predatory drug systems, and cycles of poverty continue to trap millions of Black men and women. These are modern forms of bondage, no less destructive than the chains our ancestors carried.

This is why reparations matter. They are not about punishing America for the past, they are about acknowledging the debt that still lingers in the present. And in any case brought forward by descendants, the principle is clear: families act on behalf of those who were not able to seek justice for themselves. This is not new. Courts and governments have long recognized that when victims are denied justice in their lifetimes, their descendants have the right to stand in their place.

So when people say, “You were not a slave,” I answer: No, but I am standing for the ones who were, because they were never given their day of justice. And I will not allow their debt to be erased by time.

We Are Still Here

So yes, slavery was bad and fueled by racism that still exists. But ADOS is not the same people we were sixty years ago. We have learned. We have built. We have found new ways to use our voices and our power.

So when I hear Jillian Michaels twist history, it makes my blood boil. The attempt to not only whitewash American history but to paint America as a saint in a system that oppressed others is a blatant lie, and it must always be called out. Her switch to Cuba and LGBTQ issues is nothing more than sleight of hand, a distraction meant to redirect the conversation. But the story she really wants to erase is the story of ADOS. And the truth is, you cannot erase it. You cannot tell one story without the other, because the history of America is inseparable from the history of ADOS.