Short Story: Reparations (Patreon)
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Whew! OK, so let me say up front, my intention is *not* to be political, and while the title is certainly a political buzzword in modern American politics, I don't think this story does anything to take a stand. Still, if you're easily agitated or triggered, feel free to sit this one out and I promise the next one will be disclaimer-free. :)
That said, this piece is about a young white girl whose rich dad, upon learning his ancestors had enslaved people, decided to make amends by giving up his eldest daughter to a family descended from slaves for a week, using a lamentably fictitious control chip to coerce her into going along with it. Some good old multi-ethnic shenanigans ensue.
Full disclosure: this story was inspired by my own sister's genealogical investigations, which recently turned up... well, you guessed it. I'd always figured my family had dodged that particular historical bullet, which on my dad's side is true. They immigrated from Germany in the late 1800's (post Civil War). I always used to joke that we'd done it exactly right, karmically speaking -- too late in America for slavery, quick enough out of Germany to be clear of Nazism. (Ha. It's funny because those things were horrible.) Then we found out that my mom's side... yeah. They've been here trifle longer.
None of that is to outline any particular moral framework or political perspective on the subject of the story's title. I know my own personal reaction to the news was to feel some amount of baseless guilt, much as when that same research turned up an ancestor who served in the American Revolution (Valley Forge and everything), I felt some amount of equally baseless pride. Ancestry is a weird thing, where we get that attachment to all those deeds we never did, and in many cases probably couldn't have done (for good or ill), and so jotting down this weird little story was just on my mind as I was processing this recent revelation of some very old stuff.
Anyway, I promise the next one will be... well, not normal, because fuck normal, but normal for me? :) More to come!