Slavery Tourism: Is It Fair To Profit From Tragedy?

My ancestors were Enslaved Africans and my ancestors were the Europeans that enslaved the Africans. My tear ducts hurt as I struggle to write about my family's connection to slavery. I meet so many African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans that feel the way to connect to their ancestors is to connect to slavery.

I choose not to allow slavery to define who and what my ancestors were, well to a certain degree. In researching the history of my family, I uncovered that my Grandmother's great-great grandfather was a White man. I was angered that my Grandmother's family chose to praise and center the family's history on the White man that possibly raped my great-great-great grandmother. The family tree features the name of the White man but lists my great-great-great grandmother only as a "slave".

In uncovering the history of my paternal  great grandfather, I learned that he was the byproduct of an affair between a White southern woman and a sharecropper. His White mother abandoned him in a Black orphanage. He spent his entire life trying to find his mother and he did not. I can only imagine that he died with an emptiness that could never be filled.

I want to know my ancestors. I feel that going to Ghana could never help me quantify the horror that my ancestors went through. My ancestors are not tied to a specific place, my ancestor's blood flows through me. I am my ancestor.

I refuse to support Ghana's or an African country profiting from the tragedy of slavery. If I was to feel some connection to Ghana or the Cape Coast Slave castles then should I feel a connection to the Auction Blocks that my ancestors stood on? Should I feel a connection to the whips that beat my ancestors? Should I feel a connection with the people that enslaved my ancestors?


 via CNN
African-American poet Maya Angelou once wrote: "Africa is a historical truth ... no man can know where he's going unless he knows exactly where he's been and exactly how he arrived at his present place."

This search for" historical truth" has led thousands of visitors to Cape Coast, in Ghana, a picturesque seaside town with stunning blue sea, serene beaches and pastel-colored fishing boats.

Instead of idyllic days under the sun, they are looking for a glimpse into their dark ancestral past -- the harrowing experience of their African forebears who were sold as slaves. Roots tourism has brought more and more people of African descent, like Monique Ross and Jacques Wallace, to the sleepy fishing port.

Ross, Wallace and their tour group from New York walk the grounds of Cape Coast Castle, a seaside fortress that served as slave dungeons, to see what their ancestors went through before they were shipped across the Atlantic.

"I'm slightly numb actually," said Wallace. "I wasn't actually ready for the stories about this place as far as the way people were treated, and the thing about the tunnel and everyone bound and being led down the tunnel is a little bit tragic, a little bit too much to take in all at once."

His fellow traveler agreed. "It is a little devastating at first," said Ross. "It's good to know the history of what has happened and how to connect your historical past with things that have happened."