Earlier this month I had the privilege to work as a background extra on the Shelburne set of “Book of Negroes”. I don’t know my scenes as a Dock Worker will actually make it into the mini-series, but it was a lot of fun to be there on the set. I learned a lot about the film industry, I got to spend days with my teenage son who was also an extra, I met many interesting people, and I made some money from it. Pretty sweet deal.
The original book, written by Canadian Lawrence Hill, is anything but sweet and fun, however. It’s a good read, and an important contribution to understanding Canadian history, but it was very painful.
The book, and the mini-series filmed in part in Shelburne, tells the story of Aminata Diallo, a young girl kidnapped from her village deep in the heart of Africa in the 1750’s, and brought to South Carolina to work as a slave on an indigo plantation. Without giving away the whole plot, she escaped from slavery in New York and came to Birchtown as a free British citizen. Her journeys did not end in Nova Scotia, but I don’t want to give more away for you, if you have not read it yet.
The tragedy of the story is how poorly people were treated. African tribal chiefs sold their own people for wealth, slave traders bargained in human trafficking, and religious white people regularly abused their slaves, treating others made in God’s image like cattle or possessions. It was infuriating to read this book, reading about people who claimed to know God but treated other people – with souls, emotions, and rights of their own – as if they owned them.
Friends, discrimination and racism are to have no part in our lives, especially for those of us who have caught a glimpse of how much God loves us. Looking down on others for the colour of their skin is just plain evil. Discriminating against those who don’t look like us, spend money like us, live like us, believe something different from us, or smell like us – this is wrong.
2 Corinthians 5:16 says, “So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now!” People who know how much they have been loved and forgiven should have nothing to do with looking down on others, for any reason whatsoever.
Loved people love people. Open your eyes, and see others as God sees them.