More Than a Static Image of Trauma: Letting Go of Our Narrative of Slavery

by Ashley Heidebrecht, LMSW, Director

When we are taught about slavery in the United States, it is often through one of two lenses, or sometimes even a combination of both. The first lens is that slavery, while unfortunate, was a necessary, almost inevitable means to enable the United States to develop and thrive. Accompanying this is the narrative that many of the “slave owners” showed kindness to enslaved people and some enslaved women were even allowed to live in the main house (of course leaving out the realities of enslaved women sharing a residence with the white men enslaving them). This lens depicts the dynamic of Black servitude and white domination as the natural, inevitable, and necessary order, which is a central tenant of white supremacy. The second lens is one of unilateral brutality: white enslavers abused and dominated Black people, and Black people suffered. This narrative, while not untrue in the raw facts of violence and dehumanization, is deeply incomplete. More than that, it is harmful. It erases the constant, daily acts of resistance by enslaved people and turns them into objects of pity rather than subjects of struggle. In doing so, it reinforces the same white supremacist ideologies that were foundational to slavery.

The dominant narratives on slavery turn enslaved people into static images of trauma. We learn of beatings, of chains, of auction blocks. We are shown the whip but rarely the hand that grabbed it and turned it back on the master. We are told of the suffering but not the fight. This sanitized depiction of slavery casts Black people as passive recipients of white cruelty rather than as agents in their own liberation. This is not only historically inaccurate but psychologically destructive.

Resistance was the norm, not the exception. We know the names of Nat Turner and Harriet Tubman, but these are the tip of the iceberg. Most resistance didn’t make it into the history books because it wasn’t spectacular in scale. It was everyday and everywhere. Enslaved people broke tools, slowed their work, faked illness, ran away, poisoned food, physically fought with both fists and weapons, and yes, sometimes killed their enslavers. These actions, often dismissed as isolated, were coordinated, calculated, and brave. They were declarations of humanity.

To center only the trauma of slavery is to continue the project of white supremacy by other means. White supremacy does not merely rely on depicting white people as superior; it also relies on depicting Black people as naturally servile, docile, and incapable of rebellion. The conventional framing of slavery as a one-way street of domination perpetuates these myths. It suggests that enslaved Black people were inherently submissive, that they simply endured for centuries until white abolitionists decided to free them. This is a lie.

In fact, white enslavers feared Black resistance constantly. Laws were written not only to control enslaved people but to contain their rage. Patrols were organized, and punishments were codified not because enslaved people were passive but because they weren’t. White supremacy was, and still is, obsessed with containing Black agency, because Black resistance is white supremacy’s undoing.

The myth of the docile slave is not neutral. It is a cornerstone of racist ideology. It suggests that Black people are naturally inclined to be ruled, that their place is under white authority, and that their suffering is inevitable rather than imposed. This narrative infantilizes Black people, erases their intellect and strategy, and denies them the full spectrum of human emotion and action. It makes rebellion seem like an anomaly rather than a legacy.

Teaching about slavery in this way is also deeply traumatic. It subjects Black children to a curriculum in which their ancestors are constantly brutalized but rarely victorious. It teaches them that their past is one of unrelenting loss and powerlessness. This is also often accompanied by misrepresenting the Civil Rights Movement, including sanitizing the words and actions of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and portraying other leaders like Malcom X and Fred Hampton as deviant or “scary”. This is not just inaccurate; it is violent. It offers no unsanitized or un whitewashed models of strength, only suffering. It cultivates despair instead of pride.

It also comforts white audiences. A narrative focused solely on the horrors of slavery allows white people to feel pity, which is often confused for justice. It permits tears without accountability. By centering pain over resistance, the story of slavery becomes a spectacle of Black suffering for white consumption, a form of moral theater that lets the audience leave unchanged. Pity does not challenge power; it reinscribes it.

But when we teach about resistance—not just in revolts, but in the small, defiant acts that characterized everyday life under slavery—we restore humanity to the enslaved. We tell a fuller story, one that includes cunning, strategy, rage, and love. We recognize enslaved people not just as survivors but as fighters, not just as victims but as visionaries. We honor their choices, their risks, their sacrifices, and not just in ways that are clean and palatable.

To teach slavery through resistance is not to downplay the horror. It is to insist that horror was met with courage. It is to show that even in the most oppressive systems, people fought back. This changes everything. It changes how Black children see themselves and their ancestors. It changes how white people understand history and their role in it. It challenges the comfortable myth of white benevolence and replaces it with the unsettling truth of Black resistance.

Historians have documented countless acts of defiance. Enslaved people established covert networks to communicate and plan escapes. They held secret meetings, created coded songs, and protected one another. Women used reproductive resistance, refusing to bear children into bondage or controlling when and with whom they would reproduce. They took up arms, told their enslavers “no”, and burned down plantations.

These were not isolated incidents; they were part of a culture of resistance. Enslaved people were not waiting to be saved. They were doing the saving themselves, every day, often at great personal cost. Their fight wasn’t always loud, but it was persistent. It took place in kitchens, in fields, in whispered conversations and knowing glances. It was as strategic as any organized rebellion and just as courageous.

We must stop teaching a version of slavery that denies this reality. We must reject the story that makes Black people only symbols of suffering. That story is not just incomplete; it is ideological. It serves white supremacy by reinforcing the myth that Black people are naturally subordinate and incapable of revolt. And it strips away the dignity and agency of those who lived, fought, and died under the yoke of slavery.

In truth, the history of Black people in America is not only a history of oppression. It is a history of rebellion, resistance, survival, and triumph. It is a story of people who carved out dignity in the face of dehumanization, who built communities, raised families, preserved cultures, and imagined freedom even when every law, every whip, every chain said they should not.

The truth is not that enslaved people were powerless. The truth is that their power terrified their oppressors.

Let’s tell that story.

Be sure to check out our related blog, written by Dr. Robert L. Reece, PhD "Not Today": Examining the Role of Violence in Asserting Humanity During Chattel Slavery.

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