The other day, I had a friendly conversation with a man who works in a different department in my organization. We started telling each other about our backgrounds.
I told him about growing up on a ranch, halfway across the country, sometimes riding horses all day long, tending the sheepherder camps up in the mountains, trailing sheep and cows from the mountain to winter pastures, the hard beauty of taking care of the land and the animals, about escaping with relief to school and the joy of books, about loving the trees and water of where I live now, because it is so different from the dry high desert of my home.
This very charming, highly educated, cultured man told me about growing up on a small estate halfway around the world, carefully rotating different crops depending upon the weathers and the markets, how his grandparents had traded carefully and well, and become very prosperous, about the servants who live on the estate, and help his family, and how his family takes care of them, because they go with the estate, and have lived there even before his grandfather bought the place.
It took me a minute to process this information. He was telling me that these servants that went with the estate are slaves. I was so shocked, I was really quite speechless. The conversation petered out rapidly, and he went away.
I feel so provincial and judgmental. I have never knowingly talked to someone who is a slave owner before now. I see him from time to time, and we speak cordially, but there has not been an occasion to have another extended conversation. I think about what I will ask him and say to him when I do have a chance to really talk to him again.
My initial impulse was to make sure I understand correctly, and then ask him when his family will free their slaves so they can live their own lives. But I wonder if he will have the same sort of response to that, that I would have if a member of PETA asked me when I am going to free my chickens and my horses so they can lead their own lives.
What is the proper etiquette for discussing the issue of slavery with a slave owner?
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