White Like Me

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Tim Wise. White Like Me

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To his son, Samuel D. McLean, Sam Senior bequeathed “a Negro boy named Sim,” who would then be handed down, not unlike an armoire, to his son John, my third great-grandfather. Then, according to family legend (and in what can only be considered the Margaret Mitchell version of the McLean’s history), Sim went happily off to the Civil War with his master. What’s more, we even have dialogue for this convenient plot twist, as Sim exclaims (and I’m sure this is a direct quote, transcribed faithfully at the time), “I’ve taken care of Mr. John all his life and I’m not going to let him go off to war without me.” Cue the harmonica. For his loyalty, we learn that “Sim got a little farm to retire on because the McLeans knew he would not get a pension of any kind.” No indeed, as property rarely receives the benefit of its very own 401(k) plan.

To his daughters, Sam McLean gave the slave woman Jenny and her child, and the slave woman Manerva and her child, and in both cases “any further increase,” which is an interesting and chillingly dehumanizing way to refer to future children. But we are to think nothing of this subterfuge in the case of the children of Manerva or Jenny. We are to keep telling ourselves that they are not people, and we are to keep repeating this mantra, no matter how much they look like people. Pay no attention to such small and trivial details.

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