Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North
PBS documentary flips the script as white descendants of slave traders confront their past
2008-06-23
By Ronda Racha Penrice

Most frequently, the North gets a pass for slavery, especially in our “history” books, when the reality is the entire nation sanctioned and received economic benefit from slavery’s existence. Images of sprawling Southern plantations with many slaves working the land have dominated film and television depictions of slavery. Depicting the role Northern business interests played in facilitating  the slave trade as well as manufacturing and selling the goods generated from slave labor hasn’t been as popular.

Even as corporations and some states have stepped up and apologized for the roles their institutions have played in enabling slavery, it’s hard to name many white Americans who have actively confronted their familial links to the institution. Too often those who have extensive knowledge about their family’s involvement in the despicable practice brush it off as something that happened long before them and has no bearing on their present lives. In that sense, it’s so admirable that Katrina Browne’s realization that her ancestors, the DeWolfs, were the most successful slave traders in American history has resulted in Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North.

Browne narrates the documentary, which kicks off the 21st season of PBS’s acclaimed documentary series, P.O.V., to create a personal connection with the audience. Browne’s journey with nine other DeWolf descendants, as they retrace their family’s footsteps from Bristol, Rhode Island to slave forts in Ghana to DeWolf-owned Cuban plantations and back again, is a marked departure from what we’re used to. Roots created the model of Black Americans retracing their roots back to Africa and, in recent years, Henry Louis Gates’ African American Lives, also seen on PBS, updated the concept. By taking mostly celebrities on a journey similar to the one in which Alex Haley engaged the nation, Gates combined the cutting-edge technology of DNA testing with the latest scholarship on African American history to contextualize the personal stories of his participants within the general history of Black folks in the United States.

Because many of us have grown accustomed to this narrative, it’s challenging to embrace one in which white people make a similar journey, especially when the purpose is to confront their slave trading ancestry. Traces of the Trade, to its credit, recognizes this. Many of the Black people the DeWolf descendants encounter don’t easily reward them for their mission. Rightfully, they challenge the family members to push beyond the surface. To enable real racial reconciliation, however, journeys such as the one Browne and her relatives take are a necessary beginning. Browne peppers the journey with real historical evidence to increase the effectiveness of her quest. For many of us, such information may be old hat but it really is the first time many of Browne’s relatives have encountered much of this history.

Traces of the Trade underscores the need for Critical White Studies, an academic movement focused on studying the construction of white identity as well as white privilege. It’s not enough to simply present African American history and the role racism has played in this nation if creating real sustainable change is the ultimate goal. Unfortunately, racism is too often viewed as a personal problem, with too many people substituting “preference” for “racism.” What Browne underscores in her documentary is that, even people like herself who are pretty conscientious in their personal lives and take no ownership in the horrific ordeals of the past benefit from that history, whether they are aware of it or not.

Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in U.S. History, the documentary’s accompanying book penned by Thomas Norman DeWolf, who also made the journey with Browne, not only recounts the journey but also adds an intellectual layer that this film does not possess. DeWolf presents a deeply personal narrative interwoven into his experiences living in predominantly white Oregon for much of his adult life. He frankly admits how questions of race have never really entered his universe. Browne’s ambitious project, however, knocked him out of his comfort zone. Just a few years ago, DeWolf never imagined that he would pen a book advocating racial atonement and forgiveness or introducing the struggle for reparations to his white peers.

For so long, much of the struggle has been to get white people to acknowledge and pay attention to the fact that racism is indeed real, that white privilege is not a convenient Black fantasy. Traces of the Trade probably won’t engage Black audiences in the way that African American Lives  has but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t watch. While the film will seem a tad overindulgent at times and you might find yourself wondering what bearing this family’s story has on your own life, if racial reconciliation is truly going to happen, we have to have narratives that will reach white people where they are, that speak to them in their own language.

To that end, Traces of the Trade and its accompanying book, Inheriting the Trade, are welcomed additions to a growing movement to bring about racial reconciliation. Just, as we must confront history from our own perspectives if we are to comprehend where we’ve come from and where we’re going, so do they. It’s the only way we’re all going to move closer to the unity and equality we’d like our nation to put into practice and not just into words.

Traces of the Trade airs on PBS June 24 at 10PM. Check your local listings.

Veteran freelance writer and self-diagnosed television junkie Ronda Racha Penrice is the author of African American History For Dummies, which includes a chapter on film and television.