into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely

The child’s version of US history, at least as this writer absorbed it in school, did a very poor job explaining slavery, and certainly never mentioned this [the slave-breeding] aspect of it. Partly that’s because slavery is not a subject fit for children. It’s embarrassing to have to explain what it consisted of. It gets into things we would prefer children not know about — middle-aged men fornicating with adolescent girls, women used for breeding purposes, children sired and sold, black men dehumanized, and families routinely shattered.