The best thing I can say is that I hope we are all living in a time and place where racism, overt or subtle, is lessening. I hope the next generations of Bees and Azizis and McGraths and Janies and all will be able to read archived conversations like this one with the same degree of detachment I feel when reading about the Highland Clearances. That is, that our forebears suffered opression and evil acts in the past that have little or no effect on my present circumstances, or that our forebears committed these acts of opression with similar present lack of effect.

Such hurts live on for generations, the significance of their effects to some extent related to the magnitude of the original crimes. In the case of the Clearances, for example, very few North Americans of Scottish Ancestry could honestly complain that they are now significantly the worse for those events. But my father, five generations out of the Isles, and normally a non-political, quiet and gentle man, was moved to say one day, when observing a ceremonial visit to Cape Breton of a Scottish 'Clan Chief', "Look at them, fawning over that person whose family didn't know or care about them and their children, or where they went or whether they lived or died. They are fools."

I was young, and shocked by the bitterness in his tone, because it was out of character. But later I learned how his generation, and his father's generation literally had the Gaelic beaten out of them in order to make them 'civilized'. And I learned family stories that dated back five generations and more, from humourous events and ghost stories to intelligent evaluations of particular diseases and conditions to which our family seems to have been predisposed for many generations.

I am not by any means comparing the African American history of slavery and racism with the opression of the Highland Scots in order of magnitude. I am just hoping that healing can happen, as it has for my family and others over the generations.

I have no idea if what I just wrote conveys what I wanted to express, and apologise for being inarticulate if no one else can grasp it either.