Sometimes anger is sacred. It’s the fire that reminds you your spirit hasn’t gone numb. But anger alone won’t rebuild nations. We need vision, healing, and strategy. Because power doesn’t only belong to those who take—it belongs to those who remember, who build, and who refuse to forget.
There’s something unsettling about the way history moves — or perhaps, the way it hides.
Some of the world’s most celebrated companies, the ones now praised for their commitment to diversity and human rights, were once built on the flesh, blood, and tears of enslaved people. They made their fortunes trading lives, insuring slave ships, financing plantations, and selling human suffering as commerce. And yet, today they stand tall as pillars of modern morality, talking about inclusion, equity, and sustainability — as if the soil beneath their buildings is not soaked with stories they would rather, we forget and hope we forget too or never learn about.
It fascinates and disturbs me at once — how easily institutions can shed their skin like snakes.
Rebranding. Renaming. Repackaging. Emerging polished and righteous, while the roots of their wealth remain tangled in horror.
We rarely talk about that. About how generational wealth, built from stolen lives, continues to shape the world we live in. The same money that once bought chains and ships now funds scholarships and social initiatives — but the debt has never truly been paid. And I wonder, can a company really reinvent itself without accountability? Can redemption exist without repair?
Because history doesn’t disappear when we stop mentioning it. It lingers. It lives in the wealth gap between nations. It whispers through the broken economies of places stripped bare for someone else’s profit. It breathes in the trauma passed down through families who still live with the consequences of being commodified.
It’s easy to celebrate progress when you are standing on the winning side of history. It’s harder to admit that the comfort, the stability, the prestige you enjoy — were built by hands that never knew rest.
Sometimes I imagine what true transformation would look like. Not a diversity campaign or a polished statement, but a reckoning — a return to honesty. A world where institutions name the truth out loud. Where apologies come with reparations. Where education includes the whole story, not just the edited version.
Because until then, our progress is cosmetic — a serpent changing its skin. It looks new, but the venom remains the same.
And maybe that’s where our power begins — not in rewriting history, but in remembering it honestly. In asking questions that make us uncomfortable. In refusing to celebrate progress that silences the past. Healing, both personal and collective, begins when we look truth in the eye and choose not to turn away. Because change doesn’t start with institutions; it starts with awareness. With us — daring to see what’s been hidden and deciding that silence is no longer an option.
Salima
Just me thinking out loud over here