It's a festering wound on our national psyche, as difficult to
salve as it is to fully acknowledge. Some wish it would just go
away; most know it's not quite that simple. Our fascination with
-- and avoidance of -- slavery should come as no surprise: The
"peculiar institution" ended little more than a century ago, and
it remains the most horrific period of America's social history.
But as we head into the next millennium and look to leave old
baggage behind, the latest wave of slavery images in popular
culture and the arts refuses to let us forget. "It takes a lot
to get America to look at itself," says Dr. Gail Wyatt, a
clinical psychologist at UCLA who studies and has written on the
effects of slavery on the contemporary black community. "But if
it's packaged in the right way, and the messenger is acceptable,
it seems to be becoming more and more acceptable for people to
look more seriously and not accept distortions of history." The
high-profile reminder of the moment is "Amistad," Steven
Spielberg's film