I also like the article on the Underground Railroad.
I liked that one, too, especially when she stopped to consider that the number of slaves who escaped -- through the UR or other means -- were just the tiniest fraction of a percent of the total number of people over hundreds of years who spent their lives in slavery with no hope of escape.
I thought about that a lot when watching "12 Years a Slave." That guy's experiences and the things he witnessed were unquestionably horrific, yet I couldn't help thinking that in a relative sense he was "lucky" to get out after 12 years. Millions of others never did.
I've always been interested in Colson Whitehead, the novelist whose "Underground Railroad" partly inspired this piece. I plan to read that book, and others of his have sounded intriguingly original. It's so mind-blowing to think that if he'd lived less than 200 years ago ... well, it's hard to even mentally grasp.
She also, only slightly more subtly, makes the point that white UR participants, or abolition activists, or even sympathizers were also just a tiny fraction of the white population as a whole.