What capoeira taught me

As a Jewish child, every Passover I was taught that we had been slave in Egypt for four hundred years.  Despite the rich traditions surrounding the storytelling, the concept of slavery meant little to me. 

As a teenager, I read Harriet Jacob's "Incidents in the life of a slave girl" and I was moved to tears.

As a twenty-something in Latin America, I decided to learn capoeira, an athletic, dance-inspired Brazilian martial-art done to music.  I learned that, unlike the more severe martial arts of the Far East, capoeira was not an upper-class military activity.  It was preparation for a slave revolt.  It was disguised as dance to make the overlords think "Oh, how sweet, the slaves are dancing".  In reality it was practice for a fight to death or freedom.  To disguise it even further, it is traditionally performed inside a human circle.

Then I learned capoeira angola.  Instead of energetic high kicks and acrobatics, this version was slower and closer to the ground.
The performers of capoeira angola had worn leg irons.

Suddenly the brutal dehumanization of slavery hit me in the gut.  I understood slavery from the inside.  That feeling of raw empathy has stayed with me.

That is the power of games.  When you hear about an injustice, you understand it intellectually and move on.  When you read a first-hand account, you feel sympathy.  But when you experience the injustice through the mechanics of a well-designed game, you come to understand the true horror of having your freedom curtailed, if only for a fraction of a second.  But it stays with you.