Whitman: empathy vs. appropriation

During the discussion today in class, a lot of people took the position that Whitman inhabited the position of the slave in the portion of "Song of Myself" we were discussing. This assumes that the "I" in "I am the hounded slave" is Whitman's persona or voice. We do not, and may never know who the "I" is. Bt when reading the "I" at times I can't help thinking of myself. After all that is how people refer to themselves, "I this...," "I that..." So the use of "I" forces the reader to appropriate/empathize with the feelings/experience in the poem. For me, Whitman was not the embodiment of the hounded slave, I was. Not that I felt anything a slave would have simply by reading those lines but my connection to the slave and the whole history was undeniable. It's like when people deny a bad thing because they don't feel like they are partaking in the bad action, "Slavery has nothing to do with me, I don't own slaves." The issue is that we are a production of the society in which we live and the history that comes with it, so we are a part of societal problems. This poem reminds me of the connections each person has with another. It's easy to forget that our actions affect a lot of things and are an effect of a lot of things. It's easy to forget how big the world is sometimes, but Whitman allows these connections to be made across space and time.