Apologies for Slavery Should Acknowledge Privilege
By Michel Martin
So the House apologized for slavery and Jim Crow. An interesting move coming as it does 140 years after the end of slavery and many years after apologies for the atrocities committed against Native Americans and the internment of the Japanese — events that occurred before, during, and after slavery. On one level it’s just interesting if you’re interested in politics, as I am: Why this and why now? How did this come about?
Not so interesting to me were some of the objections. So predictable: I didn’t own any slaves, my family were immigrants and they didn’t own any so why should I apologize, and blah, blah, blah. As Katrina Browne, a descendent of this country’s most successful family of slave traders, said on this program last week: “If you wore cotton or put sugar in your tea, at some point you benefited from the slave trade.”
But let’s set that aside and focus on what is “not” being talked about — the other part of the apology— the apology for Jim Crow, the system of legally imposed, culturally sanctioned and violently enforced discrimination that lasted well into this century. The legal framework of Jim Crow was dismantled only a generation ago, which means that the people who lived with, suffered from and benefited from Jim Crow are very much with us today.
Just last month for example, Virginia unveiled a monument to the students who walked out of their all-black high school in Prince Edward County, Virginia to protest inferior conditions there — a case that later became part of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case that was decided in 1959. But the monument also serves to remind us about what happened after Brown. Prince Edward actually closed the schools for five years rather than educate black and white kids together. Of course all-white private academies, funded by state and local tax credits, quickly sprang up for the white kids. But most black kids were left to fend for themselves until 1964, hardly ancient history. If that doesn’t merit an apology, well I don’t know what does.
Can I just tell you? What I think this debate is really about is acknowledging privilege.
In this country, we hate to acknowledge that any of us gets any sort of leg up at all. In fact, the more privileged you are, it seems the less likely you are to admit it. At tax time we complain about having to pay up but those of us who benefit rarely acknowledge the breaks we get as homeowners that renters don’t, or that married heterosexuals get that singles and same-sex couples do not. At college admission time people grouse about race preferences and conveniently forget all about legacies. And how about all those SAT prep courses, private tutoring, or the simple leg up that a stable, functional household gives you? The more you have of it, the more invisible privilege becomes — and then that becomes the entitlement of forgetting, as if it never happened at all.
I noticed this when — through the miracle of frequent flyer miles — I recently got a chance to take a trip in first class with my husband and kids. What an amazing experience. On my own, in coach, I was just another butt in a seat. But in the front cabin with the nice husband and two adorable tykes no less — why I was upholding Western civilization. There was none of this having to stand in a long line to check our bags, no begging for a jacket to be hung up, for a drink to be refreshed. Oh no, it was smooth sailing all the way. So this is how it is.
“This is how it is?,” I said to my husband, who frequents that part of the plane far more than I do. He looked at me puzzled and asked, “What’s the big deal?”
Exactly!
Via NPR
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Thanks to the endless work of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA) and other organizations this is a historic moment marking a victory in the ongoing struggle for human rights. It is a sign that reparations for Blacks in America are closer than they appear.
Words of Thomas Jefferson, one of America’s significant founding fathers, are instructive now than ever before, “The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most unremitting despotism (tyranny) on the one part, and degrading submission on the other. Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.” In other words justice for Blacks and the reparations movement in America is a mission of God. This is an issue that politicians cannot denounce or reject forever.
The task of making what Jefferson said be so is in the hands of a more enlighten generation. America is at a time of real change where the damage done to Black life, culture and human possibilities will be restored or the change Obama is spinning is spineless hope without audacity. Those who love America, and are willing to show it, can do this in twelve years, along with winning the war on terror, and revive a failing economy.
Don’t get it twisted; reparations are not about the shrinking dollar. Reparations are 1) the cross-road solution to our human capital development, and 2) reparations are ways and means of infrastructure development. The Reparations Accord for Blacks in America will coordinate the many ways and means of repairing the damage. As I have said in previous commentary, the issue is no longer should reparations be authorized to Blacks, but what should be the elements of the reparations accord.
N’COBRA sincerely appreciates Congressman John Conyers’ efforts to stay on the front line with this issue. His enduring leadership and congressional diplomacy over the last 20 years has awakened the moral spirit of justice in the U.S. to repair the damage done to the enslaved ancestors of Blacks in America. This is a good first step.
The National Coalition of Blacks in America (N’COBRA) has long stated its position on the growing number of resolutions of profound regret and questionable apology at all levels of public government and private corporations. These resolutions should be supported only as means to open dialogue on the elements of repair that must be included in tomorrow’s reparations accord for Blacks in America.
The resolution could have been crafted in such a way that it would lead America out of its shameful denial and acknowledge the inordinately high levels of poverty, health related issues, poor education, poor housing, crime, dysfunctional families, etc., existing in present day African descendant communities can be directly linked to the American era of enslavement.
As with any true apology/confession it is expected that the perpetrator(s) of the crime state as accurately as possible what the apology is for, seek repentance, and be willing to repair the damage done by acts of commission and omission. The maladies in the Black community are vestiges of the original acts of destruction of a civilization. An apology alone falls short, without full acknowledgement of the conduct that caused the injuries.
N’COBRA position remains, notwithstanding congressional electoral politics and Obama-mania, that at least five of the lasting injury areas must be resolved and recommendations of ways and means made for repairing the damage. The five injury areas are fatherhood/peoplehood, education, criminal punishment, wealth/poverty, and health. Obama is talking about these areas but omits and obfuscates the context.
Those of us who are about true hope and real change will continue to think about tomorrow and never forget the Holocaust of African enslavement. And, as true patriots, work for real and lasting change, regardless who is in the White House, to assure the monstrous destruction of human life, human culture, and human possibilities never occur again.
Moreover, Blacks, individually and united, must express disagreement with the final language of the resolution because it fails to include the truthful portrayal of African descendants in American history that cannot be denied. The African descendant view must be that this era in American history is more appropriately termed a Holocaust of Enslavement of African Peoples rather than the usual acceptable euphemisms for American terrorism and uneven emphasis placed on commerce as in “forced labor” or trade as in “slave trade.”
Congressman Cohen should politic relentlessly for establishing a commission, as recommended by HR40, a Bill sponsored by Congressman Conyers in 1988, to “examine the institution of slavery, subsequently de jure and de facto racial and economic discrimination against African-Americans, and the impact of these forces on living African-Americans, to make recommendations to the Congress on appropriate remedies.”