Click on the headline to link to a Website entry concerning the question of black reparations.
COMMENTARY
NO POST-DATED APOLOGIES REQUIRED, THANK YOU- THE VICTORIES OF THE UNION ARMIES IN THE CIVIL WAR HAVE SPOKEN FOR US
Earlier this year the Virginia legislature passed a formal resolution ‘apologizing’ for its history of slavery. A few days ago the North Carolina Senate passed the same kind of resolution. Reportedly, other states of the former Confederacy are considering similar actions. What gives? Apparently these elective bodies have succumbed to the same fits and starts of non-actionable ‘collective guilt’ noted in other situations such as President Clinton’s apology to Native Americans and the German apology to Jews for the Holocaust. Of course, these anti-slavery resolutions are toothless. Of course, they come much too late to do those who were actually affected any good. More importantly, in the case of the descendants of the slaves no real benefits accrue or are proposed to alleviate today’s very real wage slavery for the vast majority of blacks. Thus, we should accept such apologies for what they are worth and move on.
I have stated more than once that politics is many times a matter of timing. I would be, for example, much more impressed by the force of these anti-slavery resolutions if the various legislatures had enacted them in say, 1957. Or 1927. Or better yet, 1877. Certainly not 2007. Moreover, in 2007 I much prefer to stand by actions against slavery like Captain John Brown’s at Harpers Ferry. Or the big fights by the Union armies at Gettysburg or Vicksburg. Or the brave black Massachusetts 54th Regiment before Fort Wagner. Or Grant’s merciless pounding of Lee’s remnants in the above-mentioned Virginia or pursuing General Johnstone’s forces down into the also mentioned North Carolina. For those not so militarily-inclined the codification by post-Civil War Radical Republican-dominated Congresses against slavery and for the expansion of civil rights in the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the United States Constitution as a result of those victories will do as well. Enough said.
Symbolic gestures are in the vogue, particularly during the Clinton era.
ReplyDeleteApologies for the enslavement of black people are useless. State governments should focus their efforts on eliminating endemic racial inequalities. I despise the feel-good, self-congratulatory mood of bourgeois America. Apologies are meaningless; they're only a feeble attempt to placate the smoldering multitude.
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