By Carol M. Swain
Saturday, July 16, 2005; Page A17
It's time for the Republican Party to write a new chapter in race relations. What I have in mind is something beyond the Senate's recent resolution on lynching and this week's expression of regret by a high-ranking Republican official for the GOP's use of what came to be know as the "Southern Strategy." What I propose is a formal apology for slavery and its aftermath. This could take the form of a joint resolution passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the president in a ceremonial setting where Americans could gather to symbolically bury their past.
Whenever the idea of an apology is raised, some whites reflexively recoil. They believe it is a bad idea because it conjures up images of innocent whites prostrating themselves before blacks for crimes they never committed. Most outspoken are whites whose ancestors arrived after the end of slavery and those who fought for the Union. Neither we nor our ancestors, they argue, had anything to do with slavery, so why should we apologize?
Others will say that an apology is not necessary because one has already been issued -- two, really. In 1998 President Clinton acknowledged the evils of slavery. And last year President Bush visited Goree Island, a holding place for captured slaves in Africa, and spoke of the wrongs and injustices of slavery. "Small men," he said, "took on the powers and airs of tyrants and masters. Years of unpunished brutality and bullying and rape produced a dullness and hardness of conscience. Christian men and women became blind to the clearest commands of their faith and added hypocrisy to injustice."
More at the link provided.
And if she'd spent more "time with the blacks", she'd have learned . . . what, exactly?
Your comment seems to contain some really vile implications. Perhaps you would care to expand upon it, to eliminate any possibility of doubt as to your intentions?
Posted by: john_m_burt at July 16, 2005 03:49 PMThere aren't any vile implications to what I'm thinking...before I lay out what I was thinking, why don't you share some the vile implications of my original post. I will certainly share what I was thinking after you lay out some unimagined scenarios.
Posted by: Temple3 at July 16, 2005 08:40 PMActually, I was just thinking that her appeal is just the type of isolated scholarly exercise that has no real-world viability. Theoretically, it sounds nice - even it is a bit ahistorical...after all Lincoln's indifference to slavery is well documented, as is the accord, in 1877, struck between Democrats and Republicans which resulted in Union troops leaving the fate of newly emancipated blacks to southern democrats and the klan...so, the professor proposes reconciliation with a political party based on an overdue, meaningless, decontextualized apology...it assumes the stupidity of the black electorate; it suggests that issues of concern identified by American Africans are really about ideology, rather than life outcomes...it suggests the professor has spent too much time in the library - the political science section, certainly not the history section and it further suggests that the professor probably hasn't spent too much time with black vote who actually vote - not because of any anachronistic allegiance to the sorry-ass democrats, but because of a real world belief in a "portfolio" of issues that are at least given lip service to by democrats.
as for the vile implications, i hope i haven't disappointed you, but i don't get down like that.
Posted by: Temple3 at July 16, 2005 09:01 PM
Forgive me, since I don't usually respond in this manner, but Ms. Swain is a dumb-dumb...the amateurish logic and faulty reasoning represents the scary side of university life---too much time in the stacks, not enough time with the blacks.
Posted by: Temple3 at July 16, 2005 10:42 AM