Apology Needed For Slavery
Apology Needed for Slavery
By: Dr. Leonard Carrier, DW In-House Historian and Philosopher (with an “Amen-dum” by DW Foreign-policy Editor, Dusty Schoch)
Recently, the State of Virginia issued a formal apology for slavery, and other states, such as Georgia, Maryland, and Missouri, are on the verge of doing so this year. It is fitting because 2007 marks the anniversary of two salient dates in history. The first is 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in Great Britain, and the second is the 150th anniversary of the Dred Scott decision, in which the Supreme Court ruled that a runaway slave to a non-slave state was still a slave and must be returned to his owner. This gap of 50 years shows how far behind the ethical curve America was in redressing the injustice of slavery. Our federal government is still behind the curve in not considering an apology on behalf of the nation.
Although Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, it freed only those slaves in the Confederacy, and not in the North or in Border States such as Kentucky. The 13th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1865, but the failure of Reconstruction led to the evils of segregation, and it was only with the passage of civil rights legislation in the 1950s that black citizens got legal protection from racial discrimination, and even that did not stop the racial violence that occurred during the next decade. Even as racial violence has abated, Hurricane Katrina showed that legal protection was not enough to overcome the federal apathy and incompetence that resulted in the deaths or impoverishment of black citizens in New Orleans.
So we see that slavery has cast a long shadow in the United States. There is really no way to make proper amends for the harm it has caused, but a first step is to recognize it as the evil it was and to apologize for it. The great ethical principles all demand it. The Golden Rule states: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Emanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative proclaims: ”Never treat others merely as means but also as ends in themselves.” So if you were a victim of slavery because your ancestors were treated as mere means to an economic end, wouldn’t you want an apology? Simply asking the question provides its own answer.
DUSTY’S AMEN-DUM
Len has just graced us with his reaction, in both the ethical and historic contexts, to those States in the process of issuing official apologies to African-Americans for the enslavement of their ancestors. I have to admit it swayed me away from my luke-warm attitude towards innocent people apologizing to other innocents. It was my mother’s family—way back—and way down in Alabama that owned slaves. Why should I be held responsible for that? Moreover, how can I alter the fact I was named after Tuscaloosa Alabama’s most illustrious Confederate General, Major General, Robert E. Rodes? I certainly cannot. So why should any of us white folk apologize for something that happened a century and a half ago that no living person had anything to do with?
But then I read and considered Len’s words and his considered proposal. Len argues persuasively that Katrina may be reasonably viewed as sequela to our former cultural disease – the “abominable institution” as liberal elitists referred to it in its day.
When you take into consideration the “good” that might come to our African-American subculture by way of improvement in their individual and collective “self esteem” and sense of continued and unrequited injustice, it makes sense. If a white majority of our still white-dominated nation apologize to a minority of the same people for wrongs suffered by the minority’s ancestors, and make that apology on behalf of the country as a whole that “allowed” it, nothing is lost and the act has minimal “cost” in terms of either material expense or personal sacrifice. It is a gesture of good faith, good will and compassion.
I don’t think it’s something we (the innocent) NEED–by way of moral obligation or mandate–to do for our minority brethren. And that’s the point. That’s exactly why we SHOULD do it. Black people vote now and exercise civil rights commensurate with white Americans because of the mandates of statutory and Constitutional laws. It’s compulsory. How much greater the gesture will be perceived when it is totally un-required….voluntary and thus patently flowing from the hearts and souls of compassionate fellow citizens.
Thanks, Len, for helping me restructure and evolve my thinking and ethical inertia from “Why should we… To why on earth should we not!”
Dusty
War is Still our Only Enemy
