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Pulitzer Prize winner Clarence Page began his career in journalism as editor for the Middletown Journal and Cincinnati Inquirer, and received his ...
Read more about By Clarence Page, Tribune Media Services.
Pulitzer Prize winner Clarence Page began his career in journalism as editor for the Middletown Journal and Cincinnati Inquirer, and received his ...
Read more about By Clarence Page, Tribune Media Services.
An Apology, At Last, With an Escape Clause
By Clarence Page, Tribune Media Services
What if Congress apologized for slavery and nobody cared?
The Senate on Thursday followed the House in voting to apologize for slavery and the Jim Crow segregation that followed it.
In other words, it only took almost 150 years and the election of an African American who is not descended from slavery to move Congress to apologize for slavery.
Thanks, senators, but you're a little late. As "senior black correspondent" Larry Wilmore quipped on The Daily Show: "I thought Obama's election was our apology."
He was joking, but not by much. After all, part of the appeal of Obama's victory was its symbolic message of post-racial optimism: We were ready as a diverse nation to stand together as Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed, put our ugly racial past behind us and look to a better future.
By contrast, the slavery apology issue erupts at a convenient time for Congress but an inconvenient distraction for Obama.
Talk of slavery apologies leads to the more volatile dollars-and-sense issue of monetary reparations, which counters Obama's come-together optimism with a taint of old-school "Where's mine?" political spoils.
To ease its passage, the Senate resolution contains a significant escape clause: It is not to serve as a basis for any lawsuit against the United States. That means the measure did not have to address the racially divisive issue of whether we, the descendants of American slavery, are owed any financial reparations.
Minus that thorny issue, the resolution passed so quickly that it almost made papers fly around the room. With no political or monetary cost attached, opposition to slavery is so easy even a bipartisan coalition of senators can do it, especially by a voice vote.
Yet, after a year of work on the resolution, sponsors Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) found reason to celebrate. The House passed a similar measure last July. The Senate passed an apology for Native Americans in February 2008 . Again, it was better late than never, I suppose, but not by much.
The House apology did not contain a no-reparations clause like the Senate version. That's led to a talk of a reconsideration of the measure in the House next week to conform the resolution to the Senate version.
Members of the Congressional Black Caucus oppose the change. That could lead to an awkward situation of black members of Congress opposing a slavery apology. That's what you get, ladies and gentlemen, for trying to score good feelings on the cheap.
Since the resolution does not require the president's signature, each house of Congress probably would be best off passing its own version. The senators and congressmen can pose for pictures, smile and quietly forget about their resolutions as they move on to issues that are effecting people's lives today -- like jobs, the financial markets, health care, global warming and, oh, yes, two overseas wars.
The reparations issue is becoming more trouble than it is worth, partly because most of my fellow descendants of slavery don't have much agreement on what our reparations ought to be.
Harvard law Prof. Charles Ogletree, a consultant for the Senate resolution, has helped waged successful lawsuits aimed at insurance companies, universities and others who profited from slavery. The courts are a better recourse than Congress when you have specific offenders and the paperwork to back up your case. But most of slavery's legacy is not so conveniently documented.
This long after the offense, it is not easy to assess damages. The original victims of slavery are long dead. With each passing year, it is more difficult to trace whose descendants might be owed what. "Forty acres and a mule," the suggestion offered orally but never legally at the end of the Civil War, doesn't mean what it used to.
Reparations for segregation are no less problematic. Some of us are old enough to remember legal segregation of schools, jobs, housing, hotels, public restrooms and drinking fountains. But how do you put a price on that?
Obama's got the right idea. The damage of slavery and segregation can best be undone by all of us Americans' keeping our promises to the next generations. We need to help every child to have access to decent schools, housing and nutrition -- regardless of race, creed or ancestral conditions of servitude.
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E-mail Clarence Page at cpage(at)tribune.com, or write to him c/o Tribune Media Services, 2225 Kenmore Ave., Suite 114, Buffalo, NY 14207.
(c) 2008 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
This news arrived on: 06/21/2009
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Posted Comments:
06-23-2009 00:28
JCE wrote:
John Stout Well said.
Ann D. Actually, the big difference is that the blacks sold us the blacks, and actually owned blacks in this country, so the black sellers are the ones who deprived the blacks of homeland, family and culture. We, as a country and a people, decided to take those things from the American Indian, and punished severely those who resisted. At first, we had an exterminate the Indian policy, and when that didn't work, we had an isolate policy, and then and assimilate policy, all the while robbing them of all that made them a people. So in a sense you are quite right.
Sambo When we give all people their human rights, and stop discriminating, stop being racist, it will be enough. Of course, that means the old racists have to die out, and the young ones get really outnumbered. When white people are rarely seen that are pure white, most of the racism will be gone.
Ann D. Actually, the big difference is that the blacks sold us the blacks, and actually owned blacks in this country, so the black sellers are the ones who deprived the blacks of homeland, family and culture. We, as a country and a people, decided to take those things from the American Indian, and punished severely those who resisted. At first, we had an exterminate the Indian policy, and when that didn't work, we had an isolate policy, and then and assimilate policy, all the while robbing them of all that made them a people. So in a sense you are quite right.
Sambo When we give all people their human rights, and stop discriminating, stop being racist, it will be enough. Of course, that means the old racists have to die out, and the young ones get really outnumbered. When white people are rarely seen that are pure white, most of the racism will be gone.
06-23-2009 00:21
JCE wrote:
JDB Spoken like a true racist. Slavery existed, and was wrong, and original sin is a myth. Your republican government has already given us corporate socialism. History shows that it is the racist mentality that causes a government that denies human rights, and and the defensive backlash that causes too much welfare. And I suppose you think that all those people without jobs who want jobs are wallowing in self pity. That isn't what keeps people from being productive. It is voting for politicians, like the republicans, who send all the jobs overseas, and the democrats, who then make it easier to live on welfare than the minimum wage of a job, if they can find it, and the health care that can come with welfare, but not with a job.
aibrod As long as the racists deny that there was and is a problem, there will continue to be a problem. And those that are oppressed with fight back, and usually the oppressors won't like it, and say stop wallowing in self pity and get over it. And then it is still business as usual.
Kjnow Norhtin The only reparation possible is to stop doing it, and that doesn't happen until we admit we are doing it. That is the real purpose of the necessary and long overdue apology.
Anonymous there hasn't been any real reparation, and won't be as long as the conservatives keep being racist, and pushing the liberals to fight back, and they fight back, and do so in a unrealistic manner.
aibrod As long as the racists deny that there was and is a problem, there will continue to be a problem. And those that are oppressed with fight back, and usually the oppressors won't like it, and say stop wallowing in self pity and get over it. And then it is still business as usual.
Kjnow Norhtin The only reparation possible is to stop doing it, and that doesn't happen until we admit we are doing it. That is the real purpose of the necessary and long overdue apology.
Anonymous there hasn't been any real reparation, and won't be as long as the conservatives keep being racist, and pushing the liberals to fight back, and they fight back, and do so in a unrealistic manner.
06-21-2009 22:11
PER wrote:
Sambo, in addition to your repulsive log-in name, you make no sense at all. Your mis-spelling and your blathering are simply embarrassing to read. I really hope that you are a eunuch (look it up) and will not taint (look up that word)any innocent offspring.. Yo, Bro, check out spell-check...
06-21-2009 17:27
Ann D wrote:
Reparations
I will give it to the Blacks that slavery was bad. But nothing compared to what we did to the Native Americans.
06-21-2009 16:35
John Stout wrote:
Those that want to ignore the racial iniquities that still abound today are willing to perpetuate them. Those that don't want an apology, offically from the state, look like slavery apologists... meaning they're probably the same ones who would talk of how much "good" slavery did for this country while it was legal. Nameless, yours is the most racist comment of the day. To say that we enacted welfare specifically for blacks is incredibly racist, and inexcusable. Affirmative Action must remain in place at least for the time being, because, as I said in a previous story, without these controls in place, those in power will revert to hiring those they're "most comfortable" working with, whether it be white or black or straght or what have you. Those in power right now simply cannot be trusted to hire equal opportunity on their own.
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