Cheap Grace in Senate's Apology for Slavery

It could yet take responsibility for Jim Crow, at least in the military, or for the fact that American Indians were not granted U.S. citizenship until 1924.

I think you would find the book Slavery By Another Name most interesting. Many African American individuals (but by no means categorically) were enslaved based on trumped-up criminal charges as late as the Second World War.

That is an artifact of Jim Crow and mostly a Southern cultural artifact maintained at the state or county level.

What if anything might or could the Federal government have done after the Civil War to destroy the culture of Southern white supremacy in an attempt to prevent the years of Jim Crow that followed?

-Descended from Michigan and Wisconsin Yankees

If anyone had suggested white people pay African Americans reparations for slavery at Mom's family reunion a year ago, it would have met with a blank stare.

Finally one small voice, "Our ancestors did not come to your country from Finland until after Reconstruction."

Every white on navy blue T shirt we wore: Y___: Always Close to the Finnish Line! with the family tree on back. Clockwise, arranged by birth, near the end of the tree, my mother Rachel, now deceased, and my brother and I.

The three surviving members (not my dad, two uncles and an aunt) of the Marsh family reunion might have phrased a different rebuttal: "We're Yankees! Twelve generations from Connecticut, Rhode Island, all the way to Wisconsin.... We fought to end slavery NOT preserve it!"

Although The Genealogy of John Marsh of Salem and His descendants, 1633-1888 tends to doubt it, it is impossible to rule out Confederate ancestors or Confederate Army ancestors from the Marsh family tree.

More recent genealogical works include The Genealogy of George Gillette, and of John Watts Ford‎ by Louise Dollison Marsh and Our Marsh family in America, 1635-1995‎ by Louise Dollison Marsh and Roger Gillette Marsh. I presume I can trust them, I have found no Confederate ancestry so far.

A mother who had nothing to do with American slavery and a father whose ancestors more of less completely fought slavery (TV episodes on Northern slavery nonwithstanding).

And my brother and I would be paying reparations because we are white?

That is racism. That is what the reparations are intended to be fighting.

Not only would it harm race relations it might even make a few white kids think, gee, I am bad just because I am white, well, maybe I ought to do this.... and spray paint a house.

That is not the message we want to send to anyone of any color. Your skin doesn't make you bad or make you worthy of punishment. Your actions do.

All the people who enslaved and were enslaved are dead. The last slave, a woman, died in 1968, I think.

Keep on shouting about African Americans and maybe most of the Holocaust Jews will be dead before we figure it out.

There are people still alive who can benefit from somebody's reparations.

How about reparations for the CO2 emissions we are putting into the air, changing the climate, causing desertification, causing snowmobiles to crash through the Arctic ice, causing malaria to creep north, etc?

Now that is deep.

The whole notion of apologies lacking consequences is a paradox in this situation.

While it's true that a genuine apology should involve consequences for the apologizer, it's also critical to the equation that the apologizer be the one who committed the offense.

The problem here is that, with only the U.S. goverment still "alive" as perpetrator, individual Americans cannot make the apology. Essentially, no genuine apology can exist that is not made by the actual offender. The classic, once-removed "We're worry about what happened to you" does not count; it is not the same as a real apology from a real perpetrator: "I'm sorry I did that to you."

So, the U.S. government, in the guise of its Congress, is attempting to apologize on behalf of an earlier generation of Congress, and this is not necessarily ineffective. However, because the U.S. government also represents the interests of all individual citizens alive today, it cannot commit to making financial reparations because doing so would go against the interest of living Americans.

In other words, the only entity that can properly apologize is the government, but it cannot pay out taxpayer dollars in restitution.

Given this scenario, the Congress is doing what it can and publicly noting what it cannot do. It's unfortunate, but there is no other answer. And this applies to reparations for all other groups historically victimized by the U.S. government.

I agree, however, that Congressional members should lose the smugness and stop patting themselves on the back. There's nothing whatsoever about this issue that should make us feel good.

I am in accord with most of what is written by the three prior posts.

"Justice" and "equality" are subtle and complex concepts. As is "compensation" and "reparations". What do those terms mean?

WHOTMEWORY1 has a very good point addressing the greater 'injustices' done to Native Americans and the greater need for repairing those damages inflicted by mostly European intruders in their lands. Perhaps we should add Hawaiians to that list.

Hey, there are reasons aplenty to make apologies for. Why stop at slavery.

An apology for slavery? OK. Reparations - no way! There's not a single former slave alive today whom we could pay with their mule and 40 acres. Reparations to descendants undeserving - rending tax dollars from people innocent of this practice - would serve nothing more than to widen our slowly narrowing racial divides into a gross chasm.

On this subject should we not too apologize more rigorously to indigenous American indians who continue suffering on poverty stricken reservations as the rest of us revel in freedom and liberty?

And since THEY ARE are alive and suffering under our collective racist boot heel, I would suggest it is these folks more than any other to whom we owe reparations.

"t is also self-congratulatory in tone, stating that now "Americans can move forward and seek reconciliation, justice, and harmony for all people of the United States." The resolution is not a worthy response to the suffering caused by so many years of legalized exploitation of people of African descent in the United States."

Well, now that we can seek justice for all, how about *LBGT* people of African descent? They can still end up working and fighting for a government that takes their tax money but doesn't extend them full equality and protection under the law, still allows for them to work and fight in the military, but be denied their due compensation and benefits just cause they're gay.

How about how we treat immigrant labor?

'We,' (don't look at me, anyway, if you want to talk ancestry, my ancestors weren't here yet, for the most part, when slavery was going on, unless maybe they got off the boat and were handed a rifle to go free the slaves) ...Can't make reparations. There's no one to give them *to.*

But we can give *justice.* We, and by 'we,' I mean *all* Americans, can *be* the freedom that all people who suffer and suffered under one form of bondage or other prayed for, in their many ways.

Dear ma’am,
Thank-you for the article. I found that your article sparked several questions.

Do you mean to imply some sort of collective guilt or responsibility for slavery and its aftermath? Do ordinary citizens, who are a century and a half removed from slavery, have an obligation to be part of this apology? If so, why? What kind of “consequences” (your word) should be on the table? Why are not the lives of 360,000 Unionist soldiers and the martyrdom of President Lincoln, whose sacrifices freed the slaves, sufficient payment?

Should the descendants of New Englanders, especially those whose ancestors participated in the Underground Railroad, be exempt from both apology and “consequences”? How about those whose ancestors came to the States after the war? How would exemptions be determined? Do the descendants of slaveholders bear some greater financial responsibilities for their ancestor’s actions? If so, why is collective guilt acceptable?

At what point does slavery and its aftermath stop being a reason and start being an excuse? And why are not all apologies by the non-culpable, made TO people long dead for actions committed BY people long dead, on behalf of people who are also not culpable, not simply a politically-correct feel-good exercise?

I would be interested to read your opinions, not only on collective guilt vs. collective responsibility, but also what consequences you think are appropriate nearly 150 years after the end of the war.

God bless,
Matthew16