USA TODAY (MAGAZINE)
Jan. 2004, Vol. 132, No. 2704, pp. 30-31

Copyright © SOCIETY FOR ADVANCEMENT OF EDUCATION. January 2004. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

Do Blacks Deserve a National Apology?

By Carol M. Swain

• Should today's citizenry be held morally and financially accountable for the misdeeds of America's forefathers?

     In a few years, the Smithsonian Institution will include a National Museum of African-American History and Culture devoted exclusively to documenting the "life, art, history, and culture" of black people in America. Spearheaded by Sen. Sam Brownback (R.-Kan.), the legislation authorizing the creation and funding of the project garnered the endorsements of a bipartisan group of 54 cosponsors. Individuals such as Rep. John Lewis (D.-Ga.) have dreamed of such a museum for more than a decade. This monumental act by a majority Republican Senate represents a significant step forward in the black struggle for recognition.

     Unlike discussions of a national apology and any mention of reparations for slavery, the National Museum has not yet encountered the kind of sustained opposition that would doom the project. The major debate has been over whether it should be placed on the National Mall with the other Smithsonian museums or in a nearby Washington, D.C., location.

     The black museum represents a small portion of a much larger political and social agenda. Brownback also would like to see a national apology for slavery and the establishment of a temporary committee to study race relations, which would be charged with identifying the source of continuing economic and educational disparities between blacks and other groups. Its recommendations could include the payment of monetary reparations for slavery. The latter is a goal of Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (D.-Mich.). Since 1989, he has introduced H.R. 40 in every Congress, with its number "40" symbolic of the failure of the nation to give the newly emancipated slaves "40 acres and a mule."

     Proponents of slave reparations argue that all white Americans have derived benefits from their whiteness and from wealth that slave labor brought to the nation. According to University of Houston professor of history Steven Mintz, "A majority of the 650 workers who built the White House and the U.S. Capitol were enslaved African-Americans....Slave-grown cotton constituted 75% of the value of the nation's exports in the decades before the Civil War, and paid for the capital that financed canals, railroads, and textile factories." Mintz contends that the vestiges of slavery are substandard education, employment discrimination, inadequate housing, racial profiling, and economic inequalities. Other scholars have made similar connections. In Black Wealth, White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality, sociologists Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro document the role that the Federal government's discriminatory policies have played in accentuating and perpetuating racial disparities through its lending policies, housing programs, and initial eligibility requirements for Social security.

     Moreover, there is the argument that white America's oppression of blacks continued long after emancipation and did not officially end until the passage of three major civil rights bills: the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, and Open Housing Act of 1968. New life was breathed into the reparations debate in 2001 with the release of Randall Robinson's The Debt: What America Owes Blacks. It reenergized the argument and spurred the filing of lawsuits on behalf of African-Americans seeking compensation from governments as well as corporations loosely tied to the slave trade.

     The objections to an apology for slavery and reparations payments can take many forms. David Horowitz, president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture and author of Uncivil Wars: The Controversy Over Slave Reparation, argues vehemently against the government making any additional overtures towards blacks. He insists that African-Americans have benefited from over 50 years of special attention from government and they have failed to express any measurable gratitude for the fact that they are "richer and freer" than blacks anywhere else in the world. To support the claim that reparations already have been paid, Horowitz cites welfare, affirmative action, and a host of other social programs. He stresses that even a conciliatory gesture to blacks, Mexicans, and American Indians--the "politically correct" victimized groups--would be a colossal mistake since others have been harmed as well, including the Jews, Irish, and Catholics.

     Robert W. Tracinski of the Ayn Rand Institute delineates some of the more common arguments against contrition. Tracinski says that "an apology for slavery on behalf of the nation presumes that whites today, who predominantly oppose racism, and never owned slaves, and who bear no personal responsibility for slavery, still bear a collective responsibility--a guilt they bear simply by belonging to the same race as the slave-holders of the Old South. Such an apology promotes the very idea at the root of slavery: racial collectivism....The only justification for such an approach is the idea that each member of the race can be blamed for the actions of every other member, that we are all just interchangeable cells of the racial collective." Americans whose ancestors arrived after slavery had ended or whose relatives fought on the side of the Union army often share Tracinski's position.

A History of Mistakes

     It is clear that many white Americans see a history of well-meaning and often-misguided efforts to improve the lives of racial and ethnic minorities. Perhaps, as a consequence, whenever the idea of an apology is raised, it, like reparations, often meets with strong opposition and much skepticism. "The idea that an apology takes away the 'excuse' for black leaders to do what they do is absurd," Horowitz maintains. "Jesse Jackson is not a racial extortionist because white people haven't apologized for racism and slavery (in fact, they have--over and over again). He's a racial extortionist because it made him a millionaire and this proposal would just feed his appetite." An angry white woman wrote: "Why should we apologize for something we did not do? We are innocent and the black leaders need to get out of the past, drop the baggage and walk away and stop causing race problems."

     Notwithstanding all of these strong objections, a national apology for slavery offers many benefits for the U.S. and is the next logical step for promoting racial justice and reconciliation. A national apology need not impute guilt to individual white Americans, as blacks themselves are guilty, too. One rarely discussed issue is the evidence documenting the presence of around 3,000 black American slaveholders. In 1860, one source reported that free blacks held almost 20,000 slaves. Slavery was a national crime that all our ancestors participated in, including Native American tribes, such as the Cherokees. I believe that a majority of Americans can be persuaded to support an overture if it is made clear that monetary restitution for slavery will not follow.

     The power of an apology to promote racial healing should not be underestimated. The benefits of apologies have a proven value in social science and legal research. Law professors Erin O'Hara of Vanderbilt University and Douglas Yarn of Georgia State University have done extensive research on the use of apology in dispute resolution at the trial and pretrial level. These researchers have found that it matters to people when and how a guilty party admits, "I am sorry for my actions." Rather than simply being an empty gesture, an attempt at appeasement can disarm opponents and forestall legal action.

     Hatred and resentment are known to be at the root of many health problems. A sincere apology followed by forgiveness has the potential to offer various benefits to many embittered African-Americans, including a release of anger and resentment towards white Americans. Washington should offer an apology and blacks should accept it. The lack of any gesture for such a heinous act as slavery sets the nation apart from other countries that have expressed public contrition for past misdeeds: Germany (the Holocaust), Great Britain (treatment of the Irish during the potato famine), Pope John Paul II (sins of the Roman Catholic Church), and Australia (abuse of the Aborigines). Even the U.S. government has apologized and paid a token award to Japanese Americans held in internment camps during World War II. It also has sought to make amends to American Indians. What, therefore, would be the great harm in acknowledging responsibility for actions against black Americans?

     In one fell swoop, Washington could remove forever the basis for the accusation that it never has apologized for the nation's greatest crime against humanity. John Adams, the second president of the U.S., referred to slavery as an "evil of colossal magnitude" and an "abominable" action. Yet, no president has been willing to apologize officially on behalf of the nation. In 1998, Pres. Bill Clinton was criticized roundly for going on what many commentators dubbed an apology tour of Africa. Clinton earned the ire of numerous political conservatives for stating, "Going back to the time before we were a nation, European Americans received the fruits of the slave trade. And we were wrong in that."

     Pres. Bush, on a recent African tour of his own, stopped short of apologizing when he visited Goree Island, a holding place known as the point of no return for captured slaves. He did, however, condemn slavery as "one of the greatest crimes of history." Bush stated that, "Small men 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....My nation's journey towards justice has not been easy, and it is not over."

     The President could change history and set the nation on a different course by urging Congress to pass a joint resolution apologizing for slavery. Many Americans recognize the wrong inherent in the Federal government's forced migration of Native Americans, deportation of Mexican-Americans, and enslavement of blacks. If a wrong is recognized, an apology is the next logical step. Bush could improve U.S. race relations by urging Congress to remove from the annals of history the grievance that the nation has not sought to make amends to blacks.

     Democrats and Republicans have acknowledged serious problems with race relations. Yet, neither party has been capable of formulating a plan to move the nation beyond an uneasy stalemate. Given the recent histories of the two parties, the Republicans would stand to gain the most from such an overture. A carefully worded admission runs little risk of alienating its political base. The apology would please many of Bush's Christian supporters. Since he is a born-again Christian and most African-Americans are Christians, it becomes more likely that his apology would be accepted. Some denominations, Southern Baptists, for example, already have issued their own apologies.

     Although the U.S. rapidly is becoming a secular nation, a majority of Americans still express belief in a common creator and a brotherhood of man. It forms the core of our judeo-Christian heritage. The U.S. has a Christian president who has vowed to make the "promise of America real for everyone." A national apology could open the door to forgiveness from African-Americans. Under no circumstances should it be met with renewed demands for race-based remedies or for monetary reparations. An apology affords minority leaders an opportunity to take the high road as equal partners interested in the collective good, rather than as supplicants constantly seeking new ways to evoke white guilt. More than anything else, the U.S. needs an open dialogue on race and a new cadre of leaders.

     Black communities continue to be plagued with high rates of violent crime, illegitimacy, infant mortality, welfare dependency, and infectious disease. National, state, and local governments have tried--with mixed results--to address these conditions. The solution does not lie in racial preference programs, the payment of slave reparations, or the establishment of a national museum. What is needed is for more African-Americans to take responsibility for improving their lives and those of their peers mired in hopelessness. The fates of whites and black Americans are intertwined with the fates of other ethnic groups. We owe it to each other and to future generations to make amends for our many differences.

Carol M. Swain is professor of law and political science, Vanderbilt University, and founding director of the Veritas Institute for Racial Justice and Reconciliation, Nashville, Tenn.