Blacks and the Original Position – Western Voices World News

<o:p>By Baltasar Nordstrom</o:p>

<o:p>On June 18, 2009, the U.S. Senate formally
apologized to African Americans for slavery and the segregation era. The U.S.
House of Representatives had already issued their apology on July 29, 2008,
though will vote again on the issue because its members have changed in the
interim. These declarations are the latest in a line of mea maxima culpas also
offered by state legislatures, American universities, and others. </o:p>

<o:p>The sentiment of regret coupled with
confessions of having done wrong pervades all of them, as if the wrong done is
a fait accompli, and all that remains is to acknowledge the fact and apologize
humbly, contritely, and officially. It is easy to think this way, with slavery
representing the subjugation of man by man, sometimes brutally, and segregation
implying, if not embodying, second-class social and political status. But do
apologies, or even apologies plus reparations, represent authentic justice? Or
is the demand for them rather a case of the camel sticking his nose, head, and
more into the tent of truth?</o:p>

To date several political, educational, and
other bodies have made their apologies known or indirectly expressed guilt.
Virginia’s General Assembly was the first state legislative body to declare, in
early 2007, though what it passed was a resolution of "profound
regret" rather than one of formal apology, fearing an apology would
generate legal obligations to pay reparations to blacks for their enslavement
and denial of rights. Maryland followed suit a month later. Alabama, Arkansas,
Connecticut, Florida, New Jersey, and North Carolina have also expressed regret
or apologized, as has the Episcopal Church. Moreover, various universities,
including Brown University, the University of Alabama and the University of
North Carolina, have formally disclosed historical ties with slavery. Since
2002, at least a dozen cities, including Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit and
Philadelphia, have required companies doing business with them to admit to any
ties they had with slavery, opening the door to lawsuits against corporations
who profited from it. The states of California and Illinois have required
insurance companies to do the same.

<o:p>The trend toward more and more apologies,
though growing slowly, appears to be advancing inexorably, and could lay the
basis for a future demand for monetary reparations to blacks for the
deprivations and punishments they endured during the slavery and segregation
regimes. Some blacks have indeed indicated this as their goal. Representative
Barbara Lee of California, head of the Congressional Black Caucus, wants any
federal apology to permit “the right to address a grievance,” legal language
for a right to sue for reparations. NAACP President and CEO Todd Jealous has
said that an apology is the “first step toward healing” the wrongs done blacks,
where “healing” can also be interpreted to mean reparations. Representative
John Conyers of Michigan has submitted a bill every year since 1989 to
establish a presidential commission that would study remedies, including
reparations. Others have expressed similar sentiments.</o:p>

<o:p>Opponents have railed against formal
apologies partly because of the same potential monetary consequences. This
opposition also has a monetary goal aimed, however, at avoiding payments rather
than receiving them, and so, though based in a serious concern, is in one sense
an equivalent, not superior, argument. More importantly, it ignores the question
whether apologies are right or wrong regardless of possible reparations, which
is the issue to be addressed here. Because apologies have been made the focus
of the question of responsibility and guilt, the strength and validity of the
argument for them will determine that of any demand for reparations. </o:p>

<o:p>The Moral Paradox of Slavery</o:p>

<o:p>In spite of its initial moral appeal, the
idea that blacks are owed an apology, if not reparations, for slavery is based
on poor legal and moral reasoning. It includes the false presumption that
blacks in the early days of America had a legal right to be here, and that
therefore enslaving them was a violation of their constitutional rights. They
did not. Immigration policy up until 1965 was very restricted, and there is no
constitutional right to free and unrestricted immigration; nor has there ever
been. That is rather a matter for the American people to decide. Nor would
whites have ever accepted black immigration en masse in colonial times or after
the Revolution. Because there was essentially no legal right for blacks to be
here during the slavery period except as slaves, there was no practical or
legal possibility of them becoming Americans other than through slavery when
slavery was in force. Any blacks who were here as free men then would have been
here in very small number, and likely of little relevance for slavery or
segregation, and thus for issues involving millions of people and potentially
trillions of dollars. </o:p>

Rather than slavery and civil rights, where
blacks ought to start their reasoning process is from their "original
position." That is, understanding what moral or legal harm has been done
depends on knowing what condition or situation they were in before the alleged
harmful or otherwise immoral acts occurred. It is as a deviation from or
degradation of this situation that harm or wrong is defined.<o:p> </o:p>

For blacks this was not as residents of
colonial America and the United States, but as residents of Africa. In other
words, their true options were not between slavery and civil liberty, but
between being free in Africa and enslaved in the U.S., to undergo centuries of
slavery and segregation before they could achieve full civil rights. The
question to ask, then, is which of these lives, since their enslaved ancestors
can no longer choose, contemporary blacks would choose for themselves and their
ancestors.

If they choose a free life in Africa,
neither they nor their predecessors would ever have lived here. Any grounds for
complaint about being enslaved here simply would not arise. They would be
African still, not Americans seeking apologies or reparations.

If they choose life in America even if it
means accepting slavery as the only way to live here, then they also relinquish
their and their ancestors’ claims to any apology or reparations from the start.
They have accepted that slavery was the only way they and their ancestors could
become American.

Restoring blacks to their original
position, in turn, would mean they return to Africa, with some kind of
reparations on behalf of their ancestors if enslavement was immoral or illegal
at the time in their original societies. Considering that civil rights were
most likely poorly established in Africa during the era of slavery, it might be
hard to argue reparations are due. Any right of reparations would in any case
require returning to Africa; staying here would indicate a willingness to
accept slavery for their ancestors insofar as it provided eventual American
citizenship for themselves.

<o:p>Segregation in Context</o:p>

A similar argument could apply to apologies
and reparations for segregation, otherwise known as “Jim Crow,” when the right
to vote and other civil liberties were refused them and they were legally
segregated from whites. Blacks would not have lived in the U.S. in any
significant degree during the Jim Crow era unless it had been preceded by
slavery. Therefore, once again, blacks, or their ancestors, who lived through
segregation would have to accept the hard historical necessity of slavery as a
condition for life here. Segregation would most likely not have occurred, or it
would have affected far fewer people, if slavery had not occurred.
Nevertheless, segregation was less of a historical necessity than slavery if it
was one at all. It is not for the purposes of this analysis since the element
of necessity in segregation appears to be lacking, though to be “fair” (honest
to history) the subject could always be left to analysis. Unlike with slavery,
the issue here is one of American civil liberty versus its deprivation.
This leaves open the question of apologies and reparations for segregation.

In addition, any apologies or reparations
for segregation would have to be weighed against other moral considerations.
These would include, among other things, the deprivations inflicted on the
South, where segregation took place, during political and economic subjugation
by Northern states following the Civil War. This was a regionally and
culturally second-class status rather than a racially subjugated one, and, like
segregation, far more of an empirical question than that concerning any debts
owed for slavery. Blacks were not responsible for this, of course, but the
issue would have to arise on a national level if apologies and restorative
justice were to be distributed equally and without bias. This makes the issue
of reparations to blacks for segregation more complicated and perhaps a
less-than-ideal remedy; black standards of living in the South may have
suffered partly because of pro-Northern policies less than, as much as, or more
than they did because of segregation. A case for reparations would also have to
show that similarly-situated Southern whites suffered less than blacks
economically during segregation and if so how much. A high violent crime rate against
whites (and in general, burdening society with law enforcement, legal, and
incarceration expenses) up to the current day could also be thrown into the
weighing of harms and debts. Finally, as summarized by Mychal Massie, chairman
of the National Leadership Network of Black Conservatives, numerous programs
have already been established to remedy blacks’ plight and attempt to meet
their demands, suggesting some or all of any debt to blacks may have already
been paid off. These include:

<o:p> </o:p>

Great
Society initiatives, race-based affirmative action programs, Act 101,
race-based contracts and set-asides, race-based business loans and mortgages,
the permitting of segregated dormitories, graduations and proms to placate race
mongers, color-coded jobs, and the list goes on and on.

<o:p> </o:p>

Seen weighed along with historical (and
current) harms other than segregation, the moral calculus may support only a
weak claim for segregation reparations—if any at all. It is also possible
blacks carry moral debts.

<o:p>Conclusion</o:p>

<o:p>In terms of justifications for apologies
and reparations, then, slavery and segregation present different
considerations. Segregation concerns in part possible economic deprivation as
the yardstick by which apologies and reparations would be calculated, and has
to be investigated both empirically and in context, including harms done by
blacks as well as debts already paid. The results would not necessarily favor
blacks.<o:p> </o:p></o:p>

Slavery in turn invokes a starker and far
more basic existential question: Would contemporary blacks be willing for their
ancestors to undergo slavery and consequent segregation in order for future
generations of blacks, including themselves, to be able to become citizens of
this country? Seen in this light, factually as opposed to theoretically,
ahistorically, and unrealistically, the choices for blacks surrounding slavery
are much more limited than most current debate around apologies and reparations
acknowledges. They cannot, if blacks and others want to be honest, be based in
non-existent possibilities and circumstances, like a right to be here during
the colonial and subsequent eras.

If the necessary historical circumstances
did not exist, white guilt, apologetics, and reparations (since it is whites
who are being held responsible for the practice) should also not exist. The
pathetic prostrations of various legislative and other bodies around the United
States before the idol of infamy we know as slavery are more psychological and
political exercises than moral ones, signs more of moral decay than of moral
vitality. Whites owe American blacks the rights they would accord any human
beings, but they do not owe apologies or reparations for the institution of
slavery as they are currently offered or proposed, and any apologies already given
should be rescinded. In spite of its “injustice, cruelty, brutality and
inhumanity of slavery,” as the House of Representatives put it, slavery was the
unfortunate means by which most blacks were able to become Americans. Slavery,
not constitutional right, was their primary ticket to citizenship.

Baltasar Nordstrom is the pen name
of a non-MSM writer.

References

<a target=”_blank” href=”http://cnn.com/Associated”>CNN.com/Associated</a> Press. “US Gov. Apologizes for Slavery,”
July 30, 2007, Black Voices, <a target=”_blank” href=”http://www.blackvoices.com/newsarticle/_a/slavery-apology/20080728142709990002″>http://www.blackvoices.com/newsarticle/_a/slavery-apology/20080728142709990002</a>,
Sunday, June 14, 2009 1:33:16 PM GMT-7.<o:p> </o:p>

Hafenbrack, Josh, and Kennedy, John.
“Florida Legislature Makes Formal Apology For Slavery,” Orlando Sentinel,
at Common Dreams, March 27, 2008, <a target=”_blank” href=”http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/27/7922″>http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/27/7922</a>,
Sunday, June 14, 2009 1:29:17 PM GMT-7.<o:p> </o:p>

Koch, Wendy. “Va. 1st state to express
‘regret’ over slavery,” USA Today, February 26, 2007, <a target=”_blank” href=”http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-02-25-apology_x.htm”>http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-02-25-apology_x.htm</a>#,
Sunday, June 14, 2009 1:03:56 PM GMT-7.<o:p> </o:p>

Massie, Mychal. “America’s money-grubbing,
racial extortionists,” WorldNetDaily, June 30, 2009, <a target=”_blank” href=”http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=102531″>http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=102531</a>,
Thursday, July 02, 2009 8:20:55 PM GMT-7.

National Public Radio. “New Jersey
Apologizes for Slavery,” January 8, 2008, <a target=”_blank” href=”http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17925822″>http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17925822</a>, Sunday, June 14,
2009 1:14:14 PM GMT-7.

Perry, James DeWolf. “Connecticut issues
apology for slavery,” June 5, 2009, Traces of the Trade, <a target=”_blank” href=”http://www.tracesofthetrade.org/news/2009/06/connecticut-issues-apology-for-slavery/”>http://www.tracesofthetrade.org/news/2009/06/connecticut-issues-apology-for-slavery/</a>,
Sunday, June 14, 2009 1:17:19 PM GMT-7.

Samad, Anthony Asadullah. “Apology For
Slavery: How Convenient, But What Does It Really Mean?,” August 11, 2008, The
LA Progressive, <a target=”_blank” href=”http://www.laprogressive.com/2008/08/11/apology-for-slavery-how-convenient-but-what-does-it-really-mean/”>http://www.laprogressive.com/2008/08/11/apology-for-slavery-how-convenient-but-what-does-it-really-mean/</a>,
Sunday, June 14, 2009 1:48:05 PM GMT-7.

© the author 2009

<o:p> </o:p>

2009-08-01