Wave Editorial: Senate apology for slavery is a good start

Story Created: Jun 26, 2009 at 12:55 PM PST

Story Updated: Jun 26, 2009 at 12:55 PM PST

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Upon last week’s unanimous passage of a U.S. Senate resolution apologizing for Black slavery, Sen. Tom Harkin mused to the Washington Post, “You wonder why we didn’t do this 100 years ago.”

Given that African-Americans were afforded full suffrage less than 50 years ago, the Iowa lawmaker’s question immediately answers itself. A more likely reason can be found in the text of the resolution. At the end of a series of clauses beginning with “Whereas,” it is plainly noted that the apology for slavery and its successor, the brutally discriminatory Jim Crow laws that governed the U.S. for more than a century after the Emancipation Proclamation, in no way “authorizes or supports any claim against the United States.”

In even plainer words: No reparations.

This comes as no surprise. Following last November’s election of President Obama, those who outspokenly support the idea of economic reparations for slavery have been further relegated to a political space somewhere between Sept. 11 conspiracy theorists and proponents of returning to the gold standard.
Still, there should be no mistaking this reality for justice. The electoral triumph of the nation’s first African-American president does not alter the fact that, to this day, the destructive twin legacies of slavery and legal segregation continue to partially define the Black experience in America. The resolution acknowledges as much, stating that “African-Americans continue to suffer from the consequences of slavery and Jim Crow laws — long after both systems were formally abolished — through enormous damage and loss, both tangible and intangible, including the loss of human dignity and liberty.”

Considering this official admission, it is hard to argue with Rep. Maxine Waters’ mild admonishment that the caveat against reparations is “unnecessary language.”

Further, in a society that insists upon placing a material value on every aspect of human life, it makes perfect sense to consider reparatory compensation to the descendants of millions of men, women and children kidnapped from their homes and forced into government-sanctioned and protected hard labor and sexual slavery, followed by more than a century of legalized discrimination.

Lauding the resolution, NAACP vice president for advocacy Hilary O. Shelton said it “creates a watershed opportunity for Americans of all races, ethnicity and national origins to better understand the historic racial challenges of our nation and work together to craft a solution to the remnants of racism still lingering in our society.”

We agree. But in 2009, a time when too many social and economic ills continue to disproportionately affect African-Americans, it is high time to recognize that such a solution may necessarily involve components to address this lingering inequality with some forms of economic and social relief.

For these reasons, those who want the U.S. to seriously consider slavery reparations deserve more than to be called up from the fringe sidelines of the modern-day dialogue on American race relations. Indeed, they have earned a seat at the table.

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