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Sept 4, 2001 At the World Conference Against Racism, sponsored by the United Nations, the heads of several African states have spoken out against the legacy of slavery and colonialism. The United States is part of that legacy and an easy target because it is both influential and affluent. Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo said an apology for the crimes of slavery would recognize the wrong that was committed against Africans and constitute a promise that such an atrocity would never happen again. The process of articulating an apology is a valuable exercise in reinforcing an ideal, and it is, perhaps, the only value of an apology by an industrialized nation more than a century after the abolition of slavery. That’s the only source from which an apology is likely to be forthcoming; countries in which it is still practiced — and there are more of those than many Americans realize — are not likely to be particularly apologetic. Americans cannot say, with any degree of honesty, that we recognize now that we should have known several hundred years ago that slavery was wrong. That’s historical revisionism at its worst; the most we can truthfully say now is that we do know now. There’s no doubt that slavery was instrumental in the colonization of the Americas. To many people even 150 years ago, slavery was an unquestioned part of life, well supported by the Bible. Human progress is neither instantaneous nor neat; years of growing awareness and sometimes violent conflicts were required to bring the matter to a head in the United States, and both sides of the Civil War had an economic agenda that often overshadowed morality. Other leaders go farther than requesting an apology. They want money. Gnassingbe Eyadema, the president of Togo, said Saturday that the slave trade and colonialism were so horrific they require reparations, which should include the cancellation of African debt. And Cuban President Fidel Castro, ever the agitator, called on the United States to pay slavery reparations. "After the purely formal slavery emancipation, African-Americans were subjected during 100 more years to the harshest racial discrimination, and many of its features still persist," he said. Isn’t it painful when Fidel Castro is on target? But do monetary payments solve that problem? There’s not much chance of the United States’ paying reparations to African nations, for many reasons. The slave trade was a tremendously complicated economy, and the issue of blame is far from simple, both nationally and personally. No American living had any complicity in the era of slavery, and if responsibility can be considered genetic, most Americans lack even that. A relatively small number are descended from slaveholders, and a much tinier percentage from slave traders. We can speculate endlessly about the ways in which Togo might be different now if slavery had not been prevalent during the colonial era. We will never know; we can’t go back. At some point we all need to accept that there is no way to right past wrongs, or even to make them "come out even." We — and that includes all the nations of the world — must maintain policies that are fair and right now, and learn from history without being called upon to defend or repair something that we, unfortunately, cannot change. Yet money — in reparations, economic sanctions, forgiveness of loans, foreign aid — seems to be the most powerful tool in foreign policy today, and it’s not surprising that disadvantaged nations would seize upon the idea. If only it were that simple: Write a check and purge history of all its wrongs. To ask for assistance for current needs is one thing, and it’s fair that such assistance be forthcoming. To pretend that forgiveness can be bought is something else entirely, particularly when it perpetuates the immoral tradition of paying money for human lives. |
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