Column Need for amends wont go away
By ROBERT F. DRINAN
In high school my class was required
to memorize parts of President Lincolns second inaugural address. I
recall declaiming the words 250 years of unrequited labor.
I had no idea of the meaning or the thrust of that phrase until
recently when I contemplated the possibility of reparation to the descendants
of the slaves. Lincoln was once more a prophet; he told Americans that they
must make up for 250 years of unrequited labor.
Is this an idea whose time is about to come? The collective guilt
about what America did to its 4 million slaves before and after the
Emancipation Proclamation seems to be growing.
It has recently been discovered that 400 of the 600 laborers who
erected the White House and the Capitol were black slaves. Their wages were
appropriated by their owners. New information is being discovered about
Northerners who benefited from slavery. In 1750, slaves represented more than
10 percent of the population of New York, bringing huge economic benefits to
merchants who paid their masters a small stipend for the use of the slaves.
The idea of reparations, restitution, indemnification or any
similar concept meets immediate resistance. Writers ask what moral principle
requires todays white citizens to give something of value to todays
black citizens because of what the whites great-grandfathers did to
slaves.
The basic moral principle will not go away: The perpetrator of
injustice should be punished, and every victim should be compensated.
Basic Catholic theology makes clear that a sin is not forgiven
until the sinner makes amends. Stolen money must be restored to its
owner. The denial of just wages for work done is one of the sins about which
Christ spoke with vehemence.
It is undeniable that virtually all of Americas 32 million
black citizens would be far better off if their great-grandfathers had not been
deprived of basic opportunities in education, health and employment. These
countless injustices require some form of rectification.
In Canada, where slavery never existed, the situation is
strikingly different. Canadians of African ancestry emigrated there from
several of the Commonwealth nations. But slavery and segregation never existed.
As a result Canadian society is much more racially integrated than U.S.
society.
There are some observers in the United States who recognize the
dreadful things that have been done to African-Americans but who feel that
seeking remedies through reparations is so controversial and so complicated
that the United States should seek true equality for blacks by developing
programs to bring them truly equal opportunities in housing, education and
health. The argument is that such an approach can accelerate the present
movement of not a few blacks into the middle class.
If the Democrats retake the House of Representatives Nov. 7, there
will be for the first time in U.S. history black chairmen of the House of
Judiciary Committee (John Conyers Jr. of Michigan) and the Committee on Ways
and Means (Charles Rangel of New York). Hearings will be conducted on the bill
filed some time ago by Conyers to bring some form of reparation to black
citizens. The city councils of Chicago, Houston, Detroit and several other
cities have already backed the call for hearings on reparations.
White resistance to affirmative action may appear very mild
compared to the thunder that will be heard at the very thought that modern-day
Americans must make some sacrifice for the 250 years of unrequited
labor, in Lincolns solemn words.
Americans might begin to acknowledge the injustice they did to
their slaves and to their progeny if they follow the example of other nations.
The Germans and the Swiss are among a growing number of countries that have
decided to give reparations to Jews and to others whom they cheated.
How soon will there be another Rosa Parks who will stand up for
the proposition that America owes a debt to every eighth citizen, whose
ancestors came from Africa?
Jesuit Fr. Robert Drinan is a professor at Georgetown
University Law Center. His e-mail address is
drinan@law.georgetown.edu
National Catholic Reporter, September 29,
2000
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