Views > April 3, 2007

Slavery and the State of Denial

By Salim Muwakkil

On Feb. 24, Virginia’s state assembly voted unanimously to express “profound regret” for the state’s role in slavery. Legislators assembled in the former capital of the Confederacy to express regret for sanctioning “the most horrendous of all depredations of human rights and violations of our founding ideals in our nation’s history.” The action could mark a significant shift in public opinion.

Virginia has become the nation’s first state to step away from the state of denial.

The last such effort was in 2000, when former Rep. Tony Hall (D-Ohio) proposed a similar bill in Congress. Hall was repeating a failed effort mounted in 1997. Both efforts were greeted with derision and the legislation died an ignoble death.

The action of Virginia’s legislators comes as the state is celebrating the 400th anniversary of Jamestown, where the first enslaved Africans arrived in 1619. The resolution has sparked discussion about similar bills in Maryland, Missouri and Georgia. In Congress, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) has introduced a resolution apologizing to African-Americans for “the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow.” Cohen is a freshman who represents a predominantly black district in Memphis.

Virginia’s action also comes at a time when the country is engrossed in other discussions about slavery. One day after the state’s apology, a genealogical group released a finding that Coleman Sharpton, the great-grandfather of the civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton, was owned by the forebears of the late segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.). This connection, reported in the New York Daily News, shocked Sharpton. “I couldn’t describe to you the emotions I have had … everything from anger to outrage to reflection to some pride and glory,” he said at a press conference. “You think about the distance that you’ve come, you think about how brutal it was, you think about how life must have been life for him. And then you start wondering whether or not he would be proud or disappointed in what we have done.”

Sharpton was disturbed by the specificity of the knowledge, which made slavery less abstract and more personal. For most Americans, slavery is a vague historical abstraction, distanced and obscured by a veil of cultural denial.

Guilt is the primary reason white Americans prefer to look away from the abomination of race-based slavery that laid the foundation for this nation’s wealth and implanted enduring notions of white supremacy. Some African-Americans have been shamed into denial as well, but many desperately seek links to their lost heritage.

Slavery’s historical significance was further underlined by disclosures that presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), the Hawaiian-born son of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya, is descended from slave owners. His great-great-great-great grandfather George Washington Overall owned a 15-year-old girl and a 25-year-old man, according to the 1850 census in Nelson County, Ky.

An Obama spokesman said, “It is a true measure of progress that the descendant of a slave owner would come to marry a student from Kenya and produce a son who would grow up to be a candidate for president of the United States.”

It is progress indeed. But the measurement is mostly symbolic. Obama may physically embody racial reconciliation, but the society in which he moves has yet to reconcile disparate racial realities. Peruse the statistics of social well-being and you’ll find glaring discrepancies between white and black Americans.

One of the reasons for these enduring disparities is a lack of governmental attention to slavery’s lengthening legacy. Because of our tendency to deny unflattering history, most Americans know very little of slavery’s enormous, multi-generational impact. The current media prominence of slavery stories helps dispel some of that ignorance. Attempts by lawmakers to admit governmental culpability for the outrage of slavery also go a long way in educating Americans about this tarnished past.

With apologies and mea culpa in the air, it would seem a propitious time to re-introduce H.R. 40, Rep. John Conyers’ (D-Mich.) bill to appoint a commission to analyze the effects of slavery. Since 1989, Conyers, who is now the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has introduced H.R. 40 in every Congress. And in every Congress it has lain dormant. The legislation instructs the commission to review whether “any form of compensation to the descendants of African slaves is warranted.”

Cohen’s resolution is more explicit than Conyers’ and calls for a “commitment to rectify the lingering consequences of the misdeeds committed against African-Americans under slavery and Jim Crow.” His bill, which already has 50 co-sponsors, opens the way for a serious discussion about reparations for the legacy of slavery and a permanent exit from the state of denial.

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• Reader Comments

  So, you say, “Guilt is the primary reason white Americans prefer to look away from the abomination of race-based slavery that laid the foundation for this nation’s wealth and implanted enduring notions of white supremacy.”

  Sorry, but it’s not so with many of us. (I will not assume, as the author, to know what all other “white Americans” may think.)
  
  The fact is, while I do see huge racial problems in the U.S., I seldom think about slavery at all. I never owned a slave. (You never were a slave.) As far as I know my ancestors did not own slaves.  But if they did, it would be their guilt and not mine. I do know my great grandfather fought nearly four years in the Union army even though born in what is now West Virginia. As I cannot take any credit for his military service, neither do I accept any of his possible guilt.

  What I have seen in my lifetime is that much of what contributed to the sorry plight of a large number of Americans today, came as a result of good intentions (or perhaps the guilt longed for in this article).
  
  • The welfare payments which made it look useless to work for only a little more than what was delivered for doing nothing.

  • The money paid and added to every time younger and younger girls had another child.

  • The “color credits” given through affirmative action which mostly serve to make whites who were not prejudiced become so.

  • The way the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (supposedly preventing racial, gender, or religious discrimination) has established quotas, made census forms include nationality as race, created job security independent from performance (“You can’t fire me — I’m black!” was told to an office manager friend of mine.)

  The nation got more of exactly what it was suppose to eliminate. Those we hoped it would help got more dependency, less education, dead-end jobs, a loss of a sense of accomplishment, destruction of the family.

  If we are ever going to alleviate the racial biases it will not be by constantly picking off the scabs of history, offering preferential treatment, or legislating meaningless apologies.

  Posted by whattheheck on Apr 3, 2007 at 8:08 AM

  Great post, WTH ! I concur wholeheartedly. I always thought that civil rights or forced integration was the flip side of Jim Crow laws and slavery. By the way, check out Steve Sailor’s lengthy review of Obama’s
  1992 bio in The American Conservative, current online issue and it’s
  downloadable. Obama is very anti-white, the media hype is just hype.

  Posted by blondemike on Apr 3, 2007 at 10:11 AM

  What the heck and blondmike: Partners in the KKK???

  It’s people like you that have perpetuated the ugliness of racism. One of the themes of the article was the fact that so many people think of slavery as an abstraction and fail to see the connection between today’s racism and slavery. Thank you for proving Mr. Muwakkil right.

  You guys buy into the right wing memes of welfare, desegregation, civil rights legislation and affirmative action. It was the racist elements of society that opposed these measures to redress grievances.

  Congratulations to you both for being a part of the problem.

  Posted by lams712 on Apr 3, 2007 at 3:59 PM

  WTH, would you wake me up if lams writes anything remotely intellectual or that at least isn’t a wordsalad ? Thanks.

  Posted by blondemike on Apr 3, 2007 at 4:48 PM

  WTH, would you wake blondemike up in time for the next Klan meeting? Thanks.

  Posted by lams712 on Apr 4, 2007 at 12:46 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 39 posts.

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