Dishonorable Scum
24-04-2007, 14:09
An excellent interview with a noted African-American historian on the subject of apologizing for slavery:
Franklin, who knows what it is to grow up in a world where one's rights and equalities are constantly being questioned, refuses to let go. He thinks it's not just time for somebody to apologize, but to do something about it.
"No one knows the price that I've paid for what I've gotten out of this world and this life," he says. "My efforts represented sacrifices untold, indescribable. They don't know what my mother went through to see that I had opportunities, and even the fundamentals such as food and clothing and so forth. They don't know what my grandfather, on my father's side, paid in terms of taxes so that white young men could go to the University of Oklahoma, where my own father could not go.
"And I don't see any reason why I should get over that kind of exploitation of my immediate family—my father, my grandfather, my mother, and so forth. I see no reason I should get over it. I see every reason why there should be compensation, apologies, particularly in the hypocrisy it's represented, in their saying on the one hand that all men are created equal, and on the other hand, them saying if they're created equal, some are more equal than others."
...
"People are running around apologizing for slavery. What about that awful period since slavery—Reconstruction, Jim Crow and all the rest? And what about the enormous wealth that was built up by black labor? If I was sitting on a billion dollars that someone had made when I sat on them, I probably would not be slow to apologize, if that's all it takes. I think that's little to pay for the gazillions that black people built up—the wealth of this country—with their labor, and now you're going to say I'm sorry I beat the hell out of you for all these years? That's not enough. They ought to develop some kind of modus operandi that they can do something else—something to absolve themselves of three centuries of guilt from which they are the direct beneficiaries."
Full story: http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A88747
It's a funny thing: So many people are opposed to the idea of even apologizing for slavery, and yet it costs them nothing, as Franklin rightly points out. When there's that large a gap between the maximum that one side is willing to offer and the minimum that the other side is willing to accept, the issue is not going to be easily resolved.
I'm just disappointed that, more than a hundred and forty years later, we haven't fully dealt with the legacy of slavery yet. Maybe in another century or so...
Franklin, who knows what it is to grow up in a world where one's rights and equalities are constantly being questioned, refuses to let go. He thinks it's not just time for somebody to apologize, but to do something about it.
"No one knows the price that I've paid for what I've gotten out of this world and this life," he says. "My efforts represented sacrifices untold, indescribable. They don't know what my mother went through to see that I had opportunities, and even the fundamentals such as food and clothing and so forth. They don't know what my grandfather, on my father's side, paid in terms of taxes so that white young men could go to the University of Oklahoma, where my own father could not go.
"And I don't see any reason why I should get over that kind of exploitation of my immediate family—my father, my grandfather, my mother, and so forth. I see no reason I should get over it. I see every reason why there should be compensation, apologies, particularly in the hypocrisy it's represented, in their saying on the one hand that all men are created equal, and on the other hand, them saying if they're created equal, some are more equal than others."
...
"People are running around apologizing for slavery. What about that awful period since slavery—Reconstruction, Jim Crow and all the rest? And what about the enormous wealth that was built up by black labor? If I was sitting on a billion dollars that someone had made when I sat on them, I probably would not be slow to apologize, if that's all it takes. I think that's little to pay for the gazillions that black people built up—the wealth of this country—with their labor, and now you're going to say I'm sorry I beat the hell out of you for all these years? That's not enough. They ought to develop some kind of modus operandi that they can do something else—something to absolve themselves of three centuries of guilt from which they are the direct beneficiaries."
Full story: http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A88747
It's a funny thing: So many people are opposed to the idea of even apologizing for slavery, and yet it costs them nothing, as Franklin rightly points out. When there's that large a gap between the maximum that one side is willing to offer and the minimum that the other side is willing to accept, the issue is not going to be easily resolved.
I'm just disappointed that, more than a hundred and forty years later, we haven't fully dealt with the legacy of slavery yet. Maybe in another century or so...