Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Profound Regret: Slavery, Maryland and Non-Apologies.

Yesterday the the Maryland House of Delegates approved a bill that acknowledged the state's involvement in the slave trade and expressed profound regret for its role. From the Baltimore Sun:
The passage of both versions follows decades of wrangling over the question, and the Virginia legislature's recent acknowledgement of that state's role in slavery. The resolutions stop short of an outright apology, which has raised the question of reparations in other states.

"I think it was long overdue and I am pleased that the state of Maryland has taken this historic step," said Del. Michael L. Vaughn, a Prince George's County Democrat who sponsored the House resolution.

The House measure states in part: "Slavery's legacy has afflicted the citizens of our state down to the present. ... The state of Maryland expresses profound regret for the role that Maryland played in instituting and maintaining slavery and for the discrimination that was slavery's legacy."
The Maryland Senate had approved a similar bill last month.

First, the fact that the state of Maryland was involved in the slave trade is not new information, in fact it is very old information. Second, profound regret means nothing. I have profound regret that I didn't go to Harvard, but the fact is I didn't and nothing can change that fact.

These state wide "apologies" or non-apologies are more an attempt to appear inclusive than anyting else. Slavery was bad, no one seriously doubts it and no one seriously believes that people were not harmed by the slave trade. But the people who were harmed are dead. Teh people who engaged in the slave trade are dead. The slave trade, while morally abhorrant, was perfectly legal. These are historical facts and nothing we can do will change them.

That racial problems still exist in this country is not a result of the slave trade, but a result of our inability to look past our history to our current situation. Current racial problems don't stem from a state's invovlement in teh slave trade, but from the state's inability to address real problems of culture, crime and demographics. I will admit to the possiblity that slavery had a hand in creation of the inequities, but their continuation is not the fault of slavery but failure of leadership and a failure of responsibility.

1 comment:

Blair said...

The primary argument against repartions is that African Americans enjoy much higher standards of living than Africans who ancestors were not transported from Africa to the United States, this makes them beneficiaries rather than victims of the slave traded. (Blacks as well as whites owned slaves. About 6 percent of whites and 1.6 percent of free blacks owned slaves.)

However, due to Jim Crow laws in the South and defacto segregation in the North, African Americans are not equal beneficiares with whites. This justify the continuation of affirmative action and social programs that tend to benefit African Americas.

If paid, reparations would likely have unintended consequences. According to studies, the average total wealth of whites in the United States is about $80,000, much of it equity in their homes. If we paid $80,000 to each African American family, it could buy a car and serve as a nice downpayment on a house, but it wouldn't pay the monthly morgage payment. The impact would vanish in a single generation. Having paid reparations, white Americans would no longer feel obliged to support affirmative action and social programs that tend to benefit blacks.