Kilson Must Tell Us When It Is Time for Forgiveness

While I concur with Professor Martin Kilson to the extent that we both would find insensitive a memorial to the Confederate war dead, I must disagree with, and ask for clarification of, his logic on perpetrators, victims and forgiveness of slavery.

Professor Kilson professes belief in forgiveness, but he profoundly qualifies this belief. "The millions of injured souls...victimized by the white Americans who controlled and benefitted from American slavocracy, have no moral obligation to, as it were, make the first move on that complicated road toward Christian forgiveness.... Those who perpetrate evil and human devastation on the scale of American slavocracy have a prior duty to assuage their wrongdoing, to redeem their transgression against the human souls of African-Americans."

Exactly who is supposed to extend this apology? The last Confederate widow died in the 1960s. To be sure, perpetrators of the Jim Crow South will live for decades; is Professor Kilson referring to these men and women? Or am I, as descendant of Southern "slavocrats," supposed to apologize?

I reject any atavistic responsibility for my ancestors' repugnant acts. I am sorry for slavery like I am sorry for the Holocaust (no family connections there). I must confess feeling closer to the experience of slavery because I have long known that this is part of my national and personal history, whereas the Holocaust was very foreign to this Southerner who knew no Jews until age 12. But I will not bear this burden; I was born with original sin in general, not the sin of slavery in particular. Some descendants of slaves may insist upon internalizing the pain of slavery--that is their choice. My choice--and I do have a choice--is otherwise. There is no "reciprocity imperative," at least concerning slavery per se. All the participants--perpetrators and victims--are dead.

(Yes, we must remember slavery, the Holocaust and other extreme human tragedies. As an historian, I embrace my duty to facilitate this. But collective memory outlives collective responsibility.)

Yes, it does "sound rather un-Christian" to qualify one's forgiveness. True, forgiveness can be very difficult. It would be immodest, if not profane, for any of us to claim that we could act similarly to Pope John Paul II when he extended his unsolicited forgiveness to his would-be assassin in 1981. But we can admire this deed as a model for emulation.

Professor Kilson's temporal estimation is perhaps the most confusing part of his letter. "Precisely when that mature stage of a redeeming process vis-a-vis whites' maiming of black souls through American slavocracy will be fulfilled is anyone's guess." It is "perhaps another century away...The time required for the violators of Jewish and black souls to fulfill a viable redeeming process has not yet transpired."

Why? Why must it take so long? I would like to ask Professor Kilson to define "that mature stage" and to inform us how we will recognize it. Does he mean that I must accept atavistic guilt and do penance? Does he refer to a time when racism no longer exists in this country of 250 million and rising? "From where I sit," it appears that prejudice will not be eliminated until the Last Judgment. Or does Professor Kilson mean that the mature stage will be around the year 2070, when the last Civil Rights widow tells all--that is, when the victims of broadly institutionalized American racism no longer inhabit the earth?

Or will the "mature stage have been attained when racism, repression and exploitation have been reduced to (quantifiable?) small amounts? What can I do, what can we as Americans do, to soothe our collective soul? --Jeffrey W. Vanke   Ph.D. Candidate in History