Daniels, Kilson Should Try Dialogue Rather than Invective

How dismaying, in this public forum, to be the subject of libel by a Harvard Fellow, Lee A. Daniels (letter, March 7), and by a tenured Harvard professor, Martin Kilson (letter, March 12). Kilson calls me a "neo-White supremacist," or something close to it. Daniels calls me a "neo-Confederate" and offers an object lesson of how to deconstruct an author's text--without quoting it (see my letter of February 21)--in order to show that the author meant to say exactly the opposite of what the author actually said.

Daniels calls me "a living historian who denies, albeit implicitly, that Slavery and its successor regime were not fully-fledged systems established and perpetuated by the white majority to steal the labor of African-Americans and deny them the opportunity to compete equally in society." In fact, I called slavery "repugnant," and I described the "successor regime" as "broadly institutionalized American racism."

Daniels continues, "But then, I suppose that's his backup for implicitly declaring there are no vestiges of the legacy of slavery and Grand Apartheid still at work in American Society." I stated in my letter that "racism, repression and exploitation" continue. This fact does not make all whites guilty. Not only did I not "implicitly" make the declarations ascribed to me, I explicitly stated the contrary.

(Daniels writes that the "history," to 1965, of "enormous, government sanctioned advantage...[of] whites over blacks...remains as fresh as today's news." The memory and legacy of that history might be today's news, but the history itself is past and precedes the memory of anyone not in his mid-thirties or older.)

Daniels' broader point discusses "the matter of the atonement White America must make for Slavery," and he accuses me of reducing this to "a matter of white individuals merely apologizing to black individuals." In fact, I denied both individual and "collective responsibility" (my words) for slavery, of whites living in the 1990s. One might argue that financially wealthy Americans (mostly whites, some African-Americans and others) owe poor Americans (mostly African-Americans, Latinos and native Americans, some whites and others) a better "opportunity to compete equally in society," but this is not the argument Daniels makes.

His letter concludes "that it takes a special attraction to the evasion of moral responsibility toward one's fellow human beings...to declare there's a statute of limitations on acts of extraordinary evil, whether or not they were committed by one's ancestors." While I wrote of the desirability of the forgiveness of sins (a spiritual matter), I concur that there should be no legal statute of limitations for the individual perpetrators of such evil deeds (a worldly matter), and that history should always recognize past evil acts for what they are. I reiterate my position that one bears no responsibility for deeds "committed by one's ancestors."

Professor Kilson continues to insist that "the perpetrators of cruel inhumanity [undertake] a viable redeeming process." (Kilson now distinguishes between the antebellum "institutionalizing perpetrators of slavocracy" and the rest of us perpetrators.) I have rejected being labeled such a perpetrator, and for this Kilson calls me "arrogant." I do not know what epithet I will merit for denying any "arrogance with a neo-White supremacist tilt to it," but I am unlikely to respond again, to a tenured Harvard professor or anyone else.

Kilson places the burden of his "reciprocity imperative" on "White Southerners in particular and White Americans in general." He groups together everyone from the most offensive slave-owners to Jim Crow racists to their descendants to anyone of European ancestry living in the South or holding U.S. citizenship. This group identification is stereotyping, to put it euphemistically.

In their libelous letter, Daniels and Kilson present case-studies of exacerbation of attempts at reconciliation. In my original letter, I implored Professor Kilson, "What can we Americans do to soothe our collective soul?" Daniels takes a 25 year-old who denies any personal guilt for the slavery of 130 years ago and he attacks that person as one might attack a Patrick Buchanan. Kilson calls my letter "morally vacuous."

Are these responses supposed to encourage efforts at dialogue? Although I will continue my efforts, I have witnessed the effects on many whites of responses and commentary in this vein; these whites turn away from efforts at inter-ethnic dialogue, and sometimes turn toward dialogue with racists of various degrees.

My message to Lee Daniels, Martin Kilson and other readers is this: If you find someone with whom you disagree on racial issues, do not automatically label that person a neo-Confederate White supremacist. Instead, ask questions and pursue meaningful dialogue on how we can live together as the one human race that we are. --Jeffrey W. Vanke   Ph.D. Candidate   Harvard History