Deepest Apologies

After all the trash they have given Bill Clinton these past few months for not being honest in admitting to sins no one has even been able to prove transpired, you'd think conservatives would find some solace in the truthful remarks the President made on his tour through Africa. At least, you'd think, they would be pleased that he's not one who can lie before a crowd of school children. Not a man who could stand, as head of the great, big, powerful United States, before innocent youngsters who face life in a country beset with woes of violence and poverty and pretend as if that disparity was okay, as if that was part of the acceptable, natural order of things.

What he did do was observe a rather unremarkable truth during his address to a schoolhouse in Uganda at the end of March: "Going back to the time before we were even a nation, European Americans received the fruits of the slave trade. And we were wrong in that." Unlike the nebulous details of the Lewinsky scandal, everything Clinton spoke of at that point is factually accurate. Slavery did exist, and slavery was wrong. White Americans, as members of a governing body which sanctioned and exploited slavery, have intentionally benefited from the consequences. That is wrong as well.

But rather than celebrating President Clinton's respectable gesture, and admire his humility in confessing that America has done wrong, conservatives have leapt ignobly to attack Clinton's expression of error and shun blame for what was among the most heinous crimes this country has ever committed. And they have managed to come up with a bevy of insipid excuses for their petty outrage.

In subsequent weeks, we have seen conservatives making the talk show circuits and publishing editorials berating Clinton for his comments in Uganda. Conservative Robert Novak is upset not just because America did nothing wrong, but because in his warped view, slavery was something right. After noting some prominent black Americans, Novak arrogantly said that "if it hadn't been for slavery, they wouldn't even be in America, would they?" Pat Buchanan seems to be in denial about the horrors of slavery, remarking in his syndicated column that "America deserves better than to have Clinton romping around sub-Saharan Africa, counting cheap graces by apologizing for sins this nation never committed." What's more, Buchanan believes that since his own ancestors never owned slaves, and--being of Irish descent, were persecuted themselves--he should be absolved from the crime of slavery.

Of these ideas, Novak's suggestion that the black people of this country ought be grateful that our ancestors were taken away from everything familiar to them on the coasts of West Africa and kept as slaves for centuries is the most banal. I don't want to shock Novak, but the Middle Passage was not quite a Carnival cruise. Patterns of whip lashes on the backs of slaves weren't regarded as pretty decorations. And being raped to breed bastard children that would be sold away from you wasn't exactly a good ol' romp in the hay.

If the success of blacks today speaks to anything, it is to their own genius, strength and amazing grace, not to what Novak seem to believe was American generosity. And what of the not-so-successful blacks, those constituting the majority of the black population whose lives on the bottom rung of America's social and economic ladder are a testament to slavery's continuing legacy? Their predicament stands in answer to Buchanan's observations that because we as a nation today are different from antebellum America, this nation has nothing to repent. The point is that the consequences of slavery persist in plaguing a whole segment of American citizens. While we must look towards the future, the contemporary problems most immediately affecting black communities of poor education, illegitimacy, drug use and nihilism can all be traced back to the institution of slavery. And that is why white America, as a governing body, should be sorry that slavery ever occurred, because its repercussions must be dealt with today.

Buchanan also seems to think that because neither he nor members of his direct lineage were responsible for slavery, he is excused from collective responsibility. I find this notion most ironic. How quick Buchanan and other white Americans are to excuse themselves from the collective responsibility they have by virtue of their membership in the dominant ruling majority, since they individually did nothing to deserve such "burdens." Yet how reticent they are on giving up the collective privileges of that membership--their access to a power structure against which blacks can never openly compete, but which they must struggle to enter, or their ability to lead lives and claim identities unharried by the stigmas and stresses of black skin--despite the fact that they are no more deserving of that either.

White skin in this country is still the most precious of social heirlooms, one which is, by most, unquestionably accepted. But when it comes to the darker side of their inheritance, rhetoric changes to "not me," "not my fault," "not my problem."

Funny how all it took for the racist demons of this country to pop out was for the President to admit to national guilt. It's not as if he offered any portion of the $1.4 trillion this nation made off of slavery in reparation, or even as if he actually apologized. If the President can't even admit that this country was and continues to be wrong for reaping the benefits of slavery, what does the future hold for those who continue, alone, to reap the woes?

Carine M. Williams '00 is a African-American studies and social anthropology concentrator in Leverett House. Her column appears on alternate Wednesdays.