Slavery Reparations? Healing the Wounds of the Past
To the Editor:
Re “Ending the Slavery Blame-Game,” by Henry Louis Gates Jr. (Op-Ed, April 23):
The African role in facilitating the slave trade is undisputed. But to suggest a moral equivalence (“complicit alike”) between the respective roles of African and European/American participants in the slave trade, as Professor Gates does, is unjust.
No oppressive institution in history has carried on or endured without some form of complicity of “inside” or native collaborators. This was true, to varying degrees, of colonialism, apartheid, even the Holocaust. Yet we do not on that count alone characterize any of these episodes in human history as some sort of a joint venture between equally complicit actors.
No African government that exists today had any part in, or bears any responsibility for, slavery, the slave trade or Jim Crow in any part of colonial and postcolonial America. The same cannot be said of the United States government.
As far as the moral legitimacy of claims for race-based restorative justice in America goes, that, in the end, is all that matters.
H. Kwasi Prempeh
Plainfield, N.J., April 26, 2010
The writer is a professor at Seton Hall University School of Law and a native of Ghana.
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To the Editor:
Neither I nor any other African-Americans I know lose sleep over reparations. Nor in the age of Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe, and Idi Amin, the former president of Uganda, do we have any trouble viewing Africans as fully capable of despicable crimes.
If reparations are considered, the active involvement of Africans in enslaving and selling other Africans would not compromise a claim. Legally, all of the participants in criminal acts or civil wrongs are subject to punishment.
John Howard
Mount Vernon, N.Y., April 24, 2010
The writer is professor emeritus of constitutional law at Purchase College, SUNY.
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To the Editor:
Whether Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr. is wrong or right, perhaps his Op-Ed article will produce a true debate in the country over slavery, leading to healing. For years now, Representative John Conyers of Michigan has introduced legislation to form a commission to study reparations. But the legislation has gotten nowhere. There hasn’t even been a hearing or a public debate on the issue.
Doesn’t this divisive and vexing issue deserve a public discussion similar to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that was formed after apartheid in South Africa? So I commend Professor Gates for starting a discussion that should have been had in 1910 rather than 2010.
Reparations for slavery will become a nonissue only when we have the courage to acknowledge that it is worthy of a real public debate and decision.
Brian Gilmore
Washington, April 26, 2010
The writer is a professor at Howard University School of Law.
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To the Editor:
Henry Louis Gates Jr. discusses honestly the major role played by Africans in the slave trade and mentions an apology to African-Americans by President Mathieu Kérékou of Benin. In 1999, Mr. Kérékou invited representatives of slave-trading countries to an event in Benin. Participants included citizens of Richmond, Va., the largest American interstate slave trading market, which has taken steps to acknowledge its history, and Liverpool, England, where the city council has apologized for its leading role in the trans-Atlantic trade.
In April 2000, a delegation from Benin, including four government ministers, came to Richmond to repeat their president’s apology. Three “Reconciliation” sculptures now stand at each point of the former slave triangle. Honest conversation about our shared history and how to make amends is occurring.
None of us are responsible for the wounds of the past, but we are all responsible for the acts of repair.
Rob Corcoran
Richmond, Va., April 25, 2010
The writer is national director of Initiatives of Change, which works to build trust and peace among people of diverse backgrounds, and the author of “Trustbuilding: An Honest Conversation on Race, Reconciliation and Responsibility.”
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