(This is the second and concluding segment of “Our national debt to blacks is real.”)
Many Americans, white and black, have started from nothing and reached great heights, but many more have used the gifts rightly handed down from earlier generations as much-needed and appreciated steps on that metaphorical ladder. To deny or ignore the value of inherited wealth, even modest wealth, and all of the things that come along with it, is to turn your back on reality and common sense.
The argument here is merely that white America should acknowledge its collective debt that stems virtually on a direct line from slavery and its seemingly more subtle but almost equally as sinister offspring like Jim Crow and segregation. Nobody wants to do that, because we’ve all seen enough of the workings of the legal profession to understand that such an admission might carry along with it real dangers.
But what if the national discussion about reparations could be undertaken on a basis that wouldn’t be so terrifying and thus unthinkable to the white majority? What if we set down some ground rules that started with the concession from white America about the validity of the unpaid debt to black America?
The ground rules could also make it clear that individual citizens don’t bear a financial responsibility to redress that wrong. That caveat would have to be included in order to get the discussion moving in the first place, and in any event, how could a decision be made about which Americans had to pony up some dough for the pot? Would anyone really be able to muster the audacity to suggest that a Native American should somehow fish around in his pocket for change from the slot machines to hand over to his black neighbor in order to redress the shabby treatment that blacks received at the hands of whites? The excruciating irony of such a notion might be enough to portend the disintegration of the cosmos.
Nope, there’s no way to assess that kind of fee, and no prevailing sentiment or political will to do so anyway. Ignoring an obligation simply because it’s cumbersome, embarrassing and unpopular isn’t anything to be proud of, but there it is.
But we could foster the long-overdue healing process with black Americans by acknowledging that they have been collectively wronged. And we, as a nation, could demand from our political leaders that a fund be established to help those most in need. Not welfare, not even individual payments, but rather a commitment to those at the very bottom that those at the top will try to help, rather than to simply write them off as disposable, which is what we do now with our prison system. Stomping your feet and insisting that we owe them nothing whatsoever doesn’t make it so.
The details of how this could be accomplished are – at least initially – less important than making the gesture itself, though the commitment of resources would still have to be genuine. Simply doling out cash would not only be ineffective and politically unthinkable, it would also further confuse the issue and alienate white Americans who might, deep in their hearts, know that the playing field as always been uneven.
Think of real programs that would offer one-time help in the form of education grants or job retraining for some of the millions of blacks either simply bypassed by society or ensnared in our grotesque criminal justice sideshow. The various ways of offering help are probably endless, but all of it could and should be tied to the idea that the least advantaged in our society from this particular group can rightly lay claim to this second chance. Some significant percentage, perhaps even a distressingly high percentage, will fail to take advantage of such an unprecedented opportunity, but that’s no reason not to extend it.
I am well aware that there is not much popular sentiment for such an idea, and certainly not much political will, but that doesn’t make the notion unsound, and it certainly doesn’t mean that the moral obligation somehow vanishes.
We (White America) have already spent an enormous amount of time and energy trying to paper over and hide what is our greatest national shame. We have been in denial for more than 200 years. Insisting that we bear no responsibility for the plight of so many blacks at the bottom rung of society is no more absurd and logic-defying than when the Soviets insisted that nothing had happened at Chernobyl.
Having a president step up to the podium and offer a genuine admission of our collective guilt and issue an apology to Black America would be a truly cleansing and cathartic moment for a country that remains the greatest on Earth.
And ironically, such an admission would just make us that much greater.
It will be much easier to simply say a lot of nice things about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as we dedicate that swell statue in Washington, D.C. Still, it’s hard not to imagine that given the choice between a genuine acknowledgment of our unpaid debt to Black America and an admittedly imposing bit of sculpture, Dr. King would have opted for the former. I haven’t got a clue about how he would have felt about it being done by a Chinese artist.
- T.S. O’Connell
