Swain on Slavery: A Response (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124578001429942845.html)

June 23, 2009 by Carol M. Swain

Carol Swain of Vanderbilt University writes in with this response to our Friday item on the Senate's bill apologizing for slavery and segregation:

Mr. Taranto expresses astonishment at my statement that the Senate's resolution apologizing for slavery was meaningless, and at my position that the Republican Party needed to initiate the apology because it "would have [helped] shed that racist scab on the party." The quotation attributed to me is correct. A scab forms in the process of healing, and when it sloughs off the healing process is complete.

As some of you know, the apology issue is dear to my heart. My position on this matter has been published in several forums. See "An Apology for Slavery," Washington Post, July 16, 2005; and "Saying Sorry," a Feb. 5, 2005, interview with Marvin Olasky of World Magazine ("Saying Sorry"). I contend that what was done last week was meaningless to me and will do absolute zilch to promote racial healing and reconciliation.

Despite a barrage of criticisms, I stand firmly behind my Washington Post comments. It is the Republican Party that has alienated minorities in recent decades by a series of high profile racist incidents. By not taking the leadership role in crafting a national apology when it was in power, the Republican Party missed an important opportunity to help heal America. It also missed an opportunity to reclaim its faded legacy as the party of civil rights and the party of Lincoln.

I am astonished at how easy it is for some Republicans to deny their party has a serious race problem. In a few days, I anticipate releasing an advice letter I wrote to President Bush about this matter. I am very aware of the grand history of the Republican Party and would love to see the party reclaim the mantle of Lincoln and integrate its membership with Americans who share the values it once espoused.

Lastly, my desire to pursue an apology came after I became an active participant in the reparations debates associated with Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree and TransAfrica founder Randall Robinson. Although I oppose slave reparations, I believe much good could come from an apology. I have heard scores of elderly African-Americans state that they had no interest in monetary reparations. In fact, many said that there was not enough money in the world to repair the damage done to their ancestors. They expressed a desire for the government to acknowledge the injustice of slavery and the Jim Crow period that followed.

Likewise, I have had numerous Southern white women approach me with tears in their eyes to offer personal apologies for what their people did to my people. Clearly, I am not the appropriate person to receive an apology for what the U.S. government failed to prevent. My pursuit of an apology is a consequence of my hearing the pain of real people. It is clear to me that America would benefit by dealing with this issue in a forthright manner. The voice-vote Senate apology fails to meet my standards for how the matter ought to have been handled.