Wednesday, January 24, 2007
All due apologies
Elizabeth Strother
Recent columns
- For those who have too little
- Time to gather mountain views
- Our blind spot on roads
- Following the money trail
From the RoundTable blog
Initially, I was the only one on the editorial board who thought it'd be a good idea for Virginia's General Assembly to apologize for the state's history of black slavery.
Then Del. Frank Hargrove opened his mouth.
His ignorance and appalling condescension changed minds: If a respected state lawmaker could be so clueless, perhaps closer attention to the atrocities of the past and frictions of the present is in order.
What Hargrove said, in response to black legislators who are asking the General Assembly for a resolution apologizing for slavery, was, "our black citizens should get over it." He went on to offend Jews, too.
So, we got behind the resolution, for reasons I'd as soon not have had.
My colleagues had made all sorts of good arguments against the apology, but none that suggested it wasn't actually warranted.
An apology would be meaningless, the thinking went.
It would be one of those feel-good gestures that would give lawmakers a chance to cast a black-friendly vote without actually doing anything to benefit minorities.
It smelled of political correctness and hypocrisy.
The same lawmakers who felt compelled to vote for the discriminatory "Marriage Amendment" to Virginia's constitution, lest they fail a religious-right litmus test, might feel compelled to vote for the slavery apology, lest they fail a civil-rights litmus test.
Not Hargrove, he later proved -- but the furor over his remarks makes the P.C./hypocrisy dynamic all the more likely.
And, I had to agree with my colleagues, it's not as if white lawmakers offered up the resolution in a humble attempt to heal festering racial wounds. Black lawmakers have had to ask.
I understood all of those objections, but I thought they were beside the point.
I thought, and still think, an apology is a good idea because one is due.
One is past due.
And I believe in contrition, forgiveness and reconciliation. I wish for real reconciliation between black Americans and white and realize that it is my people who, in the past, created a legal and psychological divide.
Let me explain what I mean by real reconciliation.
As a child, I read stacks of Readers' Digests that my grandparents had passed along to my parents. I mainly remember skipping around looking for the jokes, but I read articles, too, and one made a lasting impression.
A woman told her own story of having suffered terrible burns and her months of agonizing recovery. One hospital worker was particularly gentle and caring, and she grew to love him.
During one of many chats, he mentioned his wife's alma mater. But that's a black college, the woman commented. Why would your wife go there? Whereupon he gently informed her that he was black.
There was nothing wrong with the woman's eyes. She could see, better than normal apparently. In her time of extreme need, she saw only the person, not his skin. Her many prejudices against black people, she wrote, fell away.
Many black people hold prejudices about white people, too -- out of ignorance, self-protection, resentment; the reasons are as varied as people's personalities and experiences, I'm sure.
Real reconciliation will be when we all see each other, and don't start with the color of skin.
I've seen this happen in times of extreme need. After the Oklahoma City bombing and the Sept. 11 attacks, most of us were just Americans, bound by our common confusion, our need for each other and our grief. The scales fell away from our eyes -- but only for a while.
A return to normal always means putting back the old armor.
I don't think an apology for historic wrongs would fix everything, but I think it's a place to start healing. Because it's due.
I knew little -- and probably nothing that was accurate -- about faiths other than my own Catholicism when I was growing up. So I learned only as an adult that Southern Baptists are "Southern" because they separated from Northern Baptist churches over the issue of slavery more than a century and a half ago.
I bet few black Americans have that gap in their knowledge of history.
Once I knew the Southern Baptist Convention was rooted in racism, I viewed it through that prism, suspiciously, even though I knew white Southern Baptists who held no racist views.
Then in 1995, the Southern Baptist Convention apologized. And not halfheartedly. Representatives passed a resolution that denounced racism, repudiated "historical acts of evil such as slavery," apologized and asked forgiveness. It passed to a standing ovation.
I don't know if many black Americans were moved; reconciliation is a two-way street, and only those apologies that can be accepted can have a healing effect.
It made a difference to me, though. I no longer think the Southern Baptists, as a group, might have a hidden racist agenda. They denounced that part of their past.
Virginia should too.
Strother is a member of The Roanoke Times editorial board.
