?So the US Congress has formally apologised for slavery and the institution and application of Jim Crow Laws, laws which institutionalised slavery in a different form in the post-Emancipation period–1863 into the 20th century. The statement from the Congress "acknowledges the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow laws" that enshrined racial segregation at the state and local levels in the US well into the 1960s.
It is a significant development, but not nearly enough. The inhumane brutality of generations of black Americans, the lasting psychological trauma and displacement, the generational under- development that was instituted by slavery, lasting to the present, cannot simply be wiped away with a mere apology, even if it comes from the US House of Representatives and Senate. Formal slavery, and the "slavery in another form" which followed the 1863 declaration in the US, morphed into other forms of economic and social exploitation and oppression of non-white, non-European peoples into the 20th century.
The exploitative pursuit was based on the foundation philosophy held (one that continues in the present) by the white western world that the black/non-white man was/is inherently inferior to the white man and was indeed placed on the Earth for use and abuse by the white man. Thirty-three years after the Emancipation Declaration, the US Supreme Court in the Plessy vs Fergusson case denied an American shoemaker with a trace of black blood the right to ride in the whites-only compartment of a Louisiana train, thereby legitimising what was considered the basic inferiority of blacks.
That basic philosophy has been at the core of white attitudes to blacks for 500 years and continues to exist. "Let us make no mistake, this resolution will not fix lingering injustices. While we are proud of this resolution and believe it is long overdue, the real work lies ahead," said the mover of the motion in the US Senate, Tom Harkin, a Democrat from Iowa.
The apology in the Congress goes further to make the point that slavery by another name is far from over when it "expresses its recommitment to the principle that all people are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and calls on all people of the United States to work toward eliminating racial prejudices, injustices, and discrimination from our society." Here is an acknowledgement that slavery and the hundred years and more of history after emancipation in the US and around the world where this super power and its European allies have ruled, are far from being at an end.
That is why an apology, as the one given by the US Congress, does not come close to being adequate for what former US President George W Bush, in one of his saner moments, called "one of the greatest crimes of history." President Bush was then (2003) on a trip to Goree Island in Senegal, a major slave trading port. He was perhaps emotionally hustled into the statement by being so close to the reality of this most inhumane of activities in the history of man. The apology is insufficient too because it has been so late in coming.
Perhaps the reality of a black man being in office at the White House has had something to do with this pang of conscience which seems to have hit the US Congress; more so that an attempt in 2008 to bring such a motion to the Senate was not even given a hearing. The issue of the lateness of the apology and acknowledgement is also raised in the context of the US Congress having apologised 21 years ago, 1988, for the interment and mistreatment of Japanese people in the US after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour.
Why an apology to the Japanese for a far less heinous and far more recent crime came before an acknowledgement of the horror of slavery and Jim Crow Laws? Maybe there is a kind of unwitting logic to it: the Congress could not have apologised to African-Americans while racism, discrimina-tion and inequity raged on through the 20th century and, according to the mover of the motion, still exists, still entrenched in the society, economy and polity of the US.
This latter continuing condition of institutionalised slavery and fundamental discrimination against peoples of colour in American and European societies is not considered by the apologists for slavery. How come the humanitarian consideration was powerless in the 100 years of exploitation after Emancipation in the US and Britain? The North Atlantic community enjoyed the enormous economic benefits of the exploitation of black people in South Africa, in the Congo, non-white peoples in India, China, Latin America and the Caribbean for 100 years after emancipation.
Why did this new condition of concern for humanity not save the Native American population from almost total decimation by marauding European settlers seeking to acquire gold and lands, the lands occupied for generations by the Red Men of the American plains and mountains? As Huck Finn would have said, why did the Congress take 200 years to "fess-up" over the brutal capture of the Native American and the lands he had settled on?
The apology, as expressed in the Congress, is also insufficient as it makes sure to include the following very significant qualification: "Nothing in this resolution (a) authorises or supports any claim against the United States; or (b) serves as a settlement of any claim against the United States."
The Black Caucus of the US Congress, while having not yet issued a full statement on the apology, is not impressed, particularly with the attempt to pre-empt any move by groups and individuals to seek financial and other forms of reparations for the historically odious attitudes and behaviours of white society against blacks.
What is so wrong with reparations? American and British societies compensated Jewish society with Palestinian lands, with the Americans continuing for decades now to annually transfer billions to Israel along with American protection. What is that if not reparation for the wrong inflicted on the Jews by Hitler? Why all the concerns about the complications of reparations to black Americans and indeed the affected parts of the non-white world?
