Congress Must Apologize for Lasting Evils of Slavery

A couple of years ago, when Rep. Tony Hall (D-Ohio) asked Congress to officially apologize for slavery, he was blasted from pillar to post. Irate whites called his resolution wasteful and racist. Many blacks ridiculed it as much too little and much too late.

On Monday, Hall reintroduced the resolution, which has been expanded. Hall wants Congress not only to apologize for slavery but to set up a commission to examine slavery’s legacy, fund education programs to study slavery’s effects and establish a national slavery museum. Almost certainly he’ll be hammered again with the argument that it’s unfair to blame today’s whites for slavery, and that blacks have had a century and a half to shake off its horrors. This is a wrong-headed and fallacious argument.

The U.S. government, businesses and majority whites, not just a handful of Southern plantation owners, profited and benefited from slavery. The U.S. government encoded slavery into the Constitution, and protected and nourished it for a century.

Traders, insurance companies, bankers, shippers and landowners made billions off it. Their ill-gotten profits fueled America’s industrial might.

Meanwhile, white labor groups for decades after slavery ended ensured that blacks were excluded from unions and the trades and confined to the dirtiest, poorest-paying jobs. While many whites and nonwhite immigrants did come to America after the Civil War, they were not subjected to the decades of racial terror and legal segregation that blacks were subjected to.

Through the decades of slavery and Jim Crow segregation, African Americans were transformed into the poster group for racial dysfunction. The image of blacks as lazy, as prone to crime and violence, as irresponsible and sexually predatory, has stoked white fears and hostility and has served as the standard rationale for lynchings, racial assaults, hate crimes and police violence.

The fact that some blacks today earn more and live better than ever, and that some have gotten boosts from welfare, social and education programs, civil rights legislation or affirmative action programs, does not mean that America has shaken the hideous legacy of slavery.

Recent polls by the National Conference for Community and Justice, a Washington, D.C., public policy group, found that blacks are still overwhelmingly the victims of racial discrimination. And the Leadership Council on Civil Rights found that young blacks are far more likely than whites to be imprisoned for similar crimes.

Blacks continue to have the highest or near highest rates of poverty and infant mortality. They are more likely to be the victims of violence or suffer from HIV/AIDS than any other group in America. They are more likely than nonwhites to live in segregated neighborhoods, be refused business loans and attend decrepit, failed public schools.

The beating of black motorist Rodney King in Los Angeles, the shooting of Amadou Diallo and the torture of Abner Louima in New York City and the routine racial profiling of young black males across the nation are ample proof that blacks are still at grave risk from police violence. Blame this on the legacy of slavery.

There are ample precedents of state and federal governments issuing apologies and payments for past wrongs committed against African Americans. In 1997, the U.S. government issued a presidential apology and admitted it was legally liable to pay $10 million to the black survivors and family members of the 20-year-long syphilis experiment begun in the 1930s by the U.S. Public Health Service.

In 1994, the Florida state legislature agreed to make payments to the survivors and relatives of those who lost their lives and property when a white mob destroyed the all-black town of Rosewood in 1923. In Oklahoma, state legislators are considering reparations payments to the survivors of the Tulsa massacre of 1921. And in May, the Chicago City Council, with the blessing of Mayor Richard M. Daley, backed a congressional bill by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) to bankroll a commission to study the feasibility of paying reparations for slavery.

The brutal truth is that the hinge of America’s continuing racial divide is its brutal mistreatment of blacks. This can be directly traced to the monstrous legacy of slavery. That’s why Hall is legally and morally right to demand that Congress apologize for that mistreatment. And Congress should do the right thing and issue that apology.