For those who might be interested in context, this particular post is a response to this comment by ELAshley over at a thread at ER's blog. Rather than take up space there, I thought I would respond here. Here is the comment in full:
"we are just a bit late to get into the game of moral rectitude. And once we enter it, our efforts at righteousness tend to fail the test of sincerity."
I might agree with this had I personally been alive during the aforementioned slave trade and genocide, but I wasn't. Tim Wise therefore should look to his own tie when he decides again to suggest I'm a bit late into the game; or you for that matter, ER. We're not late! We're right on time!
I might agree if any Blacks today lived as slaves, or any indigenous people living today had suffered genocide in this country. Again, Mr. Wise should look to his own presumptuous tie before suggesting I have no business being outraged by the level of outrage and misplaced venom Jeremiah Wright spills from his lips.
Mr. Wise gets it very wrong if he thinks Wright is merely "reminding" us of America's past. Wright's rhetoric condemns the Present because of the past. You, ER, are not your father. Nor your grandfather. You are not responsible for their sins.
As to responsibility, I have NONE whatsoever except to ensure it never happens again. That's not to say I don't acknowledge the past; how can I not!? But I cannot change the past, neither can you or anyone else. Drlobojo is right; it's time to rethink race, class, and ethnicity in America, NOT dredge up a past that has little relevance to where we are today.
There's a lot we can do to make things better for Blacks specifically. But if you really want to feel guilty for their plight in America, then blame yourself for what this government did, in OUR lifetime, to separate fathers from their families just so their families could have food and shelter.... in the projects. Feel guilty about this governments policy of rewarding illegitimate births. Feel guilty about the quality of entertainment these young children receive through music, television, and bling; steeped in degradation, misogyny, hedonism, drugs and booty.
Fix the culture. Demand it of D.C. Demand they stop all the social experimentation and go back to what worked. Stop castigating men like Bill Cosby for speaking the truth, and for God's sake stop rewarding race pimps like Jackson, Sharpton, Farrakhan, and Wright for perpetuating the scam of Black Victimhood.
Tim Wise's essay may have been well written, but it's filled with crap.
One minor quibble with this comment can be dispensed with easily enough. I the second to last paragraph, he writes that we should demand that our politicians "fix the culture". That isn't the way it works, nor should it. In a land with freedom of expression, we should allow and open up all sorts of cultural experiments, rather than restrict them. Politics will always be behind the curve when it comes to cultural expression. Rather than surrender to those who whine the most, we should accept even those expressions we find abhorrent - especially because they represent part of what America is. This goes equally for the left and right.
The bulk of my own reflection concerns the opening paragraph, however, in which he quite explicitly absolves himself of any responsibility for dealing honestly with our history because he was not a slave owner, nor did he participate in lynching, nor any other example of extreme racial violence. He sees appeals to these realities as instilling something called white guilt, the perpetuation of a sense of remorse on our part for these historic cruelties.
This particular point of view, while prevalent, is a distraction, the creation of those who do not wish the issue of race to be addressed. I am not saying that ELAshley is a racist. I am saying the line of argument he is employing is a creation of racists, however. Accepting this particular set of terms with which to conduct a discussion of race, while seemingly high-minded, in fact misses the point and offers a straw argument that allows those who bear the fruits of our racist past to avoid seeing and accepting responsibility for the role we continue to play in keeping it alive.
History isn't something we can pick and choose. It is, to our collective life, like genetics. It is built in to the very fiber of our being as a people. It is not determinative - I do not believe in fate - but it certainly creates conditions and circumstances and a context which can restrict the choices available to us. Our nation is one with a horrendous history of racially-inspired violence. Enshrined in our Constitution with the one-third clause, which in turn was interpreted by Chief Justice Roger Taney as declaring that no blacks had any rights a white person need respect (in Dred Scott v. Sanford), and returning after the Civil War with the introduction of racial segregation and socio-economic peonage across much of the former Confederacy, we have not just a social history of racial violence, but an official, legal history with which to contend.
Even more insidious, we are the beneficiaries of the economic exploitation of blacks, sitting on piles of wealth gained through the enslaved sweat of other human beings. This collective economic capital is a reminder that our national wealth was stolen from its rightful owners through legal means. Consider, just for a moment, the insurance industry. While still early in its formation, and hardly the financial giant it would become, it is nonetheless true that several antecedents to currently existing insurance companies made money by insuring the personal property of slave owners, including slaves. Furthermore, these same slaves, used as human capital, were capital assets individuals used as collateral for loans with banks, enriching banks through the income from interest payments. Nascent southern industry was highly profitable precisely because it used wage-free slave labor - fees were paid to slave owners which were far below what might have been paid as wages.
These examples, and they are just a sampling of the way our collective wealth was accumulated through slavery, should be proof enough that we sit atop piles of money drenched in the blood and sweat of those denied any human rights, indeed any humanity at all. While I, or ELAhsley, or whomever, might not personally profit from such wealth, our nation as a whole is far wealthier than it might otherwise be precisely because of slave labor. This stolen wealth lies at the heart of part of the argument, not just for responsibility, but for reparations as well.
Now, to be more pointed, the issue of "guilt" sounds very high-minded, but by removing oneself from any historic chain of responsibility by this trick, we are in the presence of someone who is denying not just personal responsibility for these past crimes (which I would hardly endorse), but from current participation in a society benefiting from the past exploitation and violence directed against an entire class of individuals. No human being exists free from the weight of history; it can be liberating, to be sure, but it also is false, because we cannot escape history that way. Part of being a responsible human being includes accepting the burdens history places upon us as individuals who bear this weight. There is no "white guilt", the creation of blacks and white liberals to perpetuate a sense of victimhood among blacks and perpetual agony among whites for past grievances. Rather, there is the responsibility we, as the inheritors of wealth and myriad social and cultural benefits bear. To those to whom much is given, much is also required.
My hope, in regards to the on-going discussion of race, is that we can actually move past this phony argument, expose it for the fallacious non-argument it is, and deal with the issue honestly. My further hope is that we can be honest enough to see ways to see race not as the stumbling block or destroyer of our social fabric, but part of the warp and woof of our collective lives; for all the hatred and bitterness and violence, it is inescapable as a social and historical fact of our lives as Americans. I would much rather we face it as it is, rather than pretend it exists other than it does.
