There is an adage about the importance of studying history. It goes something like this: Knowing history is the key to avoid repeating the errors of the past.
Rendering history for large-scale recollection is easier said than done, though.
How we collectively think of past events is as much a reflection of current politics, as it is of what actually took place. Present circumstances frame how we see history.
Even if there is agreement on the facts of the past, the lessons, moral evaluations and relevance in the present day are all subject to drawing contentious conclusions. This is most pronounced when there is something material at stake, and this comes up when the question of justice is raised.
Thus, addressing the past officially, even how it is taught in schools, can invite protest and divide a public.
That is why memorialisation — or the processes of creating official representations of historical figures or events in the form of statues, museums, public art, plaques, holidays or otherwise documented narratives — is so easily politicised.
Yet, memorialisation is central to the task of beginning to confront historical wrongs. This is especially true when the focus is on what governments did since they tend to reflect larger publics or societies, and can implicate them. Every nation wants to see itself as good, as moral, as better than the others, and so they are not often capable of dealing honestly with crimes done in their name. When governments are typically slow to make amends with their former wrongdoings, more progressive institutions in society are left to take the lead.
More than 12 years ago, something of a breakthrough occurred in the United States around confronting the history of slavery, the systematic forced labour of African-Americans for the first 90 years after the country’s declared independence from the British.
No, there was not an official apology put forth (though the House of Representatives did in 2008). America is still unable to consider a national plan for reparations. Rather, an institution, Brown University, became the first American college to accept officially how it was enriched by slavery. It published an official report and erected a memorial in 2014. Inscripted on the polished stone are the words: ‘This memorial recognises Brown University’s connection to the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the work of Africans and African-Americans, enslaved and free, who helped build our university, Rhode Island, and the nation.’
This was a landmark turnabout for institutions of higher learning, which previously preferred to present themselves as being the first homes of abolitionism. They were in a state of denial.
Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, was particularly connected to slavery. It was physically constructed by unfree labourers. When it issued an official statement finally in 2011, it also claimed it regretted the “decades of delay in acknowledging slavery’s harmful legacy”.
More recently, Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., took steps in atoning for its inglorious record. Details emerged about its sale in 1838 of 272 slaves. The Jesuits who ran the college made roughly $3.3 million (Dh12.13 million) in today’s dollar value, which saved it from financial ruin. Many were sent to harsh plantations in the deep South, where the conditions tended to be even more cruel.
The New York Times reported on the University’s efforts to identify the descendants of the sold slaves and the newspaper followed up by publishing profiles of a handful of them. They spoke about what they knew of their family histories. Discussion has begun about how the university can support them. One idea proposed was that a special scholarship fund should be arranged to help their children attend the exclusive university.
Georgetown University is far from the only American institution to have benefited deeply from this ignoble practice, that was once central to America’s economy. Major banks, insurance companies and major retailers are directly implicated, yet have not made amends for their unjust enrichments.
There is value in acknowledgement — which so many US firms, agencies and companies are yet to offer. As Michael Lomax, of the United Negro College Fund, said back in 2011: “It’s being dealt with transparently and openly” is “cathartic for me.” Silence about this heritage is unhealthy because it suppresses the sort of psychological redress necessary to begin to close such deep historical wounds.
A simultaneous and corollary trend is starting where the many more commemorations of Confederate leaders and figures, as well as the display of its symbols, are being excised from state capitals to universities. This is upsetting many Americans, particularly whites in the south, who see it as denying American history or as victors’ justice. For them, slavery was a secondary issue in the American Civil War and an issue that the north has been hypocritical about.
There is some value to their point, but it largely extends an old, tired debate and is entirely callous to those who suffered at the hands of the Confederacy.
While memorialisation of slavery is a vital first step to raising America’s national stain of slavery to the level of attention it demands, it is insufficient on its own. It is essential that universities like Georgetown set up a model for dealing openly and directly with their past profit from the subjugation of human beings.
The next phase will require greater acts of rectification, such as remuneration programmes in the form of scholarships. If other organisations and corporations follow suit, it will go a long away towards the US better reconciling itself to the demands of justice.
That said, an institution-by-institution remedy is not enough. Ultimately, there must be an official, national process, otherwise it will be depicted as a form of charity, or voluntary goodwill, as opposed to the basis of what the US really needs — a truth and reconciliation process with a restorative justice component.
The challenge is that once distributional questions of resources are involved, the politically controversial nature of being honest and fair about the past heightens. What used to be issues of sensitivity will be magnified into primary points of conflict.
This makes it a painful and challenging step, but that only highlights its necessity. It may take more institutions to come forward about their past before enough Americans realise the necessity of talking straight about slavery.
In this case, the old adage is off. Memorialising the history of US slavery is not as important to avoiding its repetition as it is about beginning to take the steps of national healing through justice.
Will Youmans is an assistant professor at George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs.
