"It's easy and cheap to say, 'Get over it,'" said Alfred Brophy, a law professor at the University of Alabama, at the first session of a weekend-long conference on slavery reparations Friday night.
Even apologies, said panelist Melissa Nobles, associate professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "seem to be the way to go for two reasons: They're easy, and they're cheap."
The conference, titled "Historical Injustices: Restitution and Reconcilia-tion in International Perspective," lasted all weekend and included a film screening and six discussions with guests, each of which was hosted by a University professor.
The University's Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice kicked off the conference Friday evening with a brief speech by President Ruth Simmons and a discussion about truth, apology and reconciliation. Like all the conference's discussion panels, Friday's event was held in Smith-Buonanno 106, with packed seats and people sitting on the floor.
In his introduction Friday night, Associate Professor of History James Campbell, chair of the slavery and justice committee, laid the foundation for the weekend's discussions, briefly sketching the University's historic involvement with slavery. "Like nearly every American institution," Campbell said, the University has "a long history with the slave trade," with community members and presidents who have acted vocally as both abolitionists and slave owners. He drew attention to the fact that the president's office was built, in part, with the labor of slaves.
Vanessa Huang '06 said Sunday that for her, this was the chief question concerning reparations - what, exactly, should the University's role be, especially considering its history with the slave trade? Huang said she thought the question was raised over the weekend but not satisfactorily answered. The question came up several times in terms of what a university might to do change the United States' approach to slave reparations. Still, Huang said, she was pleased with the conference overall and with the kinds of discussions raised.
In her opening address, Simmons posited the weekend's endeavor as an effort to begin to address the "catastrophic inhumanities" of slavery and to "repair the moral breach" made by the University in years past. Indirectly acknowledging the resistance the subject of reparations meets - on campus, as anywhere - Simmons said, "I welcome any discomfort this process may cause as entirely necessary and salutary."
Some of this discomfort became evident by the time Sunday's conference session came to a close. Upon one black audience member's remark that he had to "de-black" his $600,000 East Providence house before selling it, another member of the audience asked whether that didn't indicate progress on some level - namely, that a black man was able to sell his house for $600,000. The two broke into heated debate before agreeing to continue discussion later, after which the panel continued.
Friday night's first speaker was Brophy, who spoke on the history of Brown's approach to slavery. He focused on former President Francis Wayland, whose 19th-century book on morals argued that society's standards of morality were evolving and that people who were indifferent to the abolitionist movement were as culpable of evils as slave owners.
Brophy's final words were a precaution to the audience to consider Brown's historical involvement in slavery in its moral context - though the University owned slaves, he said, it pushed the limits of liberalism even then and was looked upon as an institution with progressive political ideals.
British attorney Lord Anthony Gifford's speech, which followed Brophy's, examined the legal and moral basis for reparations. Gifford emphasized that according to international law, reparations must come from the descedants of criminals who still profit. "Don't," he said, "let people think it all happened too long ago," adding that timing is less central to considering reparations than "how atrocious and lasting the crime is."
Gifford supported the idea of reparations in all countries affected by slavery, including the United States, Jamaica and the Caribbean and Africa. To the comment that reparations have been made in the past, he said, "I'm sure you do (remember), that the only compensation paid by the British at the time of emancipation was to slave owners for the loss of their property."
Nobles ended the panelists' speeches with commentary on the meaning of apology and reconciliation. Nobles questioned the importance of apologies, saying that though apologies do not necessarily promote reconciliation, they are often thought to.
Nobles, explaining the ineffectiveness of mere apology and the need for committees and mobilization to effect change, cited the Bureau of Indian Affairs' national apology to native peoples for relocation and genocide. Not only did the BIA's apology go unnoticed, she said, it lacked success in part because the former secretary of the BIA, the man who made the apology, was himself an American Indian.
In the United States, she said, "It is hard to see how reconciliation could be achieved with only apology." She cited statistics showing more than 70 percent of whites opposed reparations and over 70 percent of blacks supported it. Brophy added that according to the Mobile (Ala.) Register's poll, the issue of slave reparations today is the most racially divisive issue ever, even more than school integration after the decision in Brown v. Board of Education.
Nobles said white America may be opposed to reparations because it sees social progress and does not think racism is a problem in the United States anymore.
Gifford added, "We are indoctrinated to think how well we've done and how good we've been."
The focus of other sessions during the conference included historical injustice, the public memory, locating responsibility and restitution and compensation. The conference's final panel focused on examining global examples of reparations made, both successfully and unsuccessfully, in cases such as Rwanda and the Holocaust.
