The big cultural wedge issue in this year’s General Assembly session comes not from the right but from the left. Del. Don McEachin, D-Richmond, has submitted a bill that calls for “atoning for involuntary servitude of Africans and calling for the reconciliation of all Virginians.” It pays to read this bill carefully and to note what it says and does not say.
The bill commences by reciting the horrors of the Atlantic slave trade and the practice of slavery in the United States and Virginia, and then recounts the injustices of the Jim Crow era. If the bill stopped there, I wouldn’t find it terribly objectionable. (I say that with certain reservations. As Jim Bowden points out in his recent column, “Our Humblest Apologies,” the McEachin apology provides a lopsided, context-deficient account of history.)
But McEachin doesn’t stop there. He links the evils of slavery to the present time.
An apology for centuries of brutal dehumanization and injustices cannot erase the past, but confession of the wrongs can speed racial healing and reconciliation and help African American and white citizens confront the ghosts of their collective pasts together. … Racial reconciliation is impossible without some acknowledgment of the moral and legal injustices perpetrated upon African Americans. …
Throughout their existence in America and even in the decades after the Civil Rights Movement, African Americans have found the struggle to overcome the bitter legacy of slavery long and arduous, and for many African Americans the scars left behind are unbearable, haunting their psyches and clouding their vision of the future and of America’s many attributes. …
In the Commonwealth, home to the first African slaves, the vestiges of slavery are ever before African American citizens, from the overt racism of hate groups to the subtle racism encountered when requesting health care, transacting business, buying a home, seeking quality public education and college admission, and enduring pretextual traffic stops and other indignities.
This document does not merely ask Virginians merely to apologize for slavery — it asks that Virginianscollectively accept moral responsibility for the condition of African-Americans today. Further, it asks us to accept facts that are demonstrably untrue (that African-Americans are the victims of racism in college admissions) and facts that are arguably untrue (that African-Americans are discriminated against by mortgage lenders and providers of health care). And it does so without ever mentioning the devastation wreaked upon the African-American community by the modern welfare state. So, while Virginians apologize for the sins of long-dead ancestors, McEachin does not request anyone to apologize for the facts that:
- Great Society urban-clearing programs devastated African-American neighborhoods and disrupted the social cohesion of African-American communities in cities across the country.
- The problem of endemic African-American unemployment did not exist until after the introduction of Great Society welfare policies.
- Violent crime rates among African-Americans skyrocketed after the introduction of the welfare state and liberal attitudes towards law enforcement.
- The break-up of the nuclear African-American family and the surge in out-of-wedlock births occurred after the introduction of the welfare state.
Of course, acknowledging that the welfare state, not slavery or Jim Crow, is what created the African-American underclass, hence is responsible for most of the suffering of living African-Americans, would require McEachin to apologize policies that he endorsed and defended.
My sense is that McEachin really isn’t interested in apologizing himself. He’s looking for others to do the apologizing. McEachin isn’t interested in “racial reconciliation” — he’s just another liberal playing the racial blame game.
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