There’s nothing like reopening old emotional wounds to promote racial reconciliation. I feel so warm and fuzzy I’m ready to start singing Kumbaya… Not.
The rhetoric emanating from Del. Don McEachin’s resolution to exact an “apology” from the General Assembly for slavery, Jim Crow and other assorted wrongs is escalating. Now, reacting to comments by Del. Frank Hargrove (see “So Much for Racial Reconciliation“), the Virginia National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is calling for Hargrove’s censure.
Writes the Associated Press:
In often emotional and seething comments Thursday, state NAACP director King Salim Khalfani and four black religious leaders said nothing short of an apology by the Republican Party and a formal rebuke of Hargrove would satisfy them.
“The handwriting of the past is still riding upon the slaves today because we’ve never gotten our therapy, we’ve never dealt with it honestly because this is Virginia, this is the 51st state – the state of denial,” Khalfani said.
After the news conference, the group confronted Hargrove in his office. “We think that’s very insensitive for you to say blacks should just get over it when you haven’t walked in our shoes,” Khalfani told Hargrove.
I wouldn’t expect much else from Khalfani, who wouldn’t have much of a job if African-Americans didn’t perceive themselves as perpetual victims. It’s in his self interest to keep Africans seething with a sense of injury and injustice, even if the perceived offenses are getting so subtle, nuanced or hard to define than many people fail to see them at all. If the Khalfanis of the world can’t find any real racism to combat, they’ll manufacture some.
But I do expect better of elected legislators like McEachin, who ought to be working on constructive measures — such as improving the educational system, fighting crime, reviving inner city neighborhoods or promoting minority entrepreneurship — that will have a tangible benefit for their constituents.