If Del. Don McEachin, R-Richmond, hoped to initiate a “healing process” with his resolution apologizing for slavery, he didn’t get off to a very good start yesterday. Del. Frank Hargrove, R-Hanover, took exception to his resolution and made some remarks that some perceived as outrageous. Tempers flared and accusations were hurled.
The exchange was magnified by the media, of course, which loves nothing better than a good cat fight. “Hargrave offends blacks, Jews,” stated the front-page headline in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
When it comes to symbolic issues like this, there’s a lot more raw emotion than common sense. Hargrave did use indelicate language to express himself. But the fact is, his words reflected the views of many Virginians. And if there is to be any “reconciliation,” as opposed to “capitulation,” the people who hold such views must be allowed to express themselves rather than being shouted down with cries of fiery indignation. Of course, as I wrote in my previous post, “How About a Resolution Atoning for the Welfare State?”, McEachin’s resolution isn’t really about “reconciliation” at all — it’s about imposing a politically correct interpretation of recent history that absolves a failed liberalism of any culpability for the plight of African-Americans in our society today.
Let’s examine Hargrove’s transgressions.
First, Hargrove made the following statement to the Charlottesville Daily Progress:
How far do these calls for apologies go, wondered Hargrove, a member of the House Rules Committee that could take up McEachin’s resolution as early as Wednesday.
“Are we going to force the Jews to apologize for killing Christ?”Hargrove wondered. “Nobody living today had anything to do with it. It would be far more appropriate in my view to apologize to the Upper Mattaponi and the Pamunkey” Indians for the loss of their lands in eastern Virginia, he said.
Del. David Englin, D-Alexandria, took umbrage. One of three Jewish delegates in the House, Englin recalled how he was picked on when he was a child because of the misperception that Jews killed Jesus. “I want you all to understand,” he told the legislature, “what it means when people the respect and stature of a member of this body perpetuate the notion that Jews killed Christ.”
Excuse me. We can argue until the cows come home — and historians do — the extent to which the high priests of the Jerusalem temple did or did not force Pontius Pilate’s hand to crucify Jesus. But it is a historical fact that for the better part of 2,000 years, Christians did accuse “the Jews” of killing Jesus. It was not Hargrave’s intent to reanimate the view of Jews as Jesus killers. It was quite the opposite: He was saying that most Christians, who once embraced that view, got over it — and rightly so.
Hargrave also said the following, according to the Daily Progress:
“I personally think that our black citizens should get over it. … By golly, we’re living in 2007. Nobody can justify slavery today, but it’s counterproductive to dwell on that. … Political correctness has kind of gotten us into this area.”
Del. Dwight Jones, chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus, responded as follows: “When somebody tells me that I should just get over slavery, I can only express my emotion by suggesting that I am appalled.”
The point that Hargrave was raising, albeit in a clumsy way, was that nursing a cult of victimization does nothing to improve the lives of African-Americans or to better prepare them to prosper in a globally competitive economy. It’s a legitimate argument; indeed an increasing number of blacks are making it. But aggrieved and offended Democrats don’t want to engage that argument. Calling upon the unassailable moral force of the 19th- and 20th-century struggles to abolish slavery and enact Civil Rights, they want to delegitimize dissenting strategies for achieving black prosperity in the 21st century. They want to drive those views from the public sphere — and call it “healing.”
In Frank Hargrave’s case, I think they succeeded. It’ll be a long time, I wager, before he unfolds himself from his foetal position to speak on the topic again. But that doesn’t mean he’ll change his thinking.
One thing I’ve learned from my marriage: Sometimes the best way to get over an argument is just to stop talking about it. Sometimes you just have to agree to disagree, and move on with life. Resolutions like McEachin’s don’t reconcile anyone, they don’t heal anyone. If not time to “get over it,” it is indeed time to “move on.”