Balkinization  

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Apologizing for Slavery

Mark Graber

The University of Maryland is debating whether to apologize for slavery. An only slight exaggeration of the state of the debate is that the University will apologize if the evidence demonstrates more than one-hundred slaves toiled on campus, are undecided about an apology if the number was between ten and a hundred, and will not apologize if the number was less than ten.

While knowing the number of slaves who toiled at the University of Maryland would be interesting information, the legacy of slavery cannot be measured strictly in terms of how many slaves were and were not in particular places. Consider the themes of two wonderful recent books. Robin Einhorn in American Taxation, American Slavery demonstrates that state tax policies and collection practices were substantially influenced by the presence or absence of slavery. The historic low funded of southern higher education, in this sense, may be another legacy of human bondage. Howard Schweber in The Creation of American Common Law similarly highlights how the presence or absence of slavery determined crucial doctrines of nineteenth century tort law. Free states wanted trains and fashioned tort doctrine that facilitated speed. Plantation owners feared the industrialization promised by speed, and so fashioned tort doctrine that discouraged trains. More broadly, the contemporary historian consistently finds that you smell slavery’s influence no matter where you scratch in antebellum America. To take an example from the Dred Scott text, the House of Representatives, Presidency, and federal court system were structured in ways thought to magnify the influence of slaveholders. Similar studies have been done of South Carolina and Virginia. I have little doubt that a good history of Maryland will similarly demonstrate that some governing institutions were designed in ways to provide slaveholders with more power than their numbers warranted.

I do not know whether all of this warrants an apology or reparations. On the one hand, neither resolves an extraordinarily deeply rooted problem. On the other hand, no better immediate solution exists. Perhaps the best we can do is convert demands for apologies for slavery and investigations into the direct presence of slavery into investigations of the pervasive influence of slavery and race on all aspects of American social, political, and life. Slavery and race were not the sort of warts on the American polity that could be easily excised by the 13th Amendment or Civil Rights Act of 1964. They are cancers that are so entwined with normal practices as to resist almost all efforts at social, legal and political eradication. Our students need to be aware of just how pervasive slavery and racism were and are, and this knowledge cannot be gained by limiting the debate to whether or not a specified number of slaves worked in specific places in specific times.

Comments:

How about some apologies for slavery from the African nations involved?

As far as I know only Ghana has apologised for its part in the slave trade. Arabs, who still practice slavery of Black peoples even now e.g. Mauritania, the Sudan or Mali, have never apologised for being slavers.

In the 15th to 17th century an estimated 1.5 Million Europeans were shipped to the North African slave markets. Black "Moors" (The "BlackaMoors" of Shakesperean terminology) from North Africa regularly slave raided Europe as far as Cornwall (England) as late as the 17th century. In 1627 AD Moors kidnapped 400 men and women from Iceland. Dorset historian David Burnett reports that in 1638 AD, the corsairs even pillaged Poole (England) and the last recorded raid was 1720 AD.

I quote Thomas Sowell, a black sociologist, author and columnist, who put this whole issue into perspective.

"Blacks were not enslaved because they were black but because they were available. Slavery has existed in the world for thousands of years. Whites enslaved other whites in Europe for centuries before the first black was brought to the Western hemisphere. Asians enslaved Europeans. Asians enslaved other Asians. Africans enslaved other Africans, and indeed even today in North Africa, blacks continue to enslave blacks".
 

L.S.,

Is it just me, or is it just fundamentally silly and egocentric to be apologising for something that happened before anyone alive today was even born?
 

Hello martinned,

We are not talking about a personal apology, we are talking about an institutional apology. The University of Maryland was founded in 1856 as the Maryland Agricultural College. As an institution, it was around during the time of slavery, and as an institution, it can apologize.
 

How about some apologies for slavery from the African nations involved?

As allen pointed out, the apologies being offered are institutional. No African nation today existed when the slave trade to the Western Hemisphere was still in operation. Those nations, as nations, have nothing to apologize for.

To the extent slavery still exists today, an apology seems less important than a conviction.

I quote Thomas Sowell, a black sociologist, author and columnist, who put this whole issue into perspective.

"Blacks were not enslaved because they were black but because they were available. ..."


Other scholars would disagree. David Brion Davis, in Inhuman Bondage, provides a good deal of evidence for the close tie between New World slavery and racism.

Ultimately, though, none of this is really relevant to the issue of whether the University should apologize. The fact that others were also guilty doesn't diminish its complicity. If an apology is in order, the University should make it. Others from whom an apology is due can be judged independently.
 

L.S.,

Thank you, Allen, I'd gathered that. I suppose one could rephrase my question as asking what on earth an "institutional apology" is. Institutions, in the wider meaning of the word, are rules that structure human interaction; i.e. they are the product of choices made by individuals and serve the needs of these individuals. They do not have their own conciousnesses or an individual will, so they only people who can apologise for the fact that the institution of slavery existed within the institution of the University of Maryland are the people that made it so...
But maybe that is a discussion one would better leave for another time and place. It is admittedly more than a little bit metaphysical.
 

The United States acually has a pretty good record on slavery, which was a global institution practiced by every country in the world at the time the United States' founding. Slavery lasted only two lifetimes in the United States. Men who knew George Washington lived to see the end of slavery in 1865. (Robert E. Lee's wife was Washington's grandaughter.)

About 10 millions slaves were transported from Africa to the Americans, but most went to Latin Ameria. Only about 500,000 came to the United States. Thousands of white slaves--not to be confused with indentured servants--were also transported from Europe to the Americas.

Today, African Americans enjoy a much higher standard of living than Africans whose ancestors were not transported to the United States. Therefore, they are beneficiaries rather than victims of slavery.

Free blacks as well as whites owned slaves. About six percent of whites and about 1.6 percent of free blacks owned slaves.
 

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