This post is in response to today’s article The Big Payback (I love that title) at the Root.com regarding reparations to African-Americans for slavery and the succeeding general repression. It is also a supplemental musing on the meme I first introduced in the brief post 634 Years is a Long Time.
The title of this post is a partial quote from Doria Dee Johnson during an interview with Gwen Ifill of the Jim Leherer News Hour (PBS). The occasion, now almost exactly three years ago, was the issuing of a formal apology by the U.S. senate for failure to act in response to the widespread lynching of African-Americans in the not so distant past. Mrs. Johnson attended the vote as a family representative of her great, great grandfather Anthony P. Crawford, a somewhat notable lynching victim.
In the same interview Mrs. Johnson also states, “I would say that because of Anthony Crawford’s demise, someone got rich. And the Crawford family suffered behind that. So that needs to be discussed.”
Interested readers can view the full interview here (which I recommend), and/or read the full transcript.
Now, I’ve never met or spoken to Mrs. Johnson, but we have this in common: we are both direct descendants of Anthony P. Crawford. In fact, there were family members with whom I am very close who were also present at the nation’s Capital that day. This brings us to the crux of the matter.
During the most recent Christmas holiday I remember quite vividly telling my Dad that “…all legitimate claims must be paid.” I don’t remember the exact nature of the discussion, but I do remember that I had my great, great grandfather in mind when I made that statement. The incontrovertible fact is that one can inherit grievance just as one inherits wealth, and for African-Americans they are often the opposite sides of the same coin. Thus the fundamental claim that underlies any call for reparations is firmly planted in the most basic norms of justice. Yet despite the legitimacy of the claim, I believe directing too much energy into the reparations effort would be unwise.
There is absolutely no chance in hell that any form of federal reparations will be on the table in the near future. One of the core reasons for this is a nearly ubiquitous (and obviously racist) American history mythology. The presidential campaign of Barack Obama has provided occasion for all manner of public and private evangelizing on behalf of this cherished mythology, but my first memorable encounter with it occurred during my sophomore year at a university smack dab in the heart of middle America. I can’t recall how the subject came up, but my best friend and roommate at the time (who happened to be white) bluntly asked me “how come black folks don’t just work hard and get ahead” like his grandfather had done. He carefully explained to me how his grandfather had “worked in a factory” all his life so that his descendants could have opportunities like attending university. What I can recall is that my response was stunned silence, simply because I had no good answer, followed by a mix of humiliation and rage. Our friendship ended shortly thereafter.
Now, I would tell my then best friend, quite calmly of course, that my grandfather worked very hard all his life, primarily as a mailman for the very same university we were attending. And that he was trained as an electrician in the segregated U.S. Army during WWII, but upon his return home was denied membership in the local electrician’s union, a stalwart bastion of racial exclusion at that time. It’s quite possible my friend’s grandfather, who immigrated from Europe, was a member of that very same union. I would tell my then best friend about the man from whom I believe I inherited my natural ambition and inability to stand-down, Anthony P. Crawford. I would tell him how Mssr. Crawford was prosperous and proud, and how he was lynched one fine day in 1916 for exactly that reason. I would tell him how the Crawford family was run out of town and their land appropriated, thus cursing them to impoverishment that lasted for generations.
Unfortunately for the both of us, I couldn’t tell my then best friend anything at all, because I didn’t know. I didn’t find out these things until much later in my adult life, and only after actively searching for the truth. The truth being that African-Americans were, and many of us still are, the hardest workers one can imagine. We once valued family so much, and many of us still do, that our marriage rate was 90%, significantly higher than our white peers at the time. The pursuit of education by African-Americans was, and in many cases still is, almost a religion unto itself. My grandfather did not have much wealth to give his children, but both of my parents have masters degrees!
The truth is that the present American racial hierarchy is not a result of African-Americans being lazy or profligate, disinterested or incapable of advanced learning. The America of today is the product of a systematic white terror regime that nearly obliterated the necessary social foundations upon which a free people must stand. The U.S senate would not have convened three years ago to apologize to one man’s family. My great, great grandfather’s story was all too common. In fact, his story, and mine, encapsulate in a very real way the experience of African-Americans in the United States. That is the real history.
The truth also includes the fact that, like my 18 year old former self, African-Americans are, in general, a lost people. A people who have only the vaguest notion of how we arrived where we are. If I didn’t know the history of my own family, how in the world could one expect my then best friend to know? Who would have told him? Certainly not me.
What is required now, and which will ultimately be more valuable than any possible reparations, is a concerted effort to disseminate and institutionalize the true history of African people in the United States. Wherever and whenever the American mythology raises it’s head the challenge must be swift and zealous. We must wrest away control of the popular narrative and do everything possible to ensure that the true story be told. The story of a great slave rebellion that has few peers in the annals of human civilization. A story that is unfinished, and ongoing.
Ma Famille 