Well, the House of Representatives has gone and done it. On this historic day, the House took it upon itself to pass a non-binding resolution apologizing on behalf of We the People to blacks for slavery and Jim Crow laws. Never mind that no one living today was alive when slavery was the law of the land; that's entirely beside the point. The point is that this is an issue that scores points with a huge chunk of the voting populace -- though I imagine it doesn't play nearly as well in "flyover America" as it does in the epicenters of culture and thought -- and darn it, it looks good on election-year resumes. Thus we witness the creation of the elusive win-win situation.
While our new collective conscience stopped short of addressing the tricky issue of reparations for blacks for "the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery and Jim Crow," they did find the time to commit the House to rectifying -- in as unspecific a way as possible -- "the lingering consequences of the misdeeds committed against African-Americans under slavery and Jim Crow."
Please don't misunderstand me. I'm not for one second attempting to justify slavery or Jim Crow laws. Both represent behaviors and patterns of thought that I find reprehensible. I can't even begin to conceive the small-mindedness of the individuals responsible for enacting and enforcing Jim Crow laws. I also can't imagine the economic system that was balanced on the back of slave labor, or the individuals of all races who perpetuated and exploited that system. That being said, apologizing for our history still rubs me the wrong way, and folks are welcome to take issue with that as they may.
CYNIC ALERT! CYNIC ALERT! CONTINUE READING AT YOUR OWN RISK!
While I'm busy dashing off thank-you notes to the nimrods who took it upon themselves to issue an apology for me that I would not have made for myself, I can't help noticing two things:
1. The representative who introduced the bill, freshman Rep. Steve Cohen, is a white man who represents a majority black district in Tennessee and is engaged in a nasty re-election fight against a black man affiliated with the former holder of the House seat Cohen now occupies. Cohen introduced the bill at the beginning of his first term in Congress, back in January 2007; I'm sure it's just coincidence that the resolution comes up now, one week prior to his primary run-off.
2. The resolution was approved by a voice vote, rather than an actual recorded vote. While the voice vote is the customary procedure for non-controversial issues, it's difficult for me to imagine that the membership imagined this issue and this vote as anything but controversial. Seems the system worked to protect those members whose vote on this issue might demand some "coverage" by allowing them to vote one way and claim a vote in the other direction.
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