Beyond apologies
On May 31, Alabama joined Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia in apologizing for slavery. What do these declarations of contrition mean? What should they mean nearly 150 years after the abolition of slavery in a nation with a median age of 36.4 years?
These apologies were also offered in a society where a typical high school course in U.S. history seldom reaches World War II and any discussion of slavery in that course is done swiftly. Add the extensive racial segregation in public schools and residential housing in our country, and we have a median-age American who wasn’t even alive during the Jim Crow era, hasn’t studied slavery in any detail and hasn’t lived near or attended school with more than a few token black folk — if that.
Therefore, it isn’t rash to conclude that the images of African Americans held by a majority of citizens come from indirect sources and were formed with minimal input from black folk. Even among well-meaning observers whose perspectives are so limited, African Americans can become mere characters in books, magazines and newspapers or images on television or in the movies.
Perhaps it is time to follow those legislative admissions of guilt with demands that the slavery that engendered the apologies be taught — in detail — in high school. Secondary school students need to know that for 90 percent of their time in this country, African Americans were enslaved or subjected to Jim Crow segregation. In so doing, they might understand the historic magnitude of the “race problem” and that 350 years of institutional subjugation and humiliation are not easily surmounted.
David Evans
Cambridge
Don’t believe the type
It is time that we stop giving or participating in media coverage that is about only the tragedies that occur in the community. Just think about it. There are a lot of wonderful programs in place in our community, with the youth that are doing good things despite the barriers that are in place to keep them from achieving. People need to know about this.
We need to talk about these efforts instead of what the media wants to cover. Cover it all. There is a need for balance with a perspective of hope.
Our leaders should not be so quick to join the media, and maybe they shouldn’t talk so much about the tragedies that we live with after the reporters have gone. Our leaders are “playing into the fear game.”
Haywood Fennell Sr.
Roxbury
