TheLoop21.com

By: Susan Anderson (follow this member)
Wed, 07/15/2009 - 00:00

This is my last blog post for the Reparations Chronicles which gives me a chance to say thank you to TheLoop21.com for giving me the opportunity to write about not the news but about history, and how about how we as a nation are grappling with the wrongs of our past. 

Here’s what I promised in my first post:

I’m not going to chase the news; instead, I’m going searching for what is unspoken in the news, our national dialogue…Yes, I’m going to explore the “R” word: reparations for centuries of slavery, white supremacy, inequality and Jim Crow…I’m not talking about… some kind of government check to African Americans to make their pain, and the embarrassment of whites, go away…reparations are going to be a good deal more complicated and comprehensive.

Over the last year, we were able to touch upon topics ranging from the 2008 presidential election and the hidden history of blacks in the White House, to the legacy of discrimination in arenas from the National Basketball Association to the automobile industry. We were able to examine the meaning of whiteness in a racially privileged society and talk about white activists taking a look at their own families’ past involvement in the slave trade. 

If anything, I believe that the Reparations Chronicles showed us that history is full of surprises. Our series on unknown African American environmental pioneers is a case in point. And, unfortunately, there are still horrors, such as unsolved lynchings and white mob violence, which most Americans don’t know about.

Several posts showed that our government is reluctant to even apologize for its own actions in the enslavement and conquest of Native Americans, Hawaiians, African Americans and others. So, the rarity of redress to the Japanese Americans who suffered World War II internment camps shouldn’t be a surprise.

Mostly though, I tried to show that the struggle for reparations isn’t just some narrow, recent protest. It’s a fight that began long ago, during the American Revolution itself, when African Americans first petitioned the founders of the New Republic to live up to their creed. Through the Reparations Chronicles, I was privileged to relay stories of indomitable men and women who since and through the 21st century fought for justice and gave us an enduring legacy. That’s what I’ll take away from my blogging adventures, and I hope you will, too.

Susan D. Anderson teaches, speaks and writes about African American history, politics and culture. She is the author of Nostalgia for a Trumpet: Poems of Memory and History, published by Northwestern University Press. She has been a Visiting Professor at Pitzer College, a contributor to the Los Angeles Times Sunday Opinion since 1999, and currently manages an archival program at the USC Libraries.