AT ISSUE - July 2003
by Thomas Sowell

Leave the Past in its Place
The idea of a slave memorial may create more division

Civil rights activist Bayard Rustin once said that blacks should issue a blanket amnesty to whites – just so that guilty whites would not keep on doing counterproductive things in order to make up for the past. The proposal that Congress create a slave memorial on the Washington Mall is the latest example of guilt gone awry.

We have all we can do to live our own lives the best way we can, treating our contemporaries with decency and justice. There is not a thing we can do about what other people did in times irretrievably past.

The slave memorial proposal has the support not only of liberal Democrats but also some conservative Republicans who should know better. One of the Republicans’ big problems is that the Democrats usually get 90 percent of the black vote. Voting for gimmicks like a slave memorial may seem like a cheap and easy way for Republicans to appeal to blacks.

If Republicans are going to make any inroads into the Democrats’ lock on the black vote, it will not be by appealing to the kind of people who want a slave memorial. Those blacks whose views and values make them at least open to hearing what the Republicans have to say are more likely to be offended and repelled by a slave memorial. They know that perpetuation of a sense of victimhood has been one of the biggest handicaps facing the younger generation of blacks, at a time when the opportunities open to them have never been greater.

The Jesse Jacksons and the Al Sharptons will work tirelessly to make a slave memorial a symbol of victimhood and an argument for reparations, quotas and other handouts. Meanwhile, the white backlash will grow, mocking all the pious talk about “healing” and “reconciliation.”

Do people who make these proposals ever bother to look at what has actually happened? Racial polarization has reached the point in our schools and colleges where there are now all-white proms and different college graduation parties for students of different races.

These things are now being found in places where they didn’t exist 20 or 30 years ago. These are backlashes like those in other countries where governments have singled out particular ethnic groups for special treatment.

Endlessly repeating the magic mantra of “diversity” will not make these realities go away. Building a government-sponsored source of racial divisiveness will only make matters worse.


Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University
editorial@lanereport.com

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