By Mary Fahnestock-Thomas, Hamilton
The Emancipation Proclamation took effect on January 1, 1863, and General Sherman asked a representative group of freed men about reparations for their slavery. They responded that with 40 acres per family, they could support themselves and gradually save up enough to pay for the land. That wish was to be granted, and mules made available by the army, but then President Lincoln was assassinated in mid-April 1865, and Vice President Andrew Johnson, who succeeded him, withdrew from the agreement at the behest of southern landowners.
Ever since then, Black people in this country have had difficulty accruing the kind of property — be it land or simply a sense of belonging — that comes naturally to most White folks, usually from family, and Black people have been seen as a threat to property and therefore to life.
None of the efforts by the federal government to help bridge this gap in wealth — the New Deal, the GI Bill, Affirmative Action, the War on Poverty, etc. — have succeeded, because we White folks have required compromise in the form of quotas, housing restrictions, work requirements, etc., and you can’t “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” if you have neither bootstraps nor even boots, nor perhaps even hands or arms.
That is why it’s time we figured out how to share. Ibram Kendi, author of “How to Be an Antiracist,” believes that racism is based not on hate, but on self-interest — we Whites are afraid the Blacks want to take what we have. In fact, what they want is equality, not revenge (see Kimberly Jones). Let’s be glad of that and figure out how we can do this, how we can make this country what a lot of White people have long thought it already is.
Linda schmitt says
Thanks, Mary.