From MSNBC
Two predecessor banks of Wachovia Corp. owned slaves before the Civil War, the nation’s fourth-largest bank said Wednesday as it made an apology to black Americans.
“We are deeply saddened by these findings,” Wachovia chairman Ken Thompson said in a statement. The Charlotte-based company said it contracted earlier this year with The History Factory, a historical research firm, to investigate the predecessor institutions that over the years have become part of what is now called Wachovia. The decision came amid a welter of local and legislative initiatives aimed at requiring banks and other companies to investigate their pasts with regard to slavery.
[…] John Boyd, the president of National Black Farmers Association, said his group has been picketing and lobbying Wachovia and other banking giants for eight years, urging them to investigate and acknowledge their historical involvement with the slave trade.
[…] Similar ordinances have been passed in other cities, including Philadelphia, and a North Carolina House committee approved a bill this spring that would require companies that want to do business with state government to disclose any past financial links to slavery.
That measure has been bottled up in the Rules Committee for nearly two months. If the measure does not pass the House by Thursday, it cannot be considered again until 2007.
Boyd, who farms near Baskerville, Va., said his group and other black interest groups want major banks whose predecessors profited from the slave trade during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries to take concrete steps to ease the economic and educational disparities that plague black Americans in the 21st century.
And of course, “concrete steps to ease the economic and educational disparities” are simply code words for money—and lots of it. Which, in my estimation, the United States has duly repaid with the billions of dollars it has funneled into government-sponsered race-based social programs aimed at overcoming the cultural disparities suffered by Blacks as a result of slavery and Jim Crow.
The reader who forwarded me this story wrote, “maybe you can figure out exactly *why* this would drive people to picket & boycott a bank. I sure couldn’t.” So let me try to put what I see as the animating impulse here into some sort of theoretical context. I’ve written before at some length on the serious structural problems that arise when “race” is transformed from a rather imperfect method of categorization into something that contemporary race theorists outside the hard sciences insist is constructed by social factors and, in some current formulations, is the result of historical circumstance (race as a product of “heritage’
. And now, with the advent of the picketing of banks and other institutions that have a tenuous historical connection to slavery, we can begin to see the true folly of this formulation. Because what is operable in these protests is the application of identity politics, built on a logically untenable social constructionist paradigm, followed to its ridiculous extreme—to the point that now, even brick and mortar successors to older institutions are being imbued with a cultural memory that they are then being required to apologize for (clearly, none of today’s employees of the company are slave owners or supporters of slavery, and so they have no personal reason to offer an apology or even remuneration; and the protest itself seems to be directed against the bank as a physical vessel of blame—the idea being that having once been attached to other banks that accepted slaves as payment, the bank in its current incarnation has reaped the benefits. But as Steven Knapp has pointed out, those who have benefited from institutions such as banks over the years (employees, loan-interest loan recipients, companies financed by bank investment, etc) goes beyond a relatively small coterie of (presumably) white shareholders; and at a certain point it becomes historically impossible to suggest that the beneficiaries belong to a specific race).
Of course, thes protests make perfect sense from the perspective identity politics, if you think it through—after all, those demanding “concrete steps to ease the economic and educational disparities” that they attribute to slavery weren’t themselves slaves (or even the sons and daughters of slaves)—yet they presume to collect for slaves and their immediate descendents simply by dint of claiming a common heritage, or of sharing a cultural memory based on some historical connection allowed for by a constructionist racial formulation.
It is no stretch, then, that people who claim to remember something they never experienced as a way to establish kinship with it would expect that a bank that never owned slaves itself would should be responsible for those in the bank’s distant past who did.
Had the United States itself not taken ownership of its past and worked to atone for its mistakes by establishing programs designed to level the playing field for the sons and daughters and grandchildren and great grandchildren of the culturally dispossesed, these protests (and their concommitant demands) would have much more force. But as it stands, the racial wounds of the US will never heal until we move beyond the cycle of rage and guilt—all of which, at this point, hinges on the overdetermined idea of race as a social construct, and on the willingness of temporally disconnected actors to accept contingent ties to those distinct actors in the past with whom “history” has told them they share a common cultural memory.
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previous.
Yet another example of folks embracing the Victim Culture.
The History Factory
That’s sounds so wrong.
Spamword: black
People realize that the Victim Culture pays, so of course they’re lining up.
Particularly since Jesse Jackson’s kids have upgraded “40 acres and a mule” to a Budweiser franchise.
“Which, in my estimation, the United States has duly repaid with the billions of dollars…”
And with the hundreds of thousands of lives lost 1861-1865.
Jefferson Davis: Democrat
Confederate State of America: Democrats’ own country.
Jim Crow: Democratic legislation.
Hey, Mr. Boyd,
Seek redress with the institution most responsible for the “economic and educational disparities” of the last 140 years. They’ve got George Soros signed on, so they’ve got the deep pockets.
That, and they’ve been passing the buck for decades to American taxpayers of all partisan shadings. Enough with the joint and several crap; hit the slaveholding/sharecropper exploiting bastards.
Cordially…
So, let me get this straight.
As a person of Welsh extraction; I can go after the Roman Church for “enslaving” my people in the first few centuries A.D.
I’ll let you know when the check shows up.
The shakedown parade continues. Look for more of this sort of thing and from bigger banks (e.g. a precedessor among many of Bank of America is the former North Carolina National Bank).
You know dude, this post wasn’t remotely funny.
There must be some sensible caveat to the “Those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it” cliche.
How about, “history informs us; it needn’t define us.”
Made that one up myself.
But what about the long covered up tragedy of— “The Old Negro Space Program?” (Type it in your search engine.)
So why are all of these slave-owner witch-hunts against companies that might have owned slaves in the brief time between the end of slave ownership in the North and the ratification of the 13th amendment? The institution of slavery existed LONG before the advent of the Confederacy, and still exists today in many parts of the world.
But, let’s at least acknowledge the difference between slave ownership and the slave trade. The Southern plantation owners were consumers of slaves, but they were not traders. When abolition became widespread in the North, Maryland and Masachusetts enacted laws to allow the trading companies opperating out of their ports to continue to deal in slaves because of the tremendous revenue generated by the tarrifs. I don’t remember anyone going through the attics of every company with ties to 19th century New England trading comanies for evidence that a ship that they once held stock in carried human cargo from North Africa to the Carribean. Or the witch hunts against the states and cities who benefitted from these revenues well after they voted for abolition.
By the way, the guys who rounded up the Africans and sold them to the American slave traders in the first place were also Africans themselves. Im still waiting to hear about the reparations their descendants are going to pay.
My ancestors fought to liberate the slaves…
Where’s my cut?
Thanks, Jeff. I knew you’d say it better than I woulda.
I will give you a big AMEN ! on this one Jeff.. and I agree with Martinpundit.. This isn’t remotely funny.. I’m amazed this subject is actually treated seriously by otherwise intelligent people. The entire premise is absurd on its face…
My Grandfather was a dirt farmer in Arkansas that didn’t even own his own land, as was his father and his father’s father. In another time he would have been referred to as a ‘Serf’. He and his family, a wife and 6 children, lived in a corrugated tin covered shack. During the depression they gathered up the family and a few belongings into their truck and drove to California, the promised land, looking for work picking fruit. They left their dog Penny behind because there was just no more room for her. The image of The Beverly Hillbillies comes to mind, but that’s to real dustbowl migrants what Hogan’s Heroes was to WWII POWs.. The reality was grim, and I guarantee they owned no slaves.
My grandfather had no formal educations but he was wise enough to know that education was the way up for his family and he encouraged and supported his children in that as best he could.
His son (my father) was the first in our line to go to college and make a decent living.. his brothers and sisters followed. His youngest sister designed & copyrighted the Lucida and Wingding fonts that are part of MS Windows now.
I doubt my family’s story is particularly unique. I think many Americans would pretty much fit right into the same picture with only a few different details..
Someone explain to me again why I, as a white man, owe anything to people who may have had slave ancestors several generations ago… and how am I so different from them?
I tried to email you a response, Kyle, but the email bounced back. So I turned it into a post. Thanks for the tip.
You know, I wonder where all of this will end. Optimistically, I hope that someday all people primarily find their identity in their own achievements and work, instead of the color of their skin. Hearing that all of your problems are someone else’s fault is a powerful narcotic, and one which is often dispensed by corrupt leadership. Realistically, I suspect that as America becomes less white, and say, more hispanic, there will be much less white guilt to leverage.
The more interesting part are the implications for the hypothetical payments that would follow from such demands–as if the “bank” is an independent and tangible actor that can be held responsible for its activities.
Banks, and other entities, are frequently referred to as a “legal fiction.” Which they are.
Ken Thompson, as the Bank’s manager (chairman in coporate-speak) can be held up to ridicule for the Bank’s activities, past and present, to the extent he cares to respond to such media attention, and with a prudent eye to PR costs and benefits.
But payment of reparations–however dubious and worse, as Jeff points out–would come out of the pocket of the Bank’s owner, the shareholder, not the manager, and not out of the pocket of yesteryear’s slaveowner. And today’s shareholder includes people of disparate backgrounds, with an even more tenuous relationship to slavery than today’s Wachovia Bank has to some predecessor intitution.
Today’s Wachovia shareholders could include descendants of slaves, slaveowners, and neither–each with no moral or legal culpability for the actions of 19th century ancestors.
I may have inherited my father’s name, but my reputation is all mine; I defy anyone to suggest I am responsible for his.
hell, one would think the only slaves in the New World were black Africans. The first were Irish brought into the Carribean sent by Cromwell.
My family, the Clicks, came here in 1697…as bond slaves. They were sold to work on a plantation in Virginia (took ‘em over 60 years to pay off the bond).
American Indians owned black slaves. Heck there were black slave owners
This is just insanity.
Hey – I’m all for reparations.
According to the reparationists’ “logic,” decendents of whites who brought blacks from Africa are responsible for the current economic condition of those blacks. Well, if that is the case, then I will wait for all blacks to write checks to the whites in America for the difference in the standard of living they experience at whatever level of the social strata they happen to occupy – and that of the corresponding social strata in Africa.
Now, if there is a question about WHO should pay these ‘reparations’ to whites, that is very simple: anyone who calls himself an ‘african-american’.
Hmmm.
Then let’s toss in all those Chinese immigrants who were forced into semi-slavery on the Transcontinental Railroad because the Chinese Exclusion Act prevented them from working anywhere else. Oh and that prevented them from being protected by the law when assaulted and robbed or forced into prostitution.
Or forbid them from being citizens until around 1946.
What complete nonsense. Anybody remember reading about window signs “No Irish”? Mel Brooks made fun of it in Blazing Saddles.
What a crock.
THE JOOOS !!! THE JOOOS !!! THE JOOOS !!!
Stop! Stop! Stop arguing among yourselves about who owes who what..thats just what THEY want you to do. Whites , Blacks, Hispanics, Asians… We’re ALL slaves to the rich bastards that rule the world.. THE JOOOS !!! The Jooos own everything.. They own the banks.. and the media.. and La Jolla..and some great delis with nice lean corned beef and the mega corporations..Even the rich guys that dont sound like Jooos… ARE JOOOOS !!! Like Bill Gates born Gatestein.. or George Bush born Schlomo Bushberg.. They keep piles of gold bars in their basements just because they can.. They even go to special churches where they can get together and laugh at us goys that they own through the practice of wage slavery !!!
Theyre the ones that should pay the rest of us slaves !!! THE JOOOOS !!!
(Everyone chant with me..)
One.. Two.. Three .. Four…
We know what the JOOOS are
Slave Owners! Slave Owners !
Paaaaaaayyyyy UP !
(You guys keep up the chanting…)
Had enough of the heat Jeff ? I take Paypal.. Just direct 10K or so to me and we’ll call it ‘even steven’.. No hard feelings.. You were just doing what JOOOS were born to do.. Rule the economic world secretly and make us goys your slaves. I’ll watch for the confirmation.
–AB
Thanks for nothing Jeff. My slaves brought this article up, and I had to spend all day beating them before they would drop it.
I never quite understood why this particular mass mania fixated on slavery and not the unconstitutional Jim Crow laws. There are living victims of Jim Crow, unlike slavery. I once knew a security guard who had studied to be a doctor, but couldn’t get employment because of racial barriers, for example.
I guess the reparations enthusiasts are suffering from PMS. Poor Me Syndrome.
They and the Democrats deserve each other.
Turing = started, as in Don’t get me started…
Did it occur to them that Thomas Jefferson, a well known slave holder, founded the Democratic Party in 1792; but the Republican party was founded to end slavery and their first president was Lincoln? I think it would be fitting if the DNC made some sort of reparation for that.
My grandfather was one quarter Miami Indian. I believe that makes me maybe one sixteenth Miami Indian. Where can I get some help in financing a casino?