lawyers & genocide & Pynchon

[Eric Rosenbloom]

Doug Millison wrote:
> On Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! radio show
> (http://www.democracynow.org) this morning I heard a American
> historian -- I didn't catch his name, only heard part of the show  --
> talking about black history and the perennial issue (albeit an issue
> that receives virtually no mainstream media coverage) of reparations
> that might be owed to the African-American community for past crimes
> committed against them.  That's a complex issue, of course, and I
> have no interest in debating it in this forum.  [...]  The historian on
> the radio was talking about a value beyond monetary compensation, in
> exposing the facts to discussion, in reclaiming history that has been
> ignored or covered-up or otherwise neglected.

Remember a few years ago -- at the Library of Congress, was it? -- an
exhibit about slave life that never opened, because the Africans, the
descendents of those slaves, were offended? The fear of facing that
(long-ago) past is on both sides. It's also interesting that most of the
European population of the USA came after slavery was abolished, came as
Europe's wretched, and yet have inherited the guilt of it (much of
course earned by going on to participate in the institutionalized racism
that succeeded slavery). There's a disjunct similar to wailing the loss
of community while hailing individual self-reliance. If we examine
slavery, we will discover that the undeserved guilt or shame over it in
fact admits to a deeply ingrained and exploited racism that is still
with us, which denies our basking in the claim that we have overcome.

And if we want to atone for that past injustice, will we have to next
come to terms with the genocide theft and imprisonment that made this
continent ours? 

(My own feeling is that the USA will never grow out of its adolescence
until it deals with the decimation of the people who were here first.)

Yours,
Eric R



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