Give me progress, not guilt

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Give me progress, not guilt				December 8, 2007

It seems rather contradictory that in the same year in which we’ve been whooping it up for old Jamestown and the British blockheads who introduced us to the benefits of slavery the Virginia General Assembly expressed profound regret for the role the state played in the slave trade.

I’ve always found verbal self-flagellation to be a rather embarrassing procedure. I suppose I can understand why some religions practice physical flagellation, but when states and universities start apologizing and mea culpa-ing for events that happened hundreds of years ago, you have to wonder what it is about contemporary society that makes shame and guilt so attractive.

Yet, according to a report in the Daily Press, such seems to be the case with William & Mary’s Student Senate. Following the dubious lead of the University of Virginia, the W&M guilt-trippers have become so enamored of this Freudian fiasco that they want the college to do something - be it an apology, a memorial or some other act of contrition – to acknowledge that at some historical point there were slaves working on the campus.

Note that neither the students nor members of the General Assembly were picketing at Jamestown, where this whole ugly slavery mess began, but rather are bloviating from the comfort of their legislative chambers.

Adding fuel to the students’ belly fire is a scholarly piece written by English professor Terry Meyers in which he argues that the college bought and sold slaves in the 18^th and 19^th centuries and that slaves most likely were involved in the construction of some campus buildings, including the Brafferton and the Wren Building.

Unacceptable as this may be, the fact is that slaves the world over have been involved in the construction of notable edifices, such as the pyramids, the Parthenon in Athens and the Colosseum in Rome. Yet I know of no apologies that have come from the governments of Egypt, Greece or Italy.

While I suppose that apologies for events in the distant past make people feel better or satisfy some inexplicable need for a cosmic justice that transcends time, they generally aren’t worth the paper they’re written on or the time it takes to utter them. They rectify nothing. They can’t change history. They indicate only that we now believe that what transpired in the past was a crime against humanity.

And so it was. Unfortunately, the denizens of Hades or heaven who perpetrated the crimes are no longer among us and hence are totally unable to comprehend our disgust. They are beyond reform.

Aristotle, Plato and Sophocles, all living at a time when slavery was inherent in their culture, said little or nothing about it. They did, however, draw keen distinctions between the power of the word (logos) and action or deed (ergon). While words and the reasoning they represent are important, actions or deeds are what count. Words, like apologies, have little substantive value if they are their own ends and bereft of corresponding deeds. If, on the other hand, right reason leads to productive and beneficial acts or ends on either a personal or political (state) level, the proper balance between the two has been reached.

Since students at the college now have absolutely no control over the reasoning or the acts of those who thought it fitting to traffic in slaves on a long-ago campus, they would more profitably turn their attention to what the college is doing now to overcome the stigma not only of slavery, but of segregation. What processes have been established to rectify what we consider to be the unacceptable social norms of the past?

Is the college involved in well-reasoned courses of action that will lead to a more diverse campus? Is it promoting not only a more inclusive student body, but a diverse faculty as well? The answer to both these questions is a definite “yes.” Whether you agree with affirmative action or not, the fact is that as a result of it more and more blacks, Hispanics and Asian students and professors are now on campus.

Thanks to an energetic International Studies program, concentrations in African Studies and East-Asian Studies are now available. Black studies and African literature are also regularly included in other departmental curriculums. Courses in both early and modern black American literature are available in the English department.

It is indeed unfortunate that college president Gene Nichol has come under such intense fire from the right because of his desire to make the college more attuned to the religious and social needs of a very diverse student group. His progressive instincts in that regard should be lauded, not demeaned.

In the final analysis, the students who are clamoring for apologies or memorials for wrongs long past should rather be taking a closer look at what the college has done and is doing to rectify past injustices. I suspect that they will find that as a result of its well-conceived actions the college is moving forward in a manner for which no apologies will be needed in the future.