Views > July 21, 2005

So Very Sorry

By Salim Muwakkil

Occasionally I speak publicly about the racial disparities that afflict the prison-industrial complex. I often end my talks with an observation about how racial lynching once was accepted by white Americans because they assumed that the mostly black male victims were guilty.

African Americans had been so thoroughly demonized by the media of those days many whites considered lynching a public service. We marvel at our former acceptance of such racist injustice. But in the future we’ll look back on our current apartheid system of criminal justice and shake our heads in disbelief.

I thought about this when the Senate passed a voice vote apology for its inaction in the face of a documented 4,743 lynchings from 1882 to 1968. Most of those mob murders were of black men in the South.

During that period about 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced in Congress. Although three bills passed the House, the Senate, dominated by filibustering Dixiecrats, always said no.

On June 13, the Senate passed a non-binding resolution, sponsored by Senators Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and George Allen, (R-Va.), that apologized to the victims and survivors for its failure to act.

The measure “expresses the deepest sympathies and most solemn regrets of the Senate to the descendants of victims of lynching, the ancestors of whom were deprived of life, human dignity and the constitutional protections accorded all citizens of the United States.” The resolution also “remembers the history of lynching to ensure that these tragedies will be neither forgotten nor repeated.”

Both Landrieu and Allen requested a vote by official roll call. But Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) insisted on a voice vote, which allowed senators to avoid recording their position on the measure. Senators could add their names as co-sponsors, however, and 90 of 100 signed on.

Both senators from the state with the highest number of lynchings (Mississippi) were among those withholding their signatures, as well as senators from New Hampshire and Wyoming.

Expressing public regret for complicity in well-documented cases of domestic terrorism apparently was too risky for the 10 Republican senators who refused to sign as co-sponsors. Many of these same senators are among Congress’ fiercest opponents of Islamist terrorism.

While they refused to endorse an apology for abetting racist violence, several of the unsigned senators also were prominent in later forcing Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin to apologize for inviting comparisons between abusive treatment of suspected terrorists at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and the treatment accorded victims of Nazi camps and Soviet gulags.

Had Durbin sought a more cogent comparison between the United States and totalitarian gulags, he could have cited Pelican Bay State Prison in California and made the same point. The United States hosts 6 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of its prisoners; this nation’s prison-industrial complex is the new gulag.

What’s more, the racist impulse that impelled white hate mobs to lynch black suspects is still recognizable in America’s apartheid gulags. Although black men are about 6 percent of the U.S. population they make up about half of the nation’s prisoners. Study after study has provided statistics that confirm how racial injustices corrupt and corrode the criminal justice system, yet denial persists.

Some of this denial is being camouflaged by a seeming readiness to atone for the anti-black violence of our nation’s racist past. In recent years, some of the most egregious crimes committed during the turbulent period of the civil rights struggle have been re-examined and in some cases, resolved.

Byron de la Beckwith was convicted in 1994 for the sniper murder of Mississippi NAACP leader Medgar Evers; in 2002 Bobby Frank Cherry was convicted for killing four black girls in the infamous 1963 bombing of a church in Birmingham, Ala. 

On June 21, a jury convicted Edgar Ray Killen of manslaughter in the 1964 murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner in Philadelphia, Miss., and the FBI exhumed the body of Emmett Till in hopes of finding clues to the brutal 1955 murder of the 14-year-old for reportedly whistling at a white woman in Money, Miss.

This new thrust for retroactive racial justice is also, I suspect, a muted reaction to African Americans’ increasing push for reparations. The logic of reparations—that historical wounds worsen unless repaired or redressed—is apparent in many of these contemporary efforts.

But even supportive senators seem oblivious to the connection between our past of anti-black brutality and the racial disparities of today’s criminal justice system. And although the resolution wanly concedes Senate complicity in mob murders, it does little to compensate victims of a racist terrorism that was culture-deep.

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• Reader Comments

  Thank you, Salim, for another very insightful essay.  To be sure, belated, hypocritical apologies and long delayed, diluted justice are no substitute for Reparations.  For more than a decade courageous Black scholars and activists (including AFRE’s Silis Muhammad and NCOBRA’s Dorothy Lewis) have been diligently working inside the United Nations to establish Human Rights and secure Reparations for all slave descendants in the Western Hemisphere, who continue to suffer from long-term Euro-American imposed ethnocide and forced assimilation.  We must remember that the same Caucasian Republicans and Caucasian Democrats who are fiercely opposed to Reparations for Afrodescendants have always fully endorsed massive Reparations for the Jewish people.  Reparations means far more than financial restitution for centuries of chattel slavery and subsequent decades of de-facto apartheid.  It means the Restoration of a people who were robbed of their original language, original religion, original culture and the powers of Self-Determination.
  Sincerely,
  Malik Al-Arkam
  www.AllForReparations.org

  Posted by Malik Al-Arkam on Jul 21, 2005 at 11:54 AM

  An excellent but saddening piece indeed. This article is a good repudiation of right-wing calls for an end to affirmative action, who disgustingly enough, validate their position by claiming “racism.” Racism is alive and well in American society today, only it has changed in terms of how it is manifested. There may no longer be lynchings and racially motivated murders by the KKK and other right-wing domestic terrorist groups, but today’s racism is reflected most strongly in income disparity and prison representation. Being a white man, it is easy to say racism is dead. To take racial equality for granted overlooks the decades of protest and efforts of those brave enough to challenge their government to meet a higher standard of human rights. It overlooks all those who died in the fight for freedom and equality. That viewpoint glosses over the lingering wounds created by centuries of human bondage and abuse by the ruling class for economic gain. While overt discrimination is illegal, that does not mean it no longer exists. It has only become more subtle in how it raises its nasty head. A good chunk of this nation was built on the backs of blood and suffering. Reparations seem like the least this country can do to start healing the wounds of its racist past.

  Posted by Liberal on Jul 21, 2005 at 1:57 PM

  Agreed on much of Salim’s essay; in particular, how even ONE Senator would refuse to go on the record with the belated apology is dumbfounding.

  But enough on the reparations nonsense already. First of all, the best way to address the grievous wrongs of the past is not through some arbitrary endowment of cash to people who may or may not have actual ties to slaves.

  Not to mention the fact that if reparations are to be handed out, then blacks can go to the back of the line, behind the Native Americans who had their land stolen from them and their numbers virtually wiped off the face of the earth. No, the best way to do this is to work to fix the problem.

  Ever hear of affirmative action?

  All this bullshit about reparations just serves to divide the country when it should be coming together to determine viable solutions for the vestiges of racial inequality that still exist. Salim speaks of the prison population and the fact that the percentage of inmates are heavily black.

  Well.. why is that? Should we just unilaterally wave a magic wand and set them free? Does Salim actually believe that most of the blacks in prison are wrongly accused/convicted?

  While no doubt there are blacks in prison who might have been incarcerated wrongly, they are not the only ones - it happens all the time to people FROM ALL WALKS OF LIFE. All the time. Not saying it’s right, but it does happen.

  No - I think the answer lies in the miserable, self-perpetuating cycle of poverty, drugs and crime that admittedly white America helped foster in the black community. Take Chicago, for example: I don’t know what genius thought packing people like animals into 30-story ghettos in the 40s/50s was a good idea, but the results were predictable. You want to do some REAL damage and make some REAL strides?

  How about funneling more money towards community programs and especially education in poverty-stricken areas? How about focusing more efforts on job-training and helping ex-cons avoid repeating their mistakes from the past? I guarantee that will do more good than simply serving up handouts to people.

  Posted by g-love on Jul 21, 2005 at 2:08 PM

  This country reaped enormous economic gain through the use of slave labor. What is wrong with returning some of it to the ancestors of those laborers?
  I agree with most of what you said except the claim that the number of black men in jail is not indicative of racist state tendencies in this country. Black men do not have access to the high-profile lawyers and the connections to get them out of serving jail time. Most of the black men in prison are there for drug use/distribution. That behavior is the LEAST of this country’s problems with respect to criminal behavior. We would best be served by shining the light of law into the halls of government than onto the poor and economically disenfranchised. Public housing is a good idea, but the way it was carried out was not. Public housing projects only isolate the poor from the rest of society. No private developer wants to build near the projects. That is why Section 8 housing vouchers are a good idea. They help poor people pay for their rent but allow them to be integrated into the greater community.

  Posted by Liberal on Jul 21, 2005 at 2:26 PM

  “This new thrust for retroactive racial justice is also, I suspect, a muted reaction to African Americans’ increasing push for reparations.”

  Wrong as usual, Salim.  There will never be reparations and anyone with any sense knows that.  I owe you nothing for being here.

  Posted by Kaiser Bill on Jul 21, 2005 at 2:56 PM

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