An Apology for Jim Crow and Slavery

Is the US House Preparing the Way for Slavery Reparations?

The House of Representatives has taken some time out from wrangling about minor issues like oil drilling and the economy and is poised to pass a resolution formally apologizing to African Americans for slavery and Jim Crow.

Slavery was officially abolished in 1865 shortly after the Civil War by the passage of the 13^th Amendment of the Constitution. Jim Crow refers to a series of state and local laws, primarily Southern states of the United States, which mandated racial segregation of schools, public accommodations, transportation, restaurants and restrooms. School segregation was declared unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court in 1954 in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education. The last vestiges of Jim Crow were abolished by the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act which were passed in the mid 1960s.

The fact that the US House seems poised to apologize for slavery, an injustice of which no perpetrator or victim is alive, and Jim Crow for which victims and perpetrators, if they are alive at all, are in their dotage is a bit odd. Why the Democratic-controlled US House now seems concerned about slavery and Jim Crow, which is about as current an issue as-say-the Schleswig-Holstein Question, can be answered by looking at a key part of the legislation.

The legislation reads, in part, "African-Americans continue to suffer from the consequences of slavery and Jim Crow -- long after both systems were formally abolished -- through enormous damage and loss, both tangible and intangible, including the loss of human dignity and liberty, the frustration of careers and professional lives, and the long-term loss of income and opportunity."

In other words, decades after the end of Jim Crow and almost a century and a half after the abolition of slavery, African Americans, including presumably Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, and Colin Powell, remain victims whose only redress is government action. What government action? The answer is reparations.