The Living Consequences

Paul Butler has an interview with Tom DeWolf today on Moody Radio’s Prime Time America with Greg Wheatley. The subject is Tom’s memoir, Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in U.S. History, about our experiences retracing the route of our slave-trading ancestors.

You can listen to the interview on a local radio station or on Paul Butler’s blog.

Today marks the sixtieth anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNDR) by the United Nations General Assembly.

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I want to point out a candid and revealing post on race and gender by Renee, who writes the blog Womanist Musings.

Renee writes from what she terms “a womanist perspective,” but she has also described herself from the outset as a “woman of color,” and her latest blog entry explores the implications of that perspective.

Renee’s thesis is that online, as in the outside world, the perspectives of women of color are marginalized, even within the feminist community:

It is like we are some sort of “special interest group” who have completely divergent needs. That’s right I’m saying it, white women are “the women” and we are just a side group looking for scraps.

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Walter Olson, a conservative opponent of the U.S. legal system, has an opinion piece out today in the fall issue of City Journal, in which he argues that the slavery reparations movement has “completely disappeared from the national agenda.”

This is, of course, a puzzling argument on the surface, given that the last two years have seen an unprecedented outpouring of state and federal apologies for slavery, often seen as a precursor to reparations, and federal reparations legislation pending for twenty years finally advanced to the hearing stage during the current Congress.

Could Olson be right, though, or at least have an important argument to make about the reparations movement?

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In another sign of the nation’s hyper-sensitivity around the issue of reparations for slavery, the architect of the forthcoming national memorial to Martin Luther King, Jr. revealed this week that King’s memorial will be censored to remove a key passage which has been used rhetorically in support of reparations.

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Earlier this year, we saw the launch of Voyages, an innovative new web site designed to make available to the public the latest incarnation of the invaluable Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database.

On December 5 and 6, Emory University will host an international group of scholars for a conference to celebrate the launch of Voyages, to commemorate the bicentennial of the abolition of the trade, and to present research on the slave trade.

Those of us who have worked on the history of the DeWolf family and the slave trade in Rhode Island for the documentary Traces of the Trade, and the book Inheriting the Trade, found earlier versions of the trans-Atlantic slave trade database, including the original 1999 database as well as the more recently updated database and the beta version of the Voyages web site, to be invaluable as research tools.

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The American Jewish Committee has a booklet, available online, which beautifully tells the story of the diversity and shared values of our country at Thanksgiving.

America’s Table: A Thanksgiving Reader tells the personal stories of eight inspirational Americans, representing a variety of racial, ethnic, and personal backgrounds. They are recent immigrants and from long-standing American families; self-made success stories and the beneficiaries of inherited privilege; the descendants of slaves and those who benefited from slavery.

The reader contains passages intended to be read aloud at Thanksgiving, as well as details of all eight Americans profiled. The focus is on the the diverse experiences and shared commitments of all Americans, and on the often difficult history which we have experienced. The emphasis is positive, without shrinking from the negative aspects of our shared history, and there is no no suggestion that the American story is darker than the histories of other parts of the world.

Hat tip: Toby, Ann, and Nanda of Rhode Island for Community & Justice.

At last, after more than two weeks, we have the final results of the presidential election:

I don’t mind saying that I correctly predicted 49 out of 50 states.

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Here, courtesy of Robert J. Vanderbei of Princeton, is the current electoral map of the United States:

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While several results remain too close to call this morning, I think it’s time to post an indication of where the races stand at this time.

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