The Living Consequences

On Monday, the State of Connecticut will begin debating an apology for its role in slavery and and racial discrimination.

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Brown University announced plans yesterday to build a memorial to commemorate Brown’s historic connections to the slave trade, possibly in Bristol or neighboring Newport, Rhode Island.

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In an important development in the controversy over next month’s U.N. conference on racism, negotiators have removed several controversial passages, including references to Israel, religious defamation, and reparations for slavery, from the draft conference text.

This change follows a threat by the European Union to boycott the Durban Review Conference (also known as Durban II), and it may permit the United States to participate in the conference in Geneva in April. The U.S. and other nations had earlier threatened to boycott the conference if there were not changes to these passages in the document, while Canada and Israel had already announced that they were not attending because of the specific references to Israel and the Palestinian territories.

The draft text, which still must be reviewed by regional groups, is not yet public. So it is not clear, for instance, whether the shortened text drops all references to reparations for slavery, or whether it merely reverts to the milder language adopted at Durban in 2001. That language, which the U.S. said weeks ago that it was willing to accept, acknowledged the history of slavery, particularly the transatlantic slave trade, and suggested that reparations for slavery are appropriate, while stopping short of actually calling on nations to offer reparations.

A new study came across my desk this week, which suggests that whites who have experience distinguishing the faces of individual black people may display less “implicit racial bias.”

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Historical amnesia about slavery and race takes very different forms in the northern and southern United States.

This week, that reality is demonstrated by a critical look at public history in Charleston, South Carolina.

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The U.S. Supreme Court is poised to rule on the issue of whether apologies issued to Hawaii give native Hawaiians a legal claim to lands seized in the 19th century.

The Court will have to judge whether an apology was a mere statement of regret, or whether, even without additional language, the apology creates legal responsibilities.

The case has important implications for native Hawaiians and for other groups, such as native Americans, which may have historic claims to seized territory. It also bears directly on the politics and legal implications of the growing number of state and federal apologies for the nation’s history of slavery and discrimination.

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The state of Maryland is currently considering a slavery-era disclosure law, similar to the one now pending in Massachusetts and previously adopted in several other states.

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Yesterday, the U.S. Congress voted to ease restrictions on family travel to Cuba, as well as imports of food and medicine.

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I’d like to use this post to acknowledge Holly Fulton, one of the ten DeWolf descendants featured in Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North, and her husband, Bill Peebles.

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In a split decision, the U.S. Supreme Court today limited an important protection provided by federal voting rights law, ruling that election districts benefiting racial minorities are only protected if the minority in question comprises a majority of the entire voting-age population of the district.

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