Souls

ISSN: 1099-9949 (Print) 1548-3843 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/usou20

The Politics of Black Memory

Ronald Walters

To cite this article: Ronald Walters (2003) The Politics of Black Memory, Souls, 5:3, 1-7, DOI:
10.1080/713905996

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Published online: 21 Jun 2010.

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Souls 40 Acres and a Mule? 1

40 Acres and a Mule?

The Politics of Black Memory

Ronald Walters

T he natural law of oppression is that for those conquered there will be an attempt
where the circumstances allowto reconstruct their personality, which includes the
dignification of their identity, the normalization of their work and living conditions, and
the rediscovery of their origins and that of their ancestors. These important aspects of the
recovery from intense oppression have not received much attention as an object of for-
mal study in the academy. However, this process of reclamation and healing belongs to
the oppressed and forms a natural and essential part of their recovery. Although the United
States has experienced slavery as a fundamental part of its national identity, there has
been an attempt to suppress slaverys manifestations and to elevate in its place a heroic
myth about the making of America, and, in doing so, to subordinate the contributions that
enslaved Africans played in U.S. nation-building.
The manifestations of slaveryhigh poverty rates, transgenerational lack of wealth,
poor health, substandard housing, and the persistence of racismtake many forms, but
might be rationalized as a project of Black postmodernism. A project adopted by African
Americans upon realizing the importance of not only preserving their memories, but
institutionalizing their past in order to mobilize the resources necessary to reclaim as
much of the comprehensive story of their experience as possible.
That is the genesis of the honor given to the Black griots of our history, such as Carter
G. Woodson, John Henrik Clarke, John Hope Franklin, and others. They are honored
because of the way in which they helped African Americans not only reclaim the stories
of their past, but preserve that story, and, in doing so, provide the basis upon which to
build others.
In the most immediate sense, the reconstruction process is personal. The tremendous

Authors Note: This essay was originally presented at the Institute for Research in African-American
Studies Forty Acres and a Mule reparations research conference and has been adapted from the forthcom-
ing book The Politics of Black Memory.

Souls 5 (3): 17, 2003 / Copyright 2003 Ronald Walters / 1099-9949/03 /

DOI:10.1080/10999940390430019
 2 Souls Summer 2003
outpouring of interest in the televised version of Roots is a testament to the phenomenon
of interest in slavery as a bedrock economic, social, and political process that fostered
oppression. Alex Haleys personal journey touched off a boom of attempts by African
Americans to rediscover their African roots. Because of Roots, discovery and genealogy
clubs sprang up, which pressured archivists of United States government records, slave
family records, ship records, church institutional records, and many others, to yield the
precious secrets of how families were captured, worked in slavery, or freed. So we have
not been without a discussion of slavery. In fact, slavery has been at the heart of an
abiding discussion in American culture. Just turn your attention to Thomas Jefferson, one
of the fathers of our country.
Jefferson also fathered several children with one of his slaves, Sally Hemming. This
saga is rife with claims of ancestry by Jeffersons Black descendents and counterclaims
rejecting them by a branch of Jeffersons white descendents. The debate played out
publicly in the national media and in laboratories that performed DNA analysis of the
Hemming descendents in an attempt to discover Jeffersons paternity. Nevertheless, the
rejection by Jeffersons white descendents of the attempt by his Black descendents to
legitimize their claim of identity is a virtual paradigm of what has happened to Black
people in their attempt to dignify their history within the context of American history.
Now, what I mean by that is something simple. I dont mean that we have not been
without a discussion of slavery, but that the discussion of slavery has not lent itself to the
important reclamation process that were talking about. It has been slavery lite, a folk-
loric treatment of our past that is devoid of the political content of oppression that is
responsible for the subordinate status of our community in America today. It has been
slavery distorted and redone. It has been slavery in an accommodationist mode to the
creation myth of America and, therefore, has not been a liberating discussion of slavery.
The nature of the present movement places a demand upon the state not only for a cor-
rected version of that history, but also for a share in the resources involved in creating
it. We have not seen this political discussion about slavery until the development of the
current movement for reparations.
But there is a contradiction here. On the one
hand, while those who control the American
government have attempted to address repara-
tions for other groups, they have rejected the
There has been an demand for reparations by Black people in the
attempt to suppress United States. On the other hand, there has been
a recognition by other governments that some-
slaverys manifestations thing must be done to address the historical rac-
and to elevate in its ism suffered by oppressed groups. For example,
place a heroic myth in 1999, I participated in a conference in Aus-
tralia organized by the Council for Aboriginal
about the making of Reconciliation and, at the same time, the South
America African Truth and Reconciliation Commission
was completing its own report. Even in the
United States, President Bill Clinton had initi-
ated a so-called race dialogue. Although these
projects may have been well meaning, all have
fallen short of promoting racial reconciliation, because the grievances raised have been
limited to those that cast no aspersions on the perpetrators of crimes against peoples of
African descent and that place the issue of self-determination of the Black people at the
margins of the projects.
For example, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission was in some
 40 Acres and a Mule? 3

Reverend Sharpton #1. Photo Azim N. Thomas

ways a strange body. I think what we saw here was an attempt on the part of some well-
meaning folk to do something, but it didnt really turn out right. Coming back from
Australia, I thought that the race dialogues sponsored by President Bill Clinton were
constructed as his own sort of reclamation project without empowering Blacks as an
equal party to the discussion.
The Black strategy of reconciliation is the one that we are entertaining at the moment,
and so I want to make just a comment or two about that. It seems to me that we should, at
4 Souls Summer 2003
first, as a people, recognize that we are involved in a social struggle and become more
conscious of its power, the context of opportunities it presents, and our responsibilities.
To begin with, we should become more fully conscious of the fact that the struggle for
reparations has set in motion a new social movement in our community, with all of the
complexities and contradictions of other such movements. Like other movements, this
one has created a foundation for launching a powerful critique of the status of Black
social development as a summary of the way in which the state and its dominant culture

The discussion of slavery has not lent itself to the

important reclamation process that were talking about.
It has been slavery lite

has responded to our historical situation. In such a context, we should become more
aware, and through our awareness, more sensitive to the fact that there will be many
different kinds of contributions to this liberating struggle, leading in various directions,
and sponsored by various units of our community. As such, we cannot hope to organize
all of these contributions into one direction, but we must engage in an ongoing critique of
their relationship to the central goals of the movement.
Now, what are the goals? First, to organize the Black community into an appreciation
of the necessity for reparations as a major strategy of our social development and as a
response to our demand for U.S. accountability for our past and present oppression.
Second, to sensitize the American public to the gross injustice of having enslaved the
African peoples and then compounding this crime by refusing to make financial and
other kinds of restitution tailored specifically to addressing this crime and post-slavery
racial subordination, much of which is still with us today.
Third, to prepare a legal challenge addressed to the negligence of the American
government and private corporations for abetting the authorization of enslavement and
post-slavery racism and benefiting from the financial profits to the extent that these earn-
ings constituted the maintenance of white supremacy.
Fourth, to organize public social movement activities that provide an opportunity for
the average person to engage in the debate over reparations, but which act especially as a
forum for those who support reparations to contribute to the movement, to obtain infor-
mation about its national and international manifestations, and to focus their energies on
concrete projects at the local level, that help move the struggle forward through study
groups, city councils, legislative resolutions, and the like.
Like other such movements, the struggle for reparations has struck a contentious chord
as a public discussion about the responsibilities of America to former enslaved Africans
and their ancestors. The public nature of this debate has caused confusion and challenged
our understanding of whose voice is most legitimate in these important mattersthose
outside of the Black community and the critics of Black reclamation movements, or those
who are the descendents of enslaved Africans and members of the wider community of
African Americans?
The discussion over whether or not reparations will be granted should be a public
discussion because it depends ultimately on the agreement of the dominant class and
their political and legal representatives. Nevertheless, regardless of the fact that most
racial issues in this country engender public tension, Black people should be sensitive to
 40 Acres and a Mule? 5
the fact that their experience of suffering and disempowerment is the basis of their legiti-
macy in having the most authoritative voice in this debate.
Fifth, we should take advantage of the opportunity and the energy of the movement to
provide creative goals and strategies in various categories of Black life that relate to the
reparations movement. On this point, I think, this conference has divided itself into some
logical categories, beginning with an analysis of racialized disadvantage in areas like
health and economics, business, education, psychology, politics, cultural life, and so forth.
But this is just the beginning. To deepen this enterprise, we need to identify strategic
goals within each one of these categoriesin health, for examplethat are necessary to
move our community forward and then do the third thing, which is to specify plausible
strategies that can help make the Black community whole in that particular sector. Not
just equal, but whole. Thats a different sort of proposition.
We also need to answer the question posed by Randall Robinson, who played such an
important part in helping to stimulate this phase of the movement. What do Blacks owe
each other? This movement is not only addressed to whites but, in the sense once ob-
served by Manning Marable , the project of the reclamation of the soul of African Ameri-
can people is one that only they can participate in, within the context of their obligation to
one another. We have to realize that this is not just an outwardly directed movement. It is
a movement that challenges the very foundation of who we are as a people and, as such,
the first stage of reclamation is with ourselves. How can we have a reclamation move-
ment that is only addressed to our group relationship with the American state? Such a
reclamation movement will fail because it will not teach those involved in the movement
how to use prospective resources that may emanate from the state.
It seems that as we shape the current movement we have to reinvoke the values of a
people with a special mission in the world, especially a people whose vision identifies
with the progressive struggles of people in this
country, whether Black, white, Hispanic, Asian,
Native American, female, or other, and whose
values challenge the crass dominance of mate- Those who control
rialism as the basis of any culture. This is a rec-
ognition that mere reparations from white folk, the government have
the American political system, or wherever, will attempted to address
not save us and that we should take this mo- reparations f or other
ment to shine the spotlight of the prerequisites
for the development of the reparations move- groups, but have
ment on our own individual and group motiva- rejected the demand
tions, resources, and responsibilities. f or reparations by
To that extent I have observed some tension
among groups involved in the reparations move- Black people in the
ment such as: the Farmer-Paellmann group, the United States
National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in
America (NCOBRA), the Reparations
Coodinating Committee, the Silas Muhammad
group, the December 12th Coalition, the Black United Front, and others. If we have
learned anything from the internecine battles of the 1960s over ideology and methodol-
ogy of Black progress, it was that ultimately our enemies win when we become supremely
disunited. When we become so pure and so correct that nothing else matters, then we
become agents primed to destroy the growth of the movement among those whose lack of
purity and incorrectness amounts to most of the Black community.
Finally, the movement for reparations should become a movement for the self-deter-
mination of Black people in America and in the diaspora. As such, this is a movement to
6 Souls Summer 2003

Reverend Sharpton #2. Photo Azim N. Thomas.

reinvoke the positive nature of the ideology of Pan-Africanism and to imbue it with a
concrete project of challenging the negligence of other governments to the plight of their
citizens who are also the descendents of enslaved Africans. In concrete terms, this means
that part of our own movement should become sensitive to the responsibility of European

The project of the reclamation of the soul of African

American people is one that only they can participate in

powers for the Caribbean enslavement of Africans, the Latin American enslavement, the
enslavement of the African continent, as well as the demand for the reclamation of Afri-
can treasures held by European public and private interests.
This global initiative demands both a focus on the United Nations as a place where
reparation activists should follow up the World Conference Against Racism in Durban,
 40 Acres and a Mule? 7
South Africa with a unified call for global
reparations and an examination of the im-
pact of globalization on peoples of African
descent, who occupy the bottom of the so- The s truggle for
cial systems of each of the countries where reparations has set in
they hold citizenship. motion a new social
As we ride on the currents of this move-
ment, we should be ever-mindful of our re- movement in our
sponsibility not just to invoke the names of community, with all of
our ancestors, but to muster all of the intel- the complexities and
lectual strength and creativity at our com-
mand to present their case before the world contradictions of
in meticulous detail. Since so much of the other movements
struggle for reparations must be won in the
heat of intellectual battle, as anticipated by
this conference, the development of a re-
search base is crucial, for such information
and perspectives will support all of the sectors that are part of the grand narrative that we
place before this era of history. We owe it to ourselves and to our ancestors to pursue this
project with the utmost seriousness.