Memories In Blood
WRITING IN ESSENCE MAGAZINE, ""AMISTAD'' midwife Debbie Allen described the Joseph Cinque saga as ""a little drop in a big bucket of blood memory we need to share with the world.'' Allen's implicit assumption is that ""Amistad'' is not enough, that we need to reach deeper into that bucket if we are to understand America.
S. Allen Counter, neurophysiologist, Harvard University professor and head of the Harvard Foundation, believes that nothing less than a national monument to slavery can transmit the essence of those blood memories across the generations. For years he has sought backing for a memorial on the Washington Mall that would showcase the hold of a slave ship with 300-plus men, women and children packed inside. Such a monument, he contends, ""would answer all the questions,'' by providing some sense of the immensity of the pain endured and horror perpetrated in forging and preserving the Union. And if placed in the heart of the nation's capital, a city that was legally segregated well into this century, the memorial's lesson could not be easily overlooked.
Certainly, as Allen suggests, the Amistad story does not answer ""all the questions'' about slavery. Indeed, in some sense it is not much about slavery at all, but about heroic men who chose mutiny over slavery and, in the end, won freedom on a technicality. But is it really important for this generation of Americans to know much more about slavery than can be gleaned from a movie or two?
John Powell, head of the Institute of Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota Law School, insists that it is. If we are to make sense of our country, he says, we must understand that peculiar institution and its aftereffects. The acceptance of slavery was an essential compromise that allowed the United States to be born, he points out, and thus set the terms for what it has become: ""The enslavement of blacks really created freedom for whites.''
Some scholars see slavery's legacy not simply in political-moral terms but in economic ones. In ""Black Wealth, White Wealth,'' sociologists Melvin Oliver and Tom Shapiro documented the huge racial disparity in accumulated resources. Middle-class blacks, they calculated, earn 70 percent of the income of middle-class whites but possess only 15 percent of the wealth. The basic reason, they argue, is slavery--which denied generations of blacks the possibility of acquiring any substantial assets. Following the Civil War, that inequality was compounded by decades of discriminatory policies that, among other things, denied most blacks access to land settled upon by white homesteaders, and that made it difficult for blacks to own and operate businesses.
As a factual matter, Oliver and Shapiro are right. But what does that have to do with anybody today? The slaves are all dead, as are those who enslaved them. Isn't there some generational statute of limitations? In ruminating on post-apartheid South Africa, Mamphela Ramphele, vice chairman of the University of Cape Town, observed, ""There are limits to the extent to which one can correct for past wrongs. One may have to make peace with the past.''
If black South Africans, whose oppression is so recent that it burns within their memories, can talk about accepting the unfairness of history, why can't black Americans? Powell believes that such an argument misses an important point. ""I would be very happy to forget about slavery,'' he says, ""if we could also forget about the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.'' For slavery (and the policies developed in its wake) continues, like those documents, to define a large part of America--in terms not only of attitudes and resources but also of life possibilities. Until the country comes to terms with that, maintains Powell, there will not be a ""serious process of healing.'' Like Counter, Powell believes a memorial would be a monumental help, provided that it is not merely a shallow or symbolic gesture.
The Counter-Powell hope, in essence, is that a better understanding of American history will somehow affect the way we see--and presumably implement--social policy today. If we can make the connection between slavery and, say, inner-city poverty, we will be better prepared to combat it. And we may also be more willing to do so.
I am not convinced that the will to resolve social inequality has much to do with a sophisticated understanding of history. Nor am I persuaded that a monument on the Mall will lead to a massive reawakening of American consciousness. Counter and Powell, however, are fundamentally correct in their insistence that the past matters. And they are right to search for ways to remind us of that; just as the creators of the new Museum of African-American History in Detroit were right to showcase the American tragedy of slavery. The reason is not that such knowledge will necessarily lead to good policymaking, but that ignorance will surely lead to bad.
Like The Daily Beast on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for updates all day long.
Ellis Cose, author, columnist and contributing editor (since 1993) for Newsweek magazine and former chairman of the editorial board and editorial page editor of the New York Daily News, began his journalism career as a weekly columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times—becoming, at the age of 19, the youngest editorial page columnist ever employed by a major Chicago daily. Cose, who is also an independent radio producer, is a popular campus lecturer and public speaker.
In addition to serving as a columnist, editor and national correspondent for the Chicago Sun-Times, Cose has been a contributor and press critic for Time magazine, president and chief executive officer of the Institute for Journalism Education, chief writer on management and workplace issues for USA Today (where he has also served as an occasional columnist and member of the board of contributors) and a member of the editorial board of the Detroit Free Press. He has also been a fellow at the Gannett Center for Media Studies at Columbia University, at the National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences, a senior fellow and director of energy policy studies at the Washington-based Joint Center for Political Studies, and a consultant to the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations.
Cose's Bone to Pick: On Forgiveness, Reconciliation, Reparation and Revenge, was published by Atria (a Simon and Schuster imprint) in April 2004. The book is a wide-ranging look at a number of societies—the United States, Ghana, South Africa, East Timor, and Peru among them—and their ways of coping with cruelty and pain. The Washington Post had this to say: "The complex questions surrounding 'forgiveness, reconciliation, reparation, and revenge' probably require a scholarship of jurisprudence, philosophy, psychology, history and literature. This is the kind of ambitious enterprise that the world's great religions deal with. But Cose meets the challenge, and Bone to Pick ranges over centuries of contested histories, across five continents, spinning individual tragedies in and out of collective traumas, seeking the nature of 'forgiveness, albeit as a proxy for a larger set of values.' … The truth may be a prized (and politicized) commodity in the quest for social justice, but as Cose observes, quoting Czech novelist Milan Kundera, 'The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.' Bone to Pick is a timely reminder of that axiom and a useful addition to the canon of that struggle."
Cose's The Envy of the World, an in-depth essay on the state of black men in America, was published by Washington Square Press (an imprint of Simon and Schuster) in 2002 and has appeared on several best-seller lists, including the Essence magazine list, where it was number one. Newsweek featured the book on its cover and National Public Radio produced a special a program based on it. Kirkus Reviews called The Envy of the World, "A slender volume with a substantial and significant message." The Washington Post described it as "lucid, eloquent and deeply personal book." The Chicago Tribune called its author "a gifted, rhapsodic essayist." "Cose charts both an urgently argued history of black masculinity and a moving and nuanced snapshot of where it is now," declared Publishers' Weekly. The paperback edition was published in January 2003.
In May 2004 the Rockefeller Foundation issued Beyond Brown v. Board: The Final Battle for Excellence in American Education—a major report authored by Cose on the legacy of the historic Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation decision and the current challenges facing American educators. The report was the basis of a Newsweek cover feature and for a David Broder column and other stories in the national press. In November 2006, the Institute for Justice and Journalism at USC's Annenberg School published Cose's Killing Affirmative Action: Would ending it really result in a better, more perfect Union? That report, featured in several newspaper and in Newsweek magazine, examined California's 10-year experience living with Proposition 209, the measure that ended affirmative action in the public sector in California.
Cose's best-selling The Rage of a Privileged Class, a book-length essay on race in America, was published by HarperCollins in January 1994. It was featured as a Newsweek cover story and described by The New York Times Book Review as a "disciplined, graceful exposition of a neglected aspect of the subject of race in America." His A Man's World (published by HarperCollins in June 1995), was featured in a front page review in The New York Times Book Review. The Washington Post called it "a valuable, cogent and well-written contribution to an enormously complex subject."
Color-Blind: Seeing Beyond Race in a Race-Obsessed World (published in January 1997 and also excerpted in Newsweek) explored America's continuing obsession with race. The New York Times Book Review called it "a book this country desperately needs, one with genuine healing potential," and included Color-Blind among its best book of the year recommendations for 1997. Cose edited an essay collection entitled The Darden Dilemma published by HarperCollins in March 1997. His debut novel, The Best Defense, was published by HarperCollins in September 1998 ("a formidable first novel...crisp, fast-paced and engaging. In a genre glutted with lightweight fare, The Best Defense reaches higher"— The Seattle Times).
Cose is also the author of A Nation of Strangers, a history of American immigration, published by William Morrow and Co. in 1992 and of The Press, published by Morrow in 1989. He is the author of Energy and the Urban Crisis (1979) and the editor of Energy and Equity: Some Social Concerns (1978), both published by the Joint Center for Political Studies. He also wrote The Rebirth of Community Power, published by Westview Press: 1983.
At the Institute for Journalism Education (at the University of California, Berkeley), Cose designed and directed a widely quoted study on journalism careers published by IJE: The Quiet Crisis: Minority Journalists and Newsroom Opportunity (1985). He also instituted and served as inaugural director of IJE's Management Training Center at Northwestern University.
In his capacity as president of Ellis Cose, Inc. Cose has produced, written and hosted the pilot for a multimedia documentary series: "Against the Odds." The radio project (which has received funding from the Ford Foundation and will be distributed by Public Radio International) profiles individuals who have overcome tremendous adversity. It aspires to provide continuing and better coverage—in public radio but also on the web and in other media, including print—of people and communities often relegated to the margins of society. It also aims to stimulate thinking on how they, and their respective societies, can overcome that marginalization. The pilot focuses on a young man from a refugee camp in northern Kenya who, studying by the light of a rechargeable lamp, managed to get himself into Princeton University.
Cose has appeared on The Today Show, Nightline, Dateline, ABC Evening News, Good Morning America, the PBS "Time to Choose" election special, Charlie Rose, CNN's Talk Back Live, and a variety of other nationally televised and local programs. He has been interviewed for British, Brazilian and Canadian television. He is also a judge for the New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism. Cose has received fellowships or individual grants from the Ford Foundation, The Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, and numerous journalism awards—including the University of Missouri medal for career excellence and distinguished service in journalism, two Clarion awards, and four National Association of Black Journalists first place awards. He was also named the 2002 winner of the New York Association of Black Journalists' lifetime achievement award, winner of the 2003 award for best magazine feature from the National Association of Black Journalists as well as the winner of two New York Association of Black Journalists' first place 2003 awards for commentary and magazine features. In 2004 Cose was named the first recipient of the newly inaugurated annual Vision Award from the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education. In 2006 he won a Unity award for commentary and also shared in a first place award from the Society of Professional Journalists.
A Chicago native, Cose holds a master's degree in Science, Technology and Public Policy from George Washington University. He is married to Lee Llambelis, former legal director for the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund and current director of intergovernmental relations for the Attorney General of New York. He has a daughter, Elisa Maria.
For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.
Comments