For the past month, this virtual space has hosted a fascinating debate about race in America. My tale of being “trashed by freshmen” at my old high school lit the tinder. But you brought the fuel for the fire. 

Your responses have forced me to consider such questions even more deeply than when I was writing my novel To Love Mercy. What would it take for black and whites to understand each other a bit better? The novel suggests only questions; your responses suggest answers.

It will take honesty, but honesty alone may not be enough. As your responses showed, many whites of good will honestly believe one thing, and many blacks of good will honestly believe the precise opposite. Both sides, while being honest, are talking past one another.

So, in this time of political and social change and rebirth, I’ve worked out the following proposal:

I propose there be declared a National Time of Acknowledgment and Atonement. For a week or a month, or maybe a year — certainly more than a day — all Americans, black and white, and their leaders, would acknowledge that it was cruel, inhuman and unforgivable to enslave the hundreds of thousands of people whose misfortune was to be born with dark skin and enslaved out of Africa centuries ago, the people whom we now call African-Americans or, more simply, blacks.

I would challenge all Americans, white and black, to make a sincere effort to put themselves in the shoes of the other -– to understand and empathize with their present situation and worldview, regardless of whether the whites thought the blacks were right or wrong, or vice versa.

That’s Part I of my proposal. Here is Part II.

That black Americans acknowledge that slavery was a long time ago, that the slave-masters are long dead, and that most white Americans of today probably didn’t even descend from said slave-masters, so it’s pointless and divisive to hold said whites personally responsible for slavery; that many whites today wish to heal the relationship and move forward just as badly as blacks do: and that white Americans in turn acknowledge that even though slavery ended a long time ago, we all live every day with its malign after-effects; and that whites further acknowledge, grieve over, and resolve to work toward ending the continued and continuing discrimination against blacks.

My National Time of Acknowledgment and Atonement would include a resolution on the part of everyone, black and white, to stop making accusations about who did what to whom and who shot first, and accept whatever degree of personal responsibility they feel in their hearts is appropriate. Because accusations, even when true, just get people’s backs up. They shut down the dialogue I’d like to like to start up.

I am not proposing monetary reparations. I think monetary reparations are a terrible idea — unfair, inflammatory, certain to be subject to massive fraud and abuse, and politically about as likely to gain approval as the chances of a snowball surviving two seconds in hell.

But the impulse behind reparations is the right one — that a formal, official acknowledgement of hundreds of years of injustice, plus an expression of remorse that we all, black and white alike, attempt to feel in our hearts, has never been offered; and that it is the necessary first step to healing what divides black from white.

In other words, we will need mercy.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. I’ll be in the Chicago area in just a week and a half. Hope some of you will be on hand to cheer me on –

 

· Tuesday, Nov. 28, 7 p.m. - Edgebrook Branch, Chicago Public Library, 5331 W. Devon Ave., Chicago

· Wednesday, Nov. 29, 7 p.m. - Northtown Branch, Chicago Public Library, 6435 N. California Ave., Chicago

· Thursday, Nov. 30, 7 p.m. - Barnes & Noble, 55 Old Orchard Center, Skokie 

· Friday, Dec. 1, 7:30 p.m. - Borders, 1144 Lake St., Oak Park

· Saturday, Dec. 2, 11:00 a.m. - Newberry Library, 60 W. Walton St., Chicago 

· Saturday, Dec. 2, 2 p.m. - Centuries & Sleuths Bookstore, 7419 W. Madison St., Forest Park

· Sunday, Dec. 3, 10:30 a.m. - Chicago Sinai Congregation, 15 W. Delaware Pl., Chicago

· Monday, Dec. 4, 7:00 p.m. - Evanston Public Library, 1703 Orrington Ave., Evanston

· Tuesday, Dec. 5, 7:00 p.m. - Chicago Ridge Public Library, 10400 S. Oxford Ave., Chicago Ridge

· Wednesday, Dec. 6, 7:00 p.m. - Blackstone Branch, Chicago Public Library, 4904 S. Lake Park Ave., Chicago