Do blacks deserve a national apology? Should today's citizenry be held morally and financially accountable for the misdeeds of America's forefathers?

• Author: Swain, Carol M.
• Position: American Thought - Cover Story

IN A FEW YEARS, the Smithsonian Institution will include a National Museum of African-American History and Culture devoted exclusively to documenting the "life, art, history, and culture" of black people in America. Spearheaded by Sen. Sam Brownback (R.-Kan.), the legislation authorizing the creation and funding of the project garnered the endorsements of a bipartisan group of 54 cosponsors. Individuals such as Rep. John Lewis (D.-Ga.) have dreamed of such a museum for more than a decade. This monumental act by a majority Republican Senate represents a significant step forward in the black straggle for recognition.

Unlike discussions of a national apology and any mention of reparations for slavery, the National Museum has not yet encountered the kind of sustained opposition that would doom the project. The major debate has been over whether it should be placed on the National Mall with the other Smithsonian museums or in a nearby Washington, D.C., location.

The black museum represents a small portion of a much larger political and social agenda. Brownback also would like to see a national apology for slavery and the establishment of a temporary committee to study race relations, which would be charged with identifying the source of continuing economic and educational disparities between blacks and other groups. Its recommendations could include the payment of monetary reparations for slavery. The latter is a goal of Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (D.-Mich.). Since 1989, he has introduced H.R. 40 in every Congress, with its number "40" symbolic of the failure of the nation to give the newly emancipated slaves "40 acres and a mule."

Proponents of slave reparations argue that all white Americans have derived benefits from their whiteness and from wealth that slave labor brought to the nation. According to University of Houston professor of history Steven Mintz, "A majority of the 650 workers who built the White House and the U.S. Capitol were enslaved African-Americans.... Slave-grown cotton constituted 75% of the value of the nation's exports in the decades before the Civil War, and paid for the capital that financed canals, railroads, and textile factories." Mintz contends that the vestiges of slavery are substandard education, employment discrimination, inadequate housing, racial profiling, and economic inequalities. Other scholars have made similar connections. In Black Wealth, White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality sociologists Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro document the role that the Federal government's discriminatory policies have played in accentuating and perpetuating...