The Negro Digs Up His Past

Schomburg, Arthur A. "The Negro Digs Up His Past." The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader. Ed. David L. Lewis. New York: Viking Penguin, 1994. 61-67. Print.

I have a strong position on the common-place focus on rectifying the wrongs of past slavery that often is met with the rebuttal of racism. I am (or try to be, anyway), as any decently educated person, not in the least bit racially motivated; that does not mean, however, that I am going to keep quiet when absurd notions concerning race are upheld in the face of reason. Affirmative Action falls under this category, and I consider it to be more racist than any other modern “rectification” of past wrongs (or whatever justification you want to give AA). The absurdity I am talking about in this post is the incessant focus on revisiting the wrongs of slavery and this notion of repayment by whites to blacks for it. Of all the most ridiculously stupid things, this must take the cake. Pain, suffering, and emotional compromises are not passed on hereditarily. My grandmother may lose an arm, and I still keep both of mine; why should the issue of slavery be any different? To claim that white people owe modern-day blacks for the slavery that their remote ancestors endured is so incredibly shallow and unreasonable it boils my blood. No, these people who are demanding retribution were never slaves, and, unless they are exceptionally old, neither were their parents. They never lived the life of a slave, never endured the hardships of those poor people, and therefore have no right to claim that whites owe them anything. In the same vein, the whites of today were never slave-holders. Neither were many of the parents of white people today, or their grandparents. To say that whites who are now generations removed from slaveholders owe anything to blacks who are now generations away from slavery is picking at a wound in an effort to milk it for all it’s worth, and it is, frankly, disgusting. If true equality – something everyone should strive for – is to become a reality, the people who refuse to let this false idea of “repayment” go need to, for lack of a less emphatic phrase, shut the Hell up.

This article deals with this idea very properly. Rather than constantly and sickly revisit this “repayment” for slavery as the pinnacle of black history, Schomburg points to all of the black art, artists, and recognizable people/things from farther in the past. Bringing the focus off of inequality and putting it on the wonder and creativity of a people not only is the true path to actual equality, but it is far more educational and interesting. And, too, all of this isn’t to say that the writers and vocalists who did center their art on inequality aren’t worthy of integration into the curriculum of black history, but rather that the focus must be on the person and their cause, and not as a cheap method of guilt-tripping.

I’m sure that my views are controversial (as I’ve said, those who don’t bother to listen to my argument just assume I’m a bigot), but I am very sure about my reasoning. The best analogy I can make between the incessant focus on slavery in black history as a tool of creating guilt is, as I’ve already pointed out, one of picking at a wound and refusing to let it heal. It doesn’t help anything, and, if you pick it long enough, it is bound to get infected.