Remembering the Past, and Repeating It

CHICAGO HAS ITS WORST HOMICIDE RATE in decades, conservatives blame it on the democrats - haven't the democrats been running the city forever? - since Obama used to live in Chicago, he must be to blame, somehow or other. The President pays more attention when cops kill African-Americans than when blacks kill cops or blacks kill each other, so he obviously would rather ignore the problem. Chicago, like Gaul in Caesar's commentaries, is divided into three parts, of roughly equal size. Caucasian, Latino, and African-American, heavily segregated skin-pignentationally and socio-economically. In other, more honest words, Chicago is socially sick, re-segregated like the rest of American society. , in our economically and politically polarized country. Georgetown University is moving in another direction. It has decided to accept ownership and responsibility for the slavery which built its campus, to apologize for it, and to make amends, by contacting the descendants of slaves, building a memorial to the slave era, and establishing a study center to research and teach slavery history. Georgetown, like many of America's universities and government buildings, was built with slave labor, and Georgetown, unlike many others, kept careful records of their slaves, and know who their descendants are. Descendants of slaves will be offered the opportunity to partake in University educational opportunities. The underlying theme to all this is that the legacy of slavery is a force which helps shape our society today, which it most certainly does. any decent American historian or student of American history can see that. One of my less educated colleagues at the senior center remarked one day that "slavery was a long time ago." Whether comments like this are intended to justify ignoring present day racism in America, or to suggest that bringing the history of slavery and racial oppression to the forefront in our study of history only encourages racism which would otherwise be non existence, is subject to question. Taking a close look at Chicago as it is today and its obviously race based social structure, should be sufficient to inspire questions of past racial relationships in America, and how they brought about the current strange, and obvious circumstances in the city. Slavery was indeed not a long time ago, it was painfully recent. Just ask its descendants.