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Alfred Gingold and Helen Rogan

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from: Helen Rogan

How To Get the Reparations Ball Rolling

Posted Tuesday, Aug. 28, 2001, at 11:26 AM ET

Alfie,

This notion keeps bugging me. Over the last few days, I've been reading thumb-sucker articles on two subjects: reparations for slavery (the movement in favor of them is growing, to the point where people are trying to figure out how to come up with a dollar figure) and the changing identity of museums (moving beyond objects to ideas). Thinking about both these questions (yes! I swear that I have been!) reminds me of the time when we were researching our little book about taking kids to museums in New York. I was trying to find a general museum of black history and found absolutely nothing. In this city stuffed with museums (firefighting! skyscrapers!), there's one venerable research institution devoted to black history and there are museums of African art, but there's nothing to illustrate the presence of black people in America from the earliest times. Ditto in Washington. You can learn a lot about the immigrants who arrived voluntarily, about American Indians, about the Holocaust. And, of course, if you want to stare at Harley-Davidson motor bikes or Jackie Kennedy's clothes, pas de probleme. But as for slaves, freed blacks, the rise of the African-American middle class: nothing. And what struggling little institutions there are find themselves begging for handouts, viz. the Harriet Tubman House in Rochester, N.Y., a poor dowdy place that should be a major landmark. So here's my idea. Why not get the whole reparations ball rolling by setting aside big bucks to establish a major museum in Washington (by rights) or in New York (we'd do it better) to show good intentions and, more importantly, to educate all Americans about a big slice of their heritage. Smart, right?

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516
from: Helen Rogan

How To Get the Reparations Ball Rolling

Posted Tuesday, Aug. 28, 2001, at 11:26 AM ET
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Alfred Gingold has written eight books (including three with Helen Rogan) and for numerous magazines and Web sites. Helen Rogan, his wife, is the executive editor of My Generation, the AARP's magazine for baby boomers, and has written books and magazine articles.
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[Notes from the Fray Editor: Reparations and museums were the hot topics here. There was news from Tony Adragna that there is an African-American museum in DC. Elusive Fray poster Amyntas started a splendid discussion on reparations and taxcuts here, featuring posts titled "A nonsensical argument" and "Typical disingenuous twaddle." A high moral tone, and criticism of young women, were the common themes in two posts: a most unusual view on the Chandra Levy affair, here, and one on Tea Leoni here.]


The ambiguity of the reparations debate is what I like most about that entire issue. Whether reparations ever get paid or not (I suspect that they won't), to the extent that national attention gets focused on this issue, we'll be talking about basic moral issues.

Any serious discussion of this issue will involve questions of duty and obligation, culpability, history, values, rights and wrongs. In short, it will be (finally!) a public debate worthy of a democratic nation. Whatever conclusions we reach, either individually or as a nation, it seems likely that we will be better for having thought about these matters in depth

--Thrasymachus

(To reply, click here.)


 The CD-ROM thing is scary. How's Bloomberg going to top it? Will he try to make his hologram appear in all our living rooms?

--Claude Scales

(To reply, click here.)

 (8/28)

Didn't it ever bother anybody else that the Weathermen took their name from a line in "Subterranean Homesick Blues" that implied that a weatherman is superfluous under the circumstances? Is this part and parcel of the Marxist-v.-Leninist- historical-determinist conundrum? (i.e., that if historical/economic forces are pushing toward an inevitable result, why do they need me to help them along? As it is sometimes put, if Marx didn't exist, it would be unnecessary to invent him.) That felt good--somebody call me a jackal, it really brings me back...

--Ex-Fed

(To reply, click here.)


 I happened to walk by the site of the Village explosion the morning of the event. The exposed apartments, with their wall clocks and tables precariously clinging to the ordinary around the gaping proof of anti-civic rage; the apartments seemed like a stage set for some kind of apocalyptic Beckett drama. The scene was mute, webbed with the yellow crime scene tapes of the municipal police. A mix of fear and curiosity animated the passers-by. I stood and stared, hearing the news in bits and pieces. Suddenly I noticed a sign, hand lettered, pinned to the police sawhorse. I looked closer and saw a few others, same hand, same posting method. In repeated, and therefore intentional orthography, the phrase "nothning is free" was scrawled in black marker on typing paper.

The phrase burned itself into my subconscious. I have never seen it since, nor heard it mentioned in the context of the Weathermen or other underground groups.

Nothning is free. Even if it has escaped justice. Especially if it has escaped justice.

--Zeitguy

(To reply, click here.)

 (8/31)





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