0603blog
Tell The Truth
Without truth, there can be no reconciliation and truth without reconciliation is empty. If South Africa had never examined and recognized its long, painful, barbaric, vulgar and deadly history of apartheid and all of its brutal ramifications, the country could not have moved on in a post-apartheid world.
In Germany, the Nazi past is intentionally never far behind with vivid reminders in the museums, the history books, in school lessons, oral histories and Germans do not consider it failing to move on but rather that the past demands that the citizens be constantly reminded of the dangers from within and how, without vigilance, the dangers can easily be repeated.
Before they can qualify as full-fledged police, cadets in Germany must complete two and a half years of training, including learning the history of the Nazis, the Holocaust and all the horrors that it entailed and cadets must travel to see first hand the Sachsenhausen concentration camp where the most efficient and effective execution methods for use in the death camps were developed.
Police candidates in the U.S. undergo cursory programs to understand bias against people of color but without a historical foundation, the training is barren and inconsequential. This is not about white guilt or replaying the past as a balm to the open wounds of bigotry but it is about finding a way to revise the systems that promote racism.
In an example of Germany’s ongoing efforts to expose and examine its colonial past, the country apologized last week for mass killings in Namibia in the last century. German colonisers killed tens of thousands of Ovaherero and Nama people in Namibia between 1904 and 1908 and their land and livestock were confiscated, all in punishment for the natives having participated in an uprising. Along with an apology, Germany promised billions of dollars in development aid.
In the United States, and elsewhere, notably also in Israel, there has been far too little truth and far too little reconciliation and it continues to tear and eviscerate the national fabric. The shameful truth is that the time for truth and reconciliation in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world, is far, far overdue yet critically important.
Americans don’t grasp or appreciate the enormity of a crime where more than 2 million Africans died when they were seized and brought to the U.S. to be slaves. Most Americans are unaware of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, when mobs of angry marauding whites attacked the black community, ransacked and burned churches and businesses and killed as many as 300 people. It is only in recent years, that any mention of the Tulsa race massacre was included in history books or discussed in schools. In a similar way, most Americans have not heard of the Trail of Tears and the holocaust against the native Americans. How can the average person understand the terrible pain that African Americans and native American have suffered without knowing incidents like the Tulsa race massacre, among many, many other criminal acts that caused untold suffering and pain for African Americans and native Americans through the years.
In Germany, it is against the law to display any symbol of the Nazi era, including the swastika, the Nazi flag and the Hitler salute or to deny that the Holocaust was real. There are various public memorials to the Jews, gays, Roma and disabled who were slaughtered by the Nazis.
In the U.S., the primary symbol of slavery, the confederate flag, is commonly and often proudly exhibited; the Ku Klux Klan has been marginalized but still exists and has been replaced with more modern versions of white supremacy while the public debates about whether statues that glorify and memorialize the south during the Civil War should still stand in public places. Instead there should be memorials everywhere to the people who were enslaved, their names, their histories.
At the 1985 ceremonies marking the 40th anniversary of the end of World War II, Richard von Weizsäcker, president of West Germany, said that “anyone who closes his eyes to the past is blind to the present. Whoever refuses to remember the inhumanity is prone to new risk of infection.”
America should heed von Weizsäcker’s words and create a truth and reconciliation commission about slavery and all of its ramifications through the years of the nation. It could be patterned after the commission created in South Africa which focused not on punishing those who greased the wheels and did the deeds of apartheid running but rather an open dialogue for people to talk about grievances and heal divisions.
The prospects for such national introspection and action are slim as evidenced by the growing opposition to something as basic as teaching critical race theory in schools. At a time when millions of Americans are gripped by the desire to “Make America Great Again” they are unlikely to explore the nation’s dark sides. The Republican members of the Congress will not even allow for an investigation to expose the truth around the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol so why think they would ever support a true investigation into slavery.
The cities of Boston, Philadelphia and San Francisco announced plans in July 2020 to create truth and reconciliation commissions to confront racism in the criminal justice system but you wouldn’t know about it if you didn’t know about it. New York City also announced last year that the city would form its own commission to examine its history of racial discrimination. The COVID-19 pandemic certainly slowed progress on these fronts but with the pandemic receding, the commissions should be created now.
Truth and reconciliation commissions, known by other names, are not new and have been used to expose facts in nations with histories of violence and oppression.
In just a few examples, the “Historical Clarification Commission” in Guatemala focused on the actions of the former military government. The “Truth and Justice Commission” in Mauritius dealt with the legacy of slavery and indentured servitude over a long colonial period. The “Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation” in East Timor looked at the version of history that had been painted under foreign rule. The “Truth Commission: Commission of Inquiry into the Disappearances of People in Uganda” formed in 1974 was one of the first truth commissions. Argentina’s “National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons” was created in 1983 and documented human rights violations under the military dictatorship. A “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” was created in Chile in April 1990, soon after the nation returned to democracy. Other early commissions were established in diverse locations including Uganda (1986), Nepal (1990), El Salvador (1992), and Guatemala (1994).
It’s time for some truth in the U.S.