The College of William and Mary is beginning an examination of the institution’s past connections to slavery and racial discrimination, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Two faculty members will head the Lemon Project Committee, which is named for a slave once owned by the college. Last spring the college acknowledged it had used slave labor. William and Mary is the latest college to announce an investigation into its past ties with slave labor. In 2006 Brown University published a 106-page narrative examination of the early connections between the university and slavery.
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13 Responses to William and Mary Announces Examination of Past Ties to Slavery
22261984 - April 1, 2010 at 4:39 pm
Sounds like a lemon of a project, all right. For Pete’s sake, *of course* William & Mary will have ties to slavery and racial discrimination! Just look at a map. What’s the point? Oh, I forgot: self-flagellation, along with keeping white guilt and a black victim mindset alive, so we can have forgiveness and closure.
greenhills73 - April 1, 2010 at 5:14 pm
I totally agree with #1. My first thought when I read this was, “What’s the point?” If it’s to better document the institution’s history, OK. But beyond that?
wrbilledwards - April 1, 2010 at 5:21 pm
Suppose that I discover that one of my great grandfathers was a bank robber. Do I have some legal obligation to the descendents of those who lost by his crimes? Almost certainly not. (Lawyers please correct me if I am wrong!) Do I have some ethical obligation to them, or is it somehow morally useful to me or to them that I engage in some sort of “truth and reconciliation” exercise over this, or to try to calculate my share of any profit from his crime and repay someone? Debatable, but frankly I doubt it.On the other hand, should I deserve some ethical condemnation if I actively try to surpress facts about him, or to publish elaborate rationalizations of his acts: that he wasn’t really a bank robber or had some noble, widely misunderstood reasons for robbing banks? Perhaps I do.
edgar95 - April 1, 2010 at 5:28 pm
I respectfully disagree with the previous two comments. If the sole inquiry were a yes or no question, I think it’s relatively clear what the results of the investigation will be ex ante. However, a specific examination of the ways in which William & Mary benefitted from slave labor has historical and social merit on micro and macro levels, and could prove helpful in contextualizing an era that has often been erased (insofar as particular institutions are concerned).
jffoster - April 2, 2010 at 7:33 am
Quoth No. 4: “However, a specific examination of the ways in which William & Mary benefitted from slave labor has historical and social merit on micro and macro levels, and could prove helpful in contextualizing an era that has often been erased (insofar as particular institutions are concerned).”Would you care to translate that from Socialbabble into Plain English?
christianplwest - April 2, 2010 at 8:11 am
I think a better understanding of systemic inequality, whiteness, and privilege would be a good start to this discussion.
honore - April 2, 2010 at 11:56 am
silly, cowardly whites putting their plump behinds out to be whipped by angry blacks so that they can retire to their all-white lutheran retirement communities in California, to be served chilled Perrier by illegal mexican indians while surveying the gardens that are tended by vietnamese workers…America…You just gotta love the race games…they NEVER stop.
honore - April 2, 2010 at 12:01 pm
…and who will craft UVA’s next politically-correct, apologist sound bytes on its abuse of the indigenous people on the VERY land the campus sits on?Oh, that’s right, Native Americans are hardly a presence on this Ivy-wannabe campus, so of course THEY are not even an agenda item for the aministrative lords and ladies…shame on all of you for being so transparent and so very disengenuous…typical American administrative weasels…Madison, WI
rmelton5 - April 2, 2010 at 2:06 pm
jffoster: No. 4′s statement makes perfect sense to anyone with a college degree, which is presumably the readership of CHE. Do you think “quoth” is an example of “Plain English”?
wrbilledwards - April 2, 2010 at 4:45 pm
Thoughtful, objective scholarship on the effects of slavery on the institutions of the society of its time, and vice versa, is certainly worth while. Ritual guilt and hysterical rhetoric, on any side, are not. Nor do I see the value of identifying groups or institutions with their ancestors or predecessors.It is easy to acknowledge that European and European American’s relationships with African and Native American people were disastrously wrong. To say exactly how they could and should have been different is much harder.
jffoster - April 2, 2010 at 4:48 pm
9, it probably makes sense to someone with a “college degree” in obfuscatory sociobabble, but I have three degrees, two of em from a leading graduate department and school in my field, and I suggest the verbal Emperor has no clothes. Or is trying to sound erudite. As to your second question, yes. To anybody who studied English literature in high school. Or is old.
amnirov - April 4, 2010 at 9:20 am
Sounds more appropriate for a PhD thesis or two.Number 4, by the way, really is meaningless babble.
whateveru - April 6, 2010 at 12:18 pm
I find it interesting that Black folk are always told to “forget” about slavery, but no one ever tells Jewish folk to forget the Holocaust…William and Mary should undertake this examination of their racist past because it is American History. The real reason people want slavery swept under the rug is the cold hard fear that Black folks will want, and through scholarly and legal examination, *deserve*, reparations for 200+ years of free labor to a country that wishes to regard them as a forgotten footnote…When Jews “get over” the Holocaust, and Japanese “get over” internment, and Native Americans “get over” the Trail of Tears and other forced relocations, then, let’s revisit…