Facing the Past

“Can America face up to the terrible reality of slavery in the way that Germany has faced up to the Holocaust?” ask Susan Neiman in “History and Guilt,” an article in the online magazine Aeon.  Neiman, born in Atlanta and living in Berlin, questions whether the United States has faced its history of slavery.  I think not.

Neiman, living in Germany, is impressed with how Germany has dealt with the guilt of Hitler’s reign.  According to Neiman, the Germans even have a word “for coming to terms with past atrocities”:  Vergangenheitsbewältigung.  There is also a slogan: “Collective guilt, no! Collective responsibility, yes!” 

The crimes of the Holocaust were so pervasive, that maybe Germany was forced to look at what happened.  Still, though the majority of southerners did not own slaves, southern support for the civil war was widespread.  And it seems obvious that we haven’t really come to terms with the sin of slavery and how its legacy lives on.  Germany’s decision to deal with the Holocaust did not come immediately.  According to Neiman, its prominence began as positions of authority stopped being held by former Nazis. Here is the United States, we’ve waited much to long to readily accept the brutality of slavery.  It is downplayed in our museums and historical markers. Neiman points out that the National Mall in Washington D.C. has only one site “that focuses on unremitting negativity”—the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.  She goes on to say, “The prominence of the Holocaust in American culture serves a crucial function: we know what evil is and we know the Germans did it."

I’m not sure how we come to terms with the unproud history, but I think we need to.  Apparently, the Smithsonian is planning a National Museum of African American History and Culture, but Neiman says, 

It’s impossible to compare what’s on display in our national showcase [about slavery and genocide of native Americans] with what you can find in Germany without feeling that America’s national history retains its whitewash — and that a sane and sound future requires a more direct confrontation with our past.

 There are places in the north that have studied the role of the Underground Railroad, but it seems like something deep and essential in missing in our national conversation.

We have waited a long time; I’m sure that makes it harder.  Leonard Pitts calls it a “conspiracy of silence.” Where can we start?.  Any ideas?