Reparations: the act of making amends, offering expiation, or giving satisfaction for a wrong or injury. The act of repairing. As author Ta-Nehisi Coates has stated, reparations is what Georgetown University is planning for the descendants of 272 enslaved Africans; the sale of those men, women and children in 1838 brought the venerable Catholic institution out of debt. Georgetown has been engaged in “soul searching” ever since student-activists confronted the institution about its slavery connections last summer. On September 1, Georgetown’s President John J. DeGioia is scheduled to talk about the result of that soul searching in a speech on campus. Specifically, a committee set up to study the issue recommended that Georgetown:
“offer a formal apology, create an institute for the study of slavery and erect a public memorial to the slaves whose labor benefited the institution, including those who were sold in 1838 to help keep the university afloat. In addition, two campus buildings will be renamed — one for an enslaved African-American man and the other for an African-American [woman, an] educator who belonged to a Catholic religious order.”
“So far, DeGioia’s plan does not include a provision for offering scholarships to descendants, a possibility that was raised by a university committee whose recommendations were released on Thursday morning. The committee, however, stopped short of calling on the university to provide such financial assistance, as well as admissions preference.”
The committee convened by President DeGioia put its recommendations into a 102-page report. In the report they noted that “the university’s dependence on slavery was deeper and broader than originally believed”; that “slave labor and slave sales were envisioned as part of the financing model of the college even before the doors opened in 1789”; and, slaves were not only forced to work on the Jesuit plantations. Some also toiled on campus, hired from students and other wealthy people.”
Kudos to Georgetown for trying to make good on an old bad. How will it work? What will it prove? What difference does it really make? All legitimate questions; question that will be answered in time.