A new year usually means a fresh start. The beginning of a year is like unwrapping a brand new notebook: All those unblemished pages hold such potential.
But the reality is that today is defined by our past decisions and actions, personally and nationally. So, yes, we’re in a new year, but Wednesday’s act of insurrection and domestic terror was the result of decisions, actions and inactions this country undertook for its entire history. Despite the progress that’s been made towards justice and equality, we could easily slide backwards and erase any and all hard-won gains that’ve been made.
Experts in authoritarianism–folks like Masha Gessen, Umair Haque, Sarah Kendzior and Timothy Snyder, to name a few–all predicted that this would end badly. New Yorkers, especially Black folks, told y’all that Trump was the wrong person for a party to nominate. But, hey, who ever listens to us? Certainly not the press who waited years to call his utterances lies, and who treated Hillary’s emails like Watergate. Columbia Journalism Review noted that the media still struggled to frame Wednesday’s events, even as Trump supporters were storming the Capitol. Look at how pundits like Ezra Klein suggest that the terrorists only acted that way because their leaders—GOP congressmen, Trump—thus absolving the crowds themselves of any responsibility.
We’ve neither reckoned with our past nor the ongoing role that White supremacy plays in our lives. In many situations, you’re likely to get a violent response if you suggest that the United States became a global superpower thanks to its willingness to enslave and dehumanize an entire group of people. Recall the backlash against The 1619 Project? And political violence is nothing new in this country.
Did this country ever believe in the ideals it professes? White grievance still finds purchase with 45% of Republican voters, who feel Wednesday’s actions were justified. 75 million people looked at a self-involved, proto-fascist sociopath and what he’s wrought–saw the nearly 370,000 COVID deaths; the kids still in cages; the coddling of avowed white supremacists; the tax breaks to billionaires and the foot dragging on a second stimulus–and voted to keep this man in office for another four years. In fact, we know now that there’s a sizeable portion of the electorate who no longer believe in democracy, and they’re our fellow citizens.
Honestly, I don’t know where we go from here. The core issue is that we’ve never really reckoned with our past, never really looked America’s original sin in the face. As a nation, we keep hoping that, the further we get from de facto slavery, the further we get from the Civil Rights Movement, things will just magically be alright. We resist acknowledging that slavery’s ripple effects shape so much of our society and our culture. But we have to face this past or it’ll continue to be the rot at the core of the country. Would a truth and reconciliation process work here? It certainly helped in countries like Germany, Rwanda and South Africa.
In all cases, truth and reconciliation is the idea that people who were wronged by atrocities get to confront the people who committed them, and those people express genuine remorse, ask for forgiveness and commit to not doing it again.
Rwanda instituted three levels of justice at the international, national and local levels:
At the international level, the United Nations prosecuted those who bore great responsibility for the genocide, including a former mayor and the country’s prime minister. As well, there was a judgment against the media for helping to create the conditions in which the genocide took place.
The national courts prosecuted anyone “accused of planning the genocide or of committing serious atrocities, including rape.”
Locally, tribunals were meant to deal with justice and reconciliation at the grassroots level. Here’s how that worked:
…communities at the local level elect judges to hear the trials of genocide suspects accused of all crimes except planning of genocide. The courts give lower sentences if the person is repentant and seeks reconciliation with the community. Often, confessing prisoners return home without further penalty or receive community service orders. Since 2005, more than 12,000 community-based courts have tried 1.2 million cases throughout the country.
Further:
The Gacaca (pronounced GA-CHA-CHA) trials also serve to promote reconciliation by providing a means for victims to learn the truth about the death of their family members and relatives. They also give perpetrators the opportunity to confess their crimes, show remorse and ask for forgiveness in front of their community.
Of course, many White Americans will be quick to say, “But I didn’t have anything to do with slavery! I never enslaved anyone! Why should I have to apologize for something that happened a long time ago?”
So, yes, there are some challenges to the truth and reconciliation model that’s worked in the above mentioned countries. After living for several years in Germany–which has tons of memorials to both the Holocaust broadly, as well as individual ways of marking where its many victims lived, author Paul Scraton offered the following observation:
In reckoning with the past, especially the most horrific crimes in a nation’s history, whether the Holocaust in Germany, the British Empire or slavery in the United States, there will always be a difficultly in replicating models. Thomas Laqueur, in addressing the current discussions for his essay “While Statues Sleep” in the London Review of Books, noted that “…the crimes Germany remembers and atones for represent a small part of its national history. The Nazi period is brief and circumscribed. The outlines of Germany’s redemption slowly become clear: acknowledge and mourn the sin; make amends as far as possible; and swear never again.”
But what does it mean when the period in question lasts for hundreds of years and a society is still living through the trauma in the present day? For Laqueur, there is not much help in looking across to Germany as an example to follow. “It seems far-fetched,” he writes, “to imagine that comparing slavery to the Holocaust can help us to come to terms with the granular ubiquity of American racism.”
Can It Work Here?
I wonder. In the Rwandan case, the ultimate goal was the reconstruction of Rwandan identity and for Rwandans to be able to live together in peace after a nationally traumatic event. What’s more, there was a consensus that a holistic approach to justice was needed. Here, there’s not. And, however admirable Germany’s efforts to not forget are, far-right populism has been in on the rise and it’s now known that the far-right has infiltrated its police.
The United States has been slow to embrace efforts to move towards a restorative justice model, preferring to hold onto the retributive model. Perhaps the restorative model would provide a way for White people to let go of the reflexive defensiveness that arises whenever there are discussions of race. And maybe Black folks could move on, too, since we’d finally get White people to acknowledge–not dismiss–our collective, ever-present trauma. Journalist Ester Armah calls this Emotional Justice.
I’m not sure there’s such a consensus here as to how we move forward. On one hand, there’s already a multiracial cohort of people who are doing the work of confronting injustice and inequality on many levels. However, there’s also a large cohort of people who embrace White grievance, and who would rather see this country burn if they can’t have their way.
I expect that leaders like President-elect Biden will call for unity and urge us to move towards some vague “healing”. But without accountability, there’s no healing to be had, no moving forward at all. Some historical context from scholar Megan Nelson:
Those people that overran the Capitol–particularly those whose actions resulted in the deaths of five people–need to be prosecuted and sent to jail because it’s clear that it wasn’t just a peaceful protest. The 147 Congresspeople who supported overturning the election should be shunned by their colleagues and forced out of office. Calls for the resignation of Senators Cruz and Hawley have already begun. They encouraged a coup attempt. Advertisers should abandon media outlets that legitimized the Trumpist perspective. The bottom line: We must vigorously affirm that laws matter and that no one is above them. Will we do that?
The greater good–safeguarding this American experiment–will be well-served by forcing accountability on those who attempted Wednesday’s coup. To not do so only weakens our body politic, and also emboldens the radical right. And those of us who work to advance American ideals into reality would be forced to just suck up this latest national trauma. In either case it’s poisonous to the democratic governance we’re trying to affirm and perfect. Shirking this most important responsibility will make it even harder to move towards being a healthy, 21st century nation.
You must be logged in to post a comment.