Historical wrongs have contemporary victims

Brian YS Wong November 26, 2024 22:17

Just a little over a month ago, the leaders of 56 heads of government in the Commonwealth came to the public conclusion that “the time has come” for a proper conversation about the reparations for the slave trade. This was followed by an acknowledgment of the need and imperative for consideration of “reparatory justice” in relation to the wrongs committed in the past. As someone who has spent the better half of the past decade, these steps were certainly encouraging signs – albeit in the absence of genuine, substantive readjustments to how we discuss and conceptualise historical wrongdoings, few real breakthroughs could be politically and feasibly implemented.

I have often been confronted with the challenge, in staking my case. “Historical injustices are eponymously wrongdoings that occurred in the past, Brian. Why should we be bogged down and bothered by it?” The question goes. The logical corollary and implication is that we should look past the moral errs and failures of yore and focus on the present.

The issue with this assertion, as highlighted by theorists including Jeff Spinner-Halev and Alasia Nuti, is that the dichotomy between past and present is not, in practice, particularly clear. A useful analogy here would be an education journey – in examining and understanding the failure of a student to perform to the best of his supposed abilities at university level, we must look towards the events that befell him in his childhood or adolescent years, to figure out how and why exactly his aptitude has been kneecapped. Appreciating such nuances in turn behooves a historically anchored fact-finding mission – one that takes seriously the events of the past and their implications on contemporary events and affairs.

Let’s bring this back to Planet Earth. Spinner-Halev came up with a very powerful phrase that I have oft cited in explaining why the past matters to the and at present. The concept of “Enduring Injustice” describes – rather fittingly – the fact that historical injustices’ detrimental effects do not dissipate over time; instead, they remain germane and entrenched till the very present day – as a lingering and poignant reminder of our moral follies.

Some concrete examples could help illustrate this. The structural racism encountered by African Americans in the US today can be attributed to a plethora of factors: some would argue that it is the built-in racism that is engrained in the implicitly white-supremacist undercurrents of parts of America. Others would point to the persisting sense of cultural self-superiority with which social conservatives zealously prosecute their agenda. Still, many would argue, rightly, that the origins and sources of contemporary racism lie with the centuries-old practice of the transatlantic slave trade, and the ensuing structures of racial segregation and exclusion that proliferated throughout America in its nearly three centuries worth of post-independence rule.

The socioeconomic inequalities, political disadvantages, and cultural exclusion of minority groups perpetrated by such historically racist structures, have not and will not go away easily. They have not been mitigated or offset over the years, and remain potent, destructive, and even nihilistic forces of vindictive vengeance, that have corroded the social fabric of egalitarianism and left millions designated “second-class citizens”. In erasing talk and discussion of historical injustices from the classroom – in name of “preserving accurately” a history that is de facto sanitised and stripped of truth – the American education system had long served as an accomplice to the enduring failure to redress past injustices.

The stratification and exclusion of African Americans – many of whom are descendants of the original slaves – are perpetuated and sustained over time, through a range of institutions. Financially, African Americans are more likely to be subjected to redlining and more demanding credit requirements, as a means of offsetting the pre-conceived and pre-assigned risks associated with their communal settings. In terms of employment, less socioeconomically advantaged and dynamic African Americans may be pigeonholed – through stereotypes and rigid conceptions or tropes concerning their abilities – into particular occupational types.

Finally, from police brutality to racialised abuse instigated by far-right advocates, once again invoking the centuries-old narratives of “White Superiority” and “Black Inferiority”, life can be deeply precarious and invasive for the average person of colour living in America. The causes for such malaise are by no means contemporary but rooted firmly in history. It was slavery that engendered the geographical and residential distribution of African American communities; that propagated the notion of intellectual and moral inferiority on the part of persons of colour (clearly baseline, yet reified and bolstered through these narratives being self-fulfilling prophecies amongst some), and that sustained the de facto disenfranchisement of millions, even though de jure enfranchisement for Black citizens came in 1868, and the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965.

Now, the reader may contend – surely there exist more episodes of historical wrongdoings than merely the trans-Atlantic slave trade and ensuing racism against persons of colour in America. That is indeed correct. The above present only the tip of an iceberg. To understand truly the effects of historical injustices, we must not overlook the present. To make sense of the wrongdoings of today, we must look towards the past. Our collective past.

Brian YS Wong

Assistant Professor, HKU