Georgetown University President, John DeGioia, recently announced that the university will give "preference in admissions" to descendants of slaves formerly owned by the Maryland Jesuits as part of the school's effort to "atone" for profiting from the sale of enslaved people. According to a report of a special "Working Group" of the university, two priests who served as president of the university back in 1838 orchestrated the sale of 272 people to pay off school debts. The slaves were apparently sent from Maryland to plantations in Louisiana.
DeGioia said the university will take steps to identify the descendants of the slaves and recruit them to the university. Might we also suggest the university post the "Offer" to the official Reparations marketplace (see "There Is Now A Marketplace For White People To Make Reparations Payments").
The official report from the university includes the following details about the 1838 transaction in question:
Between Georgetown’s founding and 1864, the year slavery was declared unconstitutional in the state of Maryland, the 1838 sale of 272 slaves from the Jesuit plantations stands out for its size and the controversy it garnered. It was not the only, the first, or the last sale of slaves to provide operating revenue for the school, but it was the largest. This mass sale was the product of a complicated calculus on the part of the Jesuit leadership and an extensive controversy within the order. All the factions recognized that the plantations were not producing enough income even to support themselves in the early nineteenth century, and at the same time, the College suffered from mounting debt.
Jesuit authorities in Rome became involved in this dispute. Their initial inclinations were toward some form of emancipation. Following extensive lobbying by American Jesuits, they capitulated to those who argued for sale. They then placed conditions on a sale: that families not be divided, that the continued practice of the Catholic faith by these baptized slaves be ensured, and that the monies raised from the sale be used for endowment, not for operating expenses or the paying down of debt. In the end, none of these conditions was fulfilled.
The Working Group also called on university leaders to offer a formal apology, saying:
As the University works to develop its relationship with these groups, on and beyond our campus, the Working Group recommends that the University offer a formal, public apology for its historical relationship with slavery. The Working Group believes that an apology from the University president offered jointly with the provincial superior of the Maryland Jesuits would be especially fitting, bringing together, as it would, the successors to the two officeholders who were the architects of the 1838 sale.
The Working Group finds an express apology proper for two reasons: first, because an apology is a precondition for reconciliation. The responsibility to apologize, moreover, belongs to the perpetrators; it is what perpetrators can do on their own initiative. They admit the performance of the deed, recognize that it was wrong, display regret, and pledge not to repeat the deed. While apologies often need repeating and this apology need not to be thought of as the last, without an apology pursuit of reconciliation ends.
Second, a formal, spoken apology strikes the Working Group as appropriate because its absence rings so loudly. The University, despite the many ways that it has invested resources over the past half century to heal the wounds of racial injustice, has not made such an apology. While there can be empty apologies, words of apology, genuinely expressed, make a difference in the quest for reconciliation. Words along with symbolic actions, such as the naming of buildings, and material investments, such as the foundation of an institute for the study of slavery, work together in making apology a coherent whole. None of these components—words, symbolic gestures, and material investments—should be neglected. Again, the counsel of the descendants of the slaves, whose labor and value supported the University, should be sought out and weighted heavily.
The official report of the Georgetown University Working Group can be read in its entirety below:
via http://ift.tt/2bWAo4K Tyler Durden