The crime of innocence and the depths of sorriness: Notes on apologies and reparations in the United States

Abstract

In this article, I reflect on apologies and reparations as these themes relate to “sorriness,” a vernacular discourse which attributes blame for social problems onto African Americans. Drawing on an anthropological case study of White tobacco growers in North Carolina, I show how talk of sorriness reflects an emphasis on personal responsibility that is widespread in American culture and helps to legitimize punitive public policies and constrain efforts to address an astonishing wealth gap. Extending a critical analysis of how aspects of American culture impede apologies and reparations to specifically examine a dynamic of racialization that colors meanings and models of citizenship and status in tobacco country, I assess a textual economy of how saying “sorry” does something other than apologize and connect an intensive case study to a critique of how a broad culture of whiteness has a hard time with apologies and reparations. This article addresses the construction of American “innocence” on multiple levels and speaks to the politics of race and innocence amid deep historical burdens and debates and contestations that arise around affirmative action and reparations in the United States.

Keywords

Affirmative action apology biopolitics citizenship North Carolina race reparations tobacco

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Abadi

(1990) The speech act of apology in political life. Journal of Pragmatics 14(3): 467–471.

America

(2002) The Wealth of Races: The Present Value of Benefits from Past Injustices. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Associated Press (2008) Obama opposes reparations for slavery. New York Daily News, 2 August. Available at: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/obama-opposes-reparations-slavery-article-1.314179

Baldwin

(1962) A letter to my nephew. The Progressive, December. Available at: http://www.progressive.org/news/2014/12/5047/letter-my-nephew

Barkan

Karn

(eds) (2006) Taking Wrongs Seriously: Apologies and Reconciliation. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Benson

(2012) Tobacco Capitalism: Growers, Migrant Workers, and the Changing Face of a Global Industry. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Berlant

(1997) The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Biehl

(2012) Care and disregard. In: Fassin

(ed.) A Companion to Moral Anthropology. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 242–263.

Breen

(1985) Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great Tidewater Planters on the Eve of Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

10.

Brooks

(1999) When Sorry Isn’t Enough: The Controversy Over Apologies and Reparations for Human Injustice. New York: New York University Press.

11.

Brooks

(2006) Atonement and Forgiveness: A New Model for Black Reparations. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

12.

Brophy

(2003) Some conceptual and legal problems in reparations for slavery. NYU Annual Survey of American Law 58(4): 497–555.

13.

Brophy

(2014) Who would pay for reparations, and why? New York Times, 9 June. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/06/08/are-reparations-due-to-african-americans/who-would-pay-for-reparations-and-why

14.

Browne

(1972) The economic case for reparations to Black America. The American Economic Review 62(1–2): 39–46.

15.

Burney

(2015) In Baltimore, the whole damn system is guilty as hell. Vice, 1 May. Available at: http://www.vice.com/read/baltimore-freddie-gray-the-whole-damn-system-is-guilty-as-hell-051

16.

Campo

Mastin

Frazer

(2004) Predicting and explaining public opinion regarding U.S. slavery reparations. Howard Journal of Communications 15(2): 115–130.

17.

Celermajer

(2008) Apology and the possibility of ethical politics. Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory 9(1): 1–21.

18.

Chakrabarty

(2002) Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

19.

Coates

(2014a) The case for reparations. The Atlantic, June. Available at: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/

20.

Coates

(2014b) The radical practicality of reparations. The Atlantic, 4 June. Available at: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/06/the-radical-practicality-of-reparations/372114/

21.

Coates

(2015) Between the World and Me. New York: Simon & Schuster.

22.

Coates

(2016) The case for considering reparations. The Atlantic, 27 January. Available at: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/01/tanehisi-coates-reparations/427041/

23.

Crichlow

Gomez

(2015) Revisiting affirmative action, globally. Cultural Dynamics 27: 3–18.

24.

Cunningham

(1999) Saying sorry: the politics of apology. The Political Quarterly 70(3): 285–293.

25.

Darity

(2008) Forty acres and a mule in the 21st Century. Social Science Quarterly 89(3): 656–664.

26.

Darity

Frank

(2003) The economics of reparations. The American Economic Review 93(2): 326–329.

27.

Das

(2007) Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

28.

Davis

(2012) Racial reconciliation or retreat? How legislative resolutions apologizing for slavery promulgate white supremacy. The Black Scholar 42(1): 37–48.

29.

Davis

(2002) On apologies. Journal of Applied Philosophy 19(2): 169–173.

30.

Derrida

(2001) On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness. London: Routledge.

31.

Devega

(2015) Black America owes no forgiveness: how Christianity hinders racial justice. Salon, 23 August. Available at: http://www.salon.com/2015/08/23/the_hypocrisy_of_black_forgiveness_partner/

32.

Drum

(2016) Should Bernie Sanders support reparations? Mother Jones, 19 January. Available at: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/01/should-bernie-sanders-support-reparations

33.

Fassin

(2009) Another politics of life is possible. Theory, Culture & Society 26(5): 44–60.

34.

Faust

(2015) John Hope Franklin: race and the meaning of America. New York Review of Books, 17 December. Available at: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/12/17/john-hope-franklin-race-meaning-america/

35.

Feagin

(2004) Documenting the costs of slavery, segregation, and contemporary racism: why reparations are in order for African Americans. Harvard Black Letter Law Journal 20: 49–81.

36.

Franklin

(1993) The Color Line: Legacy for the Twenty-First Century. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press.

37.

Franklin

(2005) Mirror to America. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

38.

Garber

(2014) The sociology of sorry. The Atlantic, 24 June. Available at: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/06/the-sociology-of-sorry/373273/

39.

Gass

(2015) Graham: confederate flag a “Roadblock” for South Carolina. Politico, 28 June. Available at: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/lindsey-graham-confederate-flag-road-block-south-carolina-119511

40.

Gibney

Howard-Hassmann

Coicaud

. (2008) The Age of Apology: Facing Up to the Past. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

41.

Gill

(2000) The moral functions of apology. The Philosophical Forum 31(1): 11–27.

42.

Goffman

(1971) Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order. New York: Basic Books.

43.

Gooder

Jacobs

(2000) “On the border of the unsayable”: the apology in postcolonizing Australia. Interventions 2(2): 229–247.

44.

Govier

Verwoerd

(2002) The promise and pitfalls of apology. Journal of Social Philosophy 33(1): 67–82.

45.

Harris

(2003) “Reparations” as a dirty word: the norm against slavery reparations. University of Memphis Law Review 33: 409–448.

46.

Hernández

(2000) Delirio—The Fantastic, the Demonic, and the Réel: The Buried History of Nuevo León. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

47.

Hollander

(2006) “Subject to control”: shifting geographies of race and labour in U.S. sugar agroindustry, 1930–1950. Cultural Geographies 13: 266–292.

48.

Iyer

Leach

Crosby

(2003) White guilt and racial compensation: the benefits and limits of self-focus. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 29(1): 117–129.

49.

Johnson

(2016) An open letter to Ta-Nehisi Coates and the liberals who love him. Jacobin, 3 February. Available at: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/02/ta-nehisi-coates-case-for-reparations-bernie-sanders-racism/

50.

Johnson

III (2014) Why won’t the United States apologize for slavery? The Root, 17 June. Available at: http://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2014/06/why_won_t_the_united_states_apologize_for_slavery/

51.

Katz

(1986) In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America. New York: Basic Books.

52.

Katz

(1989) The Undeserving Poor: From the War on Poverty to the War on Welfare. New York: Pantheon Books.

53.

King

(1985) Transforming scandal into tragedy: a rhetoric of political apology. Quarterly Journal of Speech 71(3): 289–301.

54.

Lazare

(2005) On Apology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

55.

Leonardo

(2004) The color of supremacy: beyond the discourse of “white privilege.” Educational Philosophy and Theory 36(2): 137–152.

56.

Levi

(1997) The role of apology in mediation. NYU Law Review 72(5): 1165–1210.

57.

Levinas

(1996) Is ontology fundamental? In: Peperzak

Critchley

Bernasconi

(eds) Basic Philosophical Writings. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, pp. 1–10.

58.

Lipsitz

(1995) The possessive investment in whiteness: racialized social democracy and the “White” problem in American Studies. American Quarterly 47(3): 369–387.

59.

Lipsitz

(1998) The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

60.

McCarthy

(2004) Coming to terms with our past, part II: on the morality and politics of reparations for slavery. Political Theory 32(6): 750–772.

61.

McGarty

Pedersen

Leach

. (2010) Group-based guilt as a predictor of commitment to apology. British Journal of Social Psychology 44(4): 659–680.

62.

Mathis-Lilley

(2015) “Respectability politics” speeches criticized by Black progressives. Slate, 12 May. Available at: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/05/12/obama_responsibility_politics_my_brother_s_keeper_president_defends_approach.html

63.

Matsuda

(1987) Looking to the bottom: critical legal studies and reparations. Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 22. Available at: http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/hcrcl22&div=21&id=&page=

64.

Mellor

Bretherton

Firth

(2007) Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australia: the dilemma of apologies, forgiveness, and reconciliation. Peace and Conflict 13(1): 11–36.

65.

Ong

(2003) Buddha is Hiding: Refugees, Citizenship, the New America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

66.

Plant

(2006) Apologies: levinas and dialogue. International Journal of Philosophical Studies 14(1): 79–94.

67.

Purdy

(2015) Trump’s monstrous call. Huffington Post, 7 December. Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jedediah-purdy/trumps-monstrous-call_b_8743946.html

68.

Reynolds

(2004) Possible and impossible, self and other, and the reversibility of Merleau-Ponty and Derrida. Philosophy Today 48(1): 35–49.

69.

Robinson

(2001) The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks. New York: Plume.

70.

Ryle

(1998) A sorry apology from Clinton. The Guardian, 13 April. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/Columnists/Column/0,5673,234216,00.html

71.

Sack

(1997) Confederate flag divides G.O.P. in South Carolina. New York Times, 24 January. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/24/us/confederate-flag-divides-gop-in-south-carolina.html

72.

Scher

Darley

(1997) How effective are the things people say to apologize? Effects of the realization of the apology speech act. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 26(1): 127–140.

73.

Sears

Sidanius

Bobo

(2000) Racialized Politics: The Debate about Racism in America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

74.

Shin

(2015) The racial wealth gap. Forbes Magazine, 26 March. Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2015/03/26/the-racial-wealth-gap-why-a-typical-white-household-has-16-times-the-wealth-of-a-black-one/#6e2e556e6c5b

75.

Stewart

(2007) Ordinary Affects. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

76.

Taft

(2000) Apology subverted: the commodification of apology. The Yale Law Journal 109(5): 1135–1160.

77.

Taussig

(1991) The Nervous System. London: Routledge.

78.

Tavuchis

(1991) Mea Culpa: A Sociology of Apology and Reconciliation. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

79.

Thompson

(2010) Is apology a sorry affair? Derrida and the moral force of the impossible. The Philosophical Forum 41(3): 259–274.

80.

Thompson

(2000) The apology paradox. The Philosophical Quarterly 50: 470–475.

81.

Torres

(2015) Neoliberalism and affirmative action. Cultural Dynamics 27(1): 43–62.

82.

Tretjak

(2013) Opportunity and danger: why studies of the right are crucial for US anthropology and beyond. North American Dialogue 16(2): 60–68.

83.

Trouillot

(2000) Abortive rituals: historical apologies in the global era. Interventions 2(2): 171–186.

84.

Wallace-Wells

(2015) The hard truths of Ta-Nehisi Coates. New York Magazine, 12 July. Available at: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/07/ta-nehisi-coates-between-the-world-and-me.html

85.

Weber

(1958) The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Scribner.

86.

Wenger

(2010) “Too big to remedy?” Rethinking mass restitution for slavery and Jim Crow. Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 44(1): 177–232.

87.

Weyeneth

(2001) The power of apology and the process of historical reconciliation. The Public Historian 23(3): 9–38.

88.

Willen

(2012) How is health-related “deservingness” reckoned? Perspectives from unauthorized immigrants in Tel Aviv. Social Science & Medicine 74(6): 812–821.