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July 07, 2003
The Treaty
"This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it." -- Abraham Lincoln, April 1859
Yeah but God is not just.
I. Boone suggests that Affirmative Action is an entitlement on the order of feudalism and entail. Boone further suggests that we take to heart the words of Abraham Lincoln to buttress our resolve against its 'sacred orthodoxy'.
I think Boone should be reminded of Nat Turner and Frederick Douglass. The other side of the coin of florid and high-falutin' rhetoric bursting at the seams of the Claremont's reminescences is the will of the slave to take manners into his own calloused hands. I would go as far as to argue that slavery, overturned here by a war only incidental to an actual slave rebellion, has its long-standing legacy only in the absence of a treaty between nations. The African-American nation is exceptional in that it did not throw off its own chains, but it might have as did the Haitians.
Lincoln does not deserve, nor do the founders, all of the credit for the emergence of the African from slavery. And that credit which is due to African Americans themselves in that long march to freedom and self-determination accrues to the 'sacred orthodoxy' of Affirmative Action as well, for it acts as that treaty between nations.
Posted by mbowen at July 7, 2003 07:52 AM
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