No argument from me here.  That said, given the civic frailty
apparent in contemporary American public discourse, any
opportunity to remind ourselves collectively of our common
public purposes is valuable.  

To be sure, slavery is an abomination.  But it does cast into
stark relief, those public values that we share, precisely
because it is itself such a stark negation of them.  So the
opportunity to mourn slavery is also an opportunity to
celebrate the public values we do hold dear, and that are very
much worthy of celebration.  

We would be foolish indeed to fore-go the opportunity that
Jamestown affords us.  

Much of the animosity behind criticism of those who propose
public mourning for slavery derives from interest group
politics.  But unless we are prepared to condemn interest
group liberalism in toto (cf. the writing of Theodore Lowi, on
this score), it is only to be expected that some interest
groups will attempt to harness public events like Jamestown
for their own purposes.  That is an unfortunate side effect of
the times in which we live.  

Conservatives who wish to discredit liberal African American
public leaders like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, and who thus
deride those who mourn slavery, are demonstrating a distinct
lack of imagination.  Their thinking is "knee jerk."  Worse,
they are buying into precisely the process that corrodes
public civility in our country in the first place.  As I have
suggested, we can and should condemn slavery  for reasons
that, I would hope, almost every American can support.  We
don't need to support victim-politics in order to agree that
slavery is the antithesis of what we as a people, black and
white, stand for today.

Roger Wilkins does a terrific job of explaining this.  If you
have not read his work, I'd recommend it heartily to everyone
who is concerned about civic education and commemoration in
our country.

All best,
Kevin

---- Original message ----
>Date: Fri, 11 May 2007 16:08:15 EDT
>From: [log in to unmask]  
>Subject: Re: Official Opposition Events  
>To: [log in to unmask]
>
>There's not too much to "celebrate" about slavery in America,
so no  surprise 
>no one wants to do so.
> 
>J South
>
>
>
>************************************** See what's free at
http://www.aol.com.
Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.
Department of History
James Madison University