Students have voted to pay a reconciliation fee to aid the descendants of men and women enslaved by Jesuit priests.
By Courtland Milloy Courtland Milloy Local columnist Email Bio Follow Columnist April 21 at 9:00 AM While many are confounded by the subject of reparations for slavery, students at Georgetown University have acted on the courage of their convictions.These students have seen how the legacy of slavery manifests itself in racial disparities — in health, wealth, housing and employment. And they know that the outcomes are no accident.
Students learned of the school’s ties to slavery after a human thigh bone was unearthed during construction of a residence hall in 2014. It was a cemetery site, where the remains of slaves and free blacks had been buried. Subsequent discoveries led the university to make a formal apology in 2017 “for our participation in the evil of slavery,” Georgetown University President John J. DeGioia wrote in an open letter to the campus a day after the student vote.
Some students complained that the amount was too low, “just an Uber ride,” as one wrote in a post on social media.Some black students questioned why they should pay reparations when, if anything, they should be receiving them. For others, the answer was clear. “Supporters of the referendum will claim that we, by attending classes, living in dorms and accepting our degrees, owe an intrinsic debt to the descendants of those enslaved people who paid for Georgetown’s existence with their lives,” they wrote.
In an open letter to the university following the vote, DeGioia praised students for “bringing attention to deeply held convictions that we take very seriously.” But he also noted that requiring students to pay such a fee “raises complex issues” that won’t be resolved “immediately or easily.”The referendum was nonbinding; school officials would still have the last word.
“We do need to move away from viewing this as a matter of individual guilt or individual responsibility that can be offset by individual payments, towards the recognition that this is a national responsibility,” Darity said.
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