Learning from a racist past

Among the artifacts housed at the National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington, D.C., is a poster, known as a broadside, advertising the auction of enslaved persons at the Charleston, S.C., courthouse. The people listed on the document range in age from a 1-month-old infant to a 70-year-old man named Old Peter.

Handwritten notations on the poster include the words healthy, very fine, breeding, and mostly white. Charleston's role in the slave trade — an estimated 40% of the enslaved Africans brought to the continent arrived in the city's port — is well documented.

Some 155 years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, the city even issued an apology for the part it played. But a belated apology would not erase the stain of slavery or the devastation it had wrought for centuries.

So, how does a city make amends for such atrocities? How does it redeem itself? In Charleston, spurred by protesters seeking real change, city leaders created the Special Commission on Equity, Inclusion and Racial Conciliation in 2020.

Now, commissions and advisory councils are not uncommon in government, but this one had a mission more far-reaching, more ambitious than most. According to the commission's report on its findings, "The recommendations in this report are initial steps that can be taken to achieve the stated purpose of the Commission to dismantle systemic racism and rebuilding Charleston as an actively anti-racist government."

The report adds, "We can't find one example of a system where there are no racial disparities in outcomes: health, education, criminal justice, housing and so on. Baked into the creation and ongoing policies of our government, media and other institutions, racism operates at individual, institutional and structural levels and is therefore present in every system we examine." Hard truths, spoken plainly.

From there, the document lays out 125 recommendations, possible ways to righting some of those wrongs. Among the recommendations, for instance, is addressing structural inequities in recruitment, hiring and promotion of city employees, decreasing pay disparities for those employees and "to make the city of Charleston a racially equitable working place."

Imagine if every employer in America took that step alone and truly worked to make their employees a better reflection of the American people today. The other recommendations tackle everything from providing resources to historically underfunded schools to "increasing mobility infrastructure," which means improving sidewalks, streetscaping and lighting.

The plan seeks to better represent the history and culture of "Black, Indigenous, and Other People of Color" with a board of public art review. It also includes budgeting for full-time public defender services and improving access to capital so 300 new Black-owned businesses can become sustainable/viable over a five-year period. Lofty goals, but all achievable.

The more controversial recommendations of the plan, however, led the City Council to vote against formally receiving the report. Talk of establishing a $100 million reparation fund using public/private partnerships to improve the economic well-being of Charleston's Black population met with significant pushback, even though the report was only being received, not implemented.

Change rarely comes as swiftly as it should, but a community must first recognize that change is needed. The apology issued several years ago and the creation of this committee demonstrate that Charleston knows change is coming, but clearly it has a long way to go.