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The Armenian Weekly; Volume 74, No. 11; March 22, 2008
Features:
1. The Politics of official apologies
An Interview with Melissa Nobles
By Khatchig Mouradian
2. Mephisto’s Coffee-Table Book
‘Never Again, Again, Again.’ Scrapbooks Humanity’s Genocidal Descent
By Andy Turpin
***
1. The Politics of official apologies
An Interview with Melissa Nobles
By Khatchig Mouradian
Melissa Nobles is associate professor of political science at MIT. She holds
a BA in history from Brown University and an MA and PhD in political science
>From Yale University.
Her research interests include retrospective justice and the comparative
study of racial and ethnic politics. She is the author of Shades of
Citizenship: Race and the Census in Modern Politics (Stanford University
Press, 2000) and The Politics of Official Apologies (Cambridge University
Press, 2008).
In this interview, conducted in her office at MIT on March 11, we discuss
why and how governments apologize-or do not apologize-for crimes committed
in their country in the past and what significance apology-or the absence of
it-can have on the descendents of the victims and the perpetrators.
Khatchig Mouradian-How did you become interested in the politics of official
apologies?
Melissa Nobles-I became interested when, in 1998, I read an article in the
New York Times about the Canadian government’s apology to indigenous
Canadians. I thought that was interesting and unusual, because governments
don’t usually apologize. Then I became aware of the Turkish government’s
refusal to apologize for the Armenian genocide. That also interested me. I
knew that the U.S. government had apologized to Japanese-Americans for their
internment during WWII, but also realized that the U.S. had not apologized
to Native Americans or to African-Americans for their experiences. So my
interest was both in cases where governments did apologize and where
governments did not apologize.
K.M.-In the book, you make a distinction between apology offered by
governments and ones offered by heads of state. Why is this distinction
important?
M.N.-It is important because government apologies typically require more
actors and tend to be the result of more deliberation. The parliament,
commissions and historians are involved, so more people are weighing in and
it’s more of a collective decision. Moreover, typically government apologies
have been accompanied by reparations. Examples of such apologies and
reparations are the German government’s apology and ongoing reparations to
surviving Jews after WWII and the state of Israel, and U.S. President Ronald
Reagan providing $20,000 to surviving Japanese-Americans affected by the
internment.
Apologies that come from heads of state are important, of course, because
the person giving them is either the executive or government official, but
they are not necessarily the result of deliberation, so they are more
unpredictable and don’t usually come with any kind of compensation. They
tend to be more fleeting. I thought that’s the distinction that should be
taken into account.
K.M.-Speaking of reparations, in the book you write, "For vulnerable and
disadvantaged groups, moral appeals are often central to political argument
and action. . But at the same time, group members also express skepticism
about the ultimate worth of moral appeals because although they may be
essential, they are infrequently followed by action." Do you feel that
action is necessary for apologies to have meaning?
M.N.-I do. Note that action can be broadly or narrowly defined. We might
think about action as an apology that marks the beginnings of a government
and citizenry talking more seriously about their own history. Action can be
something not regulated by the state or there may be a commission that
recommends compensation. But what is the least desirable is an apology that
is just said and is followed by nothing-no discussion, or any kind of
deliberation or compensation-because then, it falls flat. Action need not be
synonymous with reparations as such, but it needs to be something more than
a mere utterance, which, once said, dies.
K.M.-Have there been cases where an official apology has not been followed
by any concrete steps-a sort of "I apologize, now let’s go home"? You
mention in the book how some governments have refrained from apologizing
mainly because of what might come next.
M.N.-In general, the "let’s go home" apologies have been given by heads of
state. I haven’t found too many cases of governments giving apologies that
haven’t been followed by something. An example would be what’s going on now
in Australia, where there’s resistance at least to doing something that
would be directly tied to the apology. At the same time they’re saying, We
are going to change Aboriginal policy-making, we’re going to take action,
but we’re not going to give money to the specific victims of this particular
government policy [of forcibly removing Aboriginal children from their
parent’s care].
Governments are reluctant to apologize precisely because of the concern that
there are going to be demands for money. But governments have more power;
they decide what they’re going to do. So while there is a tension, I don’t
think it’s a tension that’s insurmountable. The issue is framed by political
elites. They can decide to give nothing and they often times make this
decision.
K.M.-Isn’t there also some dominance relation here? After all, it’s the
dominant group that is deciding what to say and what to give.
M.N.-Absolutely. This is certainly an unequal dynamic. Much of the
dissatisfaction with symbolic politics is that it points up the relative
powerlessness of the groups that are asking for apologies.
If you’re in power and feel that you don’t need anything from the groups
that have victimized you, you would not ask for apologies. It is the less
powerful that do. The less powerful groups have fewer resources and rely
upon moral appeals in order to get what they want. And there’s value, of
course, in bringing morality to bear. That’s just the dynamic of the world
in which we live.
But you’re absolutely right, there is asymmetry here. The powerful can do as
little as they want and, many times, they do nothing. They ignore them. They
won’t apologize. On the other hand, the group can continue to express their
dissatisfaction, and continue to demand it. The demand-just the idea that
they’re being asked for it-can be discomforting to the powerful. That may be
all that the side demanding apology can do.
K.M.-I want to bring democracy into the discussion. It would be easy to
argue that democracy should help countries face their past, but there are
some very striking examples that show that this is not the case. For
example, the United States has not apologized for slavery or the genocide of
the Native Americans. What are your thoughts on this?
M.N.-Democracy is the rule of the majority and there are inherent
disadvantages for minority groups within democracies. (Native Americans, in
this example, are less than one percent of the American population; black
Americans are 12 percent). And even though democracies allow for an
expression of desires and preferences, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re
going to get what you want. It typically means that minority groups have to
get the majority on board. That’s why moral appeal is sometimes what’s
needed.
The majority decides whether it will pay any attention to the minority. They
can choose to ignore the minority, and, as I’ve said, they oftentimes do. So
what minorities have to do is try to find a way to make the majority listen.
And usually appeals to history, appeals to the conscience are the peaceful
ways that are used. There are violent ways, of course, but those haven’t
been the avenues chosen by Native Americans or African-Americans for obvious
reasons.
The hope is that public discourse within democracies will force a
discussion. There’s a need for a robust debate in the public arena, which
makes freedom of speech, freedom of universities and other freedoms that
democracy provides so important. Without those freedoms, change definitely
wouldn’t happen.
K.M.-In the context of democracy and the minorities within that democracy,
do you feel that as long as there has been no apology, the power asymmetry
and the domination are still there?
M.N.-Yes, it’s kind of unavoidable. Look at the situation of the Native
Americans. It’s disgraceful and makes one despair a great deal. It’s our
country’s history. We don’t want to talk about it, or we barely talk about
it. Even when we do talk, we certainly talk about it incompletely. And more
than that, I think many Americans thing that the dispossession of the Native
Americans was justified in some way. They think, we certainly are not going
to give anything back, we love the U.S. now and the Native American
circumstance is just the unfortunate result of history. I think that some
dimension of domination will always be there and seems to be unavoidable. It
is also, of course, not a thing that anyone who has a conscience would
celebrate. It should cause us discomfort at the very least and I think there
is no real discussion in the U.S. about Native Americans because of that
discomfort and the implications of taking their situation seriously.
K.M.-You have written, "Feelings of ‘nonresponsibility’ are powerful
constraints against state support for apologies. Feelings of national pride,
derived from certain interpretations of national history, also play a role."
What is shocking is that in each and every case that I know of and that you
mention in the book, the victimizers or their descendents-the dominant
group-deal the exact same way with the victim group and its demands. This
issue seems to cut across civilizations.
M.N.-It is shocking. There are lots of justifications for not feeling
responsible. The most obvious is the argument that "I was not personally
responsible." But, of course, that’s a pretty easy one to challenge. People
aren’t responsible for what goes well in their countries, but they claim it,
right? So it’s kind of selective claiming: "I like the constitution but I
hate slavery." Being part of a country requires the good and bad, but it is
human nature to want to bask in the glory and then ignore the bad. Once I
decide that I’m not responsible for the act, why would I apologize for it?
Once this particular position takes hold, everything else follows and makes
apology impossible. So the point is to always try to deal with that issue of
responsibility by telling the person, "You are not individually responsible,
we get that, but somehow you are a beneficiary of, or you benefited from,
the historical circumstances in which you were born in such a way that you
must now think about making amends."
The challenge is to try and get people to see that they are somehow
responsible. Not that they themselves are responsible, but that somehow they
should accept responsibility, even if they were not personally involved.
One thing the research has shown is that feelings of guilt are determined by
whether you think you are personally responsible or not. If you recognize
that your group, the group with which you are associated, was responsible
and you feel guilt about it, then you’re likely to apologize.
K.M.-How can the descendants of the victimizers argue for an apology?
M.N.-Politicians make it such that the descendents are able to say, "OK,
this happened in the past, apologizing is the right thing to do." It helps
to talk about the past but think about the future. So they use the term
acknowledgement without necessarily assigning guilt. That’s what Australia’s
Prime Minister did. He apologized to Aboriginal Australians
straightforwardly. He basically said, "We acknowledge what happened and we
are sorry." But then he said, "Now we’re moving forward. The reason we are
apologizing is to make a better community for Australian Aboriginal
peoples." So one approach that politicians use is not to dwell upon the
past; even as they acknowledge the past, they quickly move from it. That
seems to be the tactic that works best. If you dwell too much on the past,
if there’s too much discussion about the past, then it becomes fertile
ground for those who oppose giving the apology. The idea is to always keep
looking at the big picture, and one useful big picture is the future. I
think that’s the way that successful apologies are done and politicians
recognize that.
K.M.-Countless massacres and crimes against humanity have been committed in
the last two centuries alone. At some point, one might argue that everyone
has to say sorry to everyone else. Why are some apologies more "important"
than others?
M.N.-The aggrieved groups themselves must ask for it and others have to see
something in it for them. In fact, not everyone is asking for apologies
because there’s a certain distrust of apology. Some people ask, "What’s that
apology going to do?" They think, "They don’t mean it," or "If I have to ask
for it then it’s not worth getting," or "They are morally bankrupt and don’t
even know that they should apologize," or "Whatever they could do for me
wouldn’t be worth it." So there are reasons why some people wouldn’t even
think about asking for an apology, because they think it would be somehow
tainted.
Are some apologies more important than others? I don’t think there are
absolute measures. But at least in politics, it seems, the ones that are
considered worthy are the ones where the people who are giving it stand to
gain too.
K.M.-If a crime happened in the past but continues to have great
implications today and cause great distress, do you think it’s more "worthy"
of being addressed? I have in mind the Native Americans, African-Americans.
M.N.-I agree with the gist of your argument. But many would argue that what
happened in the U.S. happened. That we have found other ways of dealing with
African-American and Native American grievances, and apology is kind of
beside the point. They would say that an apology would be so polarizing that
it will do more harm than good.
In general, though, I think that if any party is going to do it, it’s the
Democrats, although they haven’t endorsed an apology-not even Bill Clinton.
K.M.-What do you think about gestures by ordinary people who apologize
despite their government’s reluctance to do so?
M.N.-Australia is a good example of that. When former Prime Minister John
Howard refused to apologize, he ended up inadvertently fostering what is
known as the people’s movement. Australians themselves were signing sorry
books. Some critics judged it as political theatre, but I didn’t view it
that way. The Australians were telling Aboriginal Australians, "Listening to
you makes me think about what happened, makes me think about you as a
neighbor that I care about. The government can’t change our attitudes. We’re
citizens, and we can apologize."
It seems to me that an official apology accompanied by real, serious
engagement by the population-as we’ve seen in Canada, Australia and New
Zealand, yet haven’t seen here in the U.S.-makes a big difference in the
quality of life in those countries.
————————————— ————————————————–
2. Mephisto’s Coffee-Table Book
‘Never Again, Again, Again.’ Scrapbooks Humanity’s Genocidal Descent
By Andy Turpin
Far flung from the likes of Rachel Ray and strategically placed back issues
of "Architectural Digest" is a very different kind of coffee-table
photography book that doesn’t scream to be elegantly in the background.
Rather, it just screams.
Human rights and genocide photographer Lane H. Montgomery’s newly compiled
book, Never Again, Again, Again (Ruder Finn Press, Inc., 2008) is a
gruesome, moving and comprehensive masterwork of photographic timelines
encompassing all the major genocides of the 20th century, beginning with the
Armenian genocide and ending its coverage only a few months ago with the
latest news of devastation from Darfur.
Up-to-the-minute death is never something to be proud of, but the book does
its homework.
Contributors on the history of the various genocides, their origins and
aftermaths, include Richard G. Hovannisian, professor of Modern Armenian
history at UCLA; Rabbi Arthur Schneier, president of the Appeal for
Conscience Foundation; Ambassador James Rosenthal, the former director of
State Department Vietnam, Laos and Cambodian Affairs; Terry George, the
writer and director of "Hotel Rwanda"; and Chuck Sudetic, New York Times
Balkan correspondent.
The pictures themselves speak volumes about man’s plunges into the lowest
depths of himself, but the texts chosen to represent each epoch are well
selected and tell recollectory passages, rather than being simply caption
fodder.
An example of which comes through in a cable from Lee Miller, Vogue’s
photographer, on May 8, 1945, upon accompanying the 7th Army to liberate
Dachau. He wrote: "I implore you to believe this is true. No question that
German civilians knew what went on. Railway siding into Dachau camp runs
past villas, with trains of dead and semi-dead deportees. I usually don’t
take pictures of horrors, but don’t think that every town and every area isn’t
rich with them. I hope Vogue will feel that it can publish these pictures."
Vogue ran Lee’s cable below the headline in extra bold: "BELIEVE IT."
Also of note is the extensive coverage of the Cambodian genocide, one rarely
understood and seldom taught in American education facilities. And the
appendix notes on the equally understated Ukrainian genocide perpetrated by
Stalin in the 1930s.
Written of Cambodia to paraphrase the events and mindset of the genocidaires
is the Khmer Rouge slogan, "’To spare you is no profit, to destroy you is no
loss’. 17,000 people entered Tuol Sleng [death camp], only 6 survived."
Perhaps Never Again, Again, Again isn’t Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem or
Werfel’s Musa Dagh, but for those with just a New York minute to spare, it
only takes a minute to look at these photos and be leveled to your core.