Harold Franklin, who integrated #Auburn University in 1964 (and was wrongfully denied his M.A. for half a century by my predecessors at @Auburn_History) has finally received his diploma. He is 87 years old.
Congratulations Dr. Franklin!
wvtm13.com/article/auburn…
Congratulations Dr. Franklin!
wvtm13.com/article/auburn…
While this small act of reparative justice can never undo the wrongs that Dr. Franklin experienced at Auburn or in America writ large it will hopefully contribute to new way of being in the world for members of the #Auburn community. When we do wrong we must try to make it right.
As I often say here, when you are talking about slavery, Jim Crow, and ongoing acts of racism, many things can be partially reparative but nothing can ever be fully reparative. All acts of repair (even big material ones) are mere symbolic gestures towards an incalculable loss.
This is why one theorist of reparations refers to the process as a "rough justice." None of that is to say that we need big checks its just to say that even those big check would, ontologically, be symbolic gestures to approximate a much larger harm.
It's also to say that we shouldn't poo-poo the purely immaterial as an empty feel-good self-congratulatory performance that is antagonistic to 'the real thing.' How we treat one another is real. How our ethics effect our actions is real. People's feelings are real.
At his defense, Dr. Franklin called on us to move towards those larger acts of material repair by equalizing funding for Alabama's HBCUs to the same level as the state's PWIs. The immaterial can often open space for the material (and vice versa). Do what you can where you can.
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