A Question of Character: Re(-)signing the Racial Contract

Abstract

A Question of Character:Re(-)signing the Racial Contract Mark Lawrence McPhail (bio) Is white America really sorry for her crimes against the black people? Does white America have the capacity to repent—and to atone? Does the capacity to repent, to atone, exist in a majority, in one half, in even one-third of American white society? —Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X Ach, I'm not fuckin' sorry for what I did. Look—I fought for my country, I believed in what I did, and I did a good job. They were my enemy at the time. . . . I did my job well. And I'd do it again if the circumstances called for it. No, man, I'm not really fuckin' sorry for what I did. —Captain Jacques Hechter The two epigraphs with which I begin this essay epitomize the stasis at the heart of any discussion of racial reconciliation: the question of credibility. The first comes from the American social activist Malcolm X.1 The second comes from Captain Jacques Hechter, a former member of South Africa's apartheid security police.2 Taken together, they reveal the double-edged character of rhetoric's third blade: ethos. The question of "character as it emerges in language" is fundamentally at stake in any discussion of race,3 and it informs my response to John Hatch's thoughtful and well-argued essay on enlarging rhetorical coherence through reconciliation.4 Hatch suggests that by forging a rhetoric of coherent reconciliation, we might contribute to a better public discourse about race in the United States. He argues that by "further theorizing reconciliation as a tragicomically coherent rhetoric, rhetoricians could help prepare the way for principled practices and constructive critiques of racial reconciliation in the United States."5 I wish to pursue this suggestion by examining the rhetoric of racial reconciliation in the enlarged space opened by Malcolm X's question and Jacques Hechter's answer: the space within which apologies are deemed sincere or simply expedient, within which credibility and character are paramount. This space is circumscribed by the center/margin relationship that is defined by what Charles M. Mills describes as "The Racial Contract." Unlike the social contract idealized in Western philosophy and politics, the Racial Contract reveals the ideological presuppositions and material conditions that have constrained race relations for the past five hundred years. During that time, black rhetors have sought persistently to re-sign the Racial Contract, and have contributed to the crafting in real [End Page 391] terms of the ideals of the social contract. White rhetors, in contrast, have largely resisted this re-signing, and have instead embraced and reshaped the Racial Contract in ways more subtle and insidious. Consequently, freedom, equality, and responsibility have been conceptualized and actualized in radically different ways by peoples of African and European descent: the former see these in terms of the consequences and material conditions of the Racial Contract, while the latter define these in terms of abstractions and intentions of the social contract. Closing the gap between the two is a prerequisite for coherent reconciliation, and this can only be accomplished by a collective act of white atonement: a resigning of the Racial Contract. 6 Whether or not this re-signing is possible is the question that led me to revisit the rhetoric of racism and that now confronts John Hatch. Will white people ever be sorry? Implicitly, Hatch would answer this question in the affirmative. He presents a compelling and provocative argument for theorizing reconciliation as a tragicomically grounded discourse, one that appeals as strongly to emotion as to reason. I sympathize with his commitment to pursuing the generative and transformative potential of discourse, but I remain skeptical about the possibility of genuine racial reconciliation in either South Africa or the United States. South Africa's struggle for reconciliation, as Hechter's comments reveal, remains caught up in questions of credibility and character. Similar questions are raised by the white racial recovery rhetorics that dominate discussions of reconciliation and reparations in the United States.7 In both contexts, while significant numbers of black people have shown a marked willingness to engage in the symbolic and social discourses...