Abstract
First, in the section ‘Telling Lies’, this article attempts to illustrate recent everyday racism. Racism has a history and takes many different forms. I describe a particular practice of racism (found in Britain, circa 1970), which relied, for its doctrine, on supposedly scientific assumptions about biology and breeding—and received a confirming fillip through the celebration of monarchy, empire and rose-tinted history. Second, in ‘Telling Tales’, the story of Zacchaeus is taken as exemplifying a form of moral repair in which telling and doing the truth are intimately related. Third, in ‘Telling and Doing the Truth’, I contend that telling and doing the truth in relation to racism requires not only a clear naming of racism’s lies but also the making of reparations, for the reason that the lies of racism subtended manifold injustices, of which Atlantic slavery and the exploitation of colonies are notable instances. I take the history of the West Indies as providing a clear case where moral repair is (over)due, and I consider the form that reparations might take.
Highlights
In the section ‘Telling Lies’, this article attempts to illustrate recent everyday racism
In making sense of a recent stretch of history and its racisms, a first-person perspective has a claim to provide some insight into lived experience, on account of the fact that racisms live from the ground up, not from the top down
Worcester stood for city in the old-fashioned sense of county cricket, Cathedral, horse racing and moderately sized and slightly quaint department stores; Birmingham stood for city in a more modern sense, with football, serious commerce and industry, dog racing and immigrants
Summary
The story of Zacchaeus can be regarded as the climax of a long section of Luke’s Gospel immediately preceding the passion. Walker observes, ‘we have a repertory of common moral gestures that aim at repair, such as owning up, apologizing, making amends, showing repentance, and seeking or offering forgiveness These are the familiar everyday maneuvers of individuals that are effective in restoring relationships after everyday wrongdoing.’[23] Further, these manoeuvres, Walker suggests, provide a basic toolkit for moral repair in the case of graver wrongs committed by individuals against individuals, but by societies against other societies, or by one section of a society against another. What can be said is that both saying and doing together appear necessary and that in general terms, full and honest apologies, along with imaginative and creative strategies of making amends, provide the best possible chance of repair: If no wrongs can be fully righted as no bell can be unrung, there is still plenty of room for reparative gestures that work on the moral plane to relieve suffering, disillusionment, isolation and despair.
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