Ben Jealous’ Obscene “Truth and Reconciliation” Proposal | Black Agenda Report

Ben Jealous’ Obscene “Truth and Reconciliation” Proposal

05 Jun 2013

🖨️ Print Article

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford

NAACP president Ben Jealous wants to start a “truth and reconciliation” process in the U.S. – before political prisoners are freed, while mass incarceration devastates Black families and communities, and when Blacks are murdered by the state every 28 hours. Jealous’ “talk of reconciliation is an obscene diversion from reality.”

Ben Jealous’ Obscene “Truth and Reconciliation” Proposal

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford

“Ben Jealous wants reconciliation without emancipation of those who sacrificed their youth for our people.”

NAACP chief Ben Jealous hasn’t taken a position on Assata Shakur, the exiled former Black Panther who President Obama’s FBI has elevated to Domestic Terrorist Number One – despite the fact that the grandmother has spent the last 29 years living peacefully in Cuba. Yes, Jealous knows that Shakur was a political prisoner before her escape, charged in the 1973 death of a New Jersey policeman. He told Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman that he thinks the NAACP will have to take a position on Shakur’s case at some point, and that he also feels for the families of the cops who died in New Jersey and in the Brinks robbery, in New York, in 1981. Jealous says he’s most interested in healing the nation from the effects of what he calls “politically motivated violence, on both sides.” What’s needed, he claims, is a kind of “truth and reconciliation commission.”

Ben Jealous’s clear reference is to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, convened in Cape Town, in 1996, by a multiracial cast of notables led by Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The Commission’s powers were limited to granting amnesty to perpetrators, or offering rehabilitation and reparations to victims. The hearings were quite controversial from the very start, and ultimately produced no political consensus among the races that justice was served.

“What is there to conciliate about?”

It is most important to bear in mind that, at that time, an African National Congress government under Nelson Mandela had been in office for two years. The ANC’s political prisoners, including Mandela, himself, had been freed. The Commission could grant amnesty, but not administer punishment – which seemed far from fair to many members of the non-white majority who had been abused in every imaginable way for generations.

It is curious that Ben Jealous thinks this rather ineffective South African medicine can heal America’s racial wounds – especially since, unlike South Africa, and Barack Obama notwithstanding, whites are still firmly in control, here. Our political prisoners remain behind bars – scores of them, many incarcerated for more than 40 years, and some of them still in solitary confinement. What is there to conciliate about? The only decent demand is that they be set free, to enjoy what years they have left among family and comrades on the outside. Ben Jealous wants reconciliation without emancipation of those who sacrificed their youth for our people. In that light, his talk of reconciliation is an obscene diversion from the reality of still-living human beings trapped in perpetuity in America’s dungeons.

Ben Jealous wants peace much more than justice – forgetting that without some semblance of justice, there can be no peace. That’s why he stakes out a position on some fantasized truth and reconciliation scheme before taking a stand on the actual plight of Assata Shakur, on whose head his favorite president has placed a $2 million bounty. Why doesn’t Ben Jealous work his conciliatory charms on Obama, whose assault on human civilization is making conciliation with America more and more impossible for huge segments of the world’s population?

Clearly, the truth is that Ben Jealous has already reconciled himself with evil, and wants the rest of us to “turn the page” while evil is still on the throne. Sounds more like a Reconciliation and Capitulation Commission.

For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

listen

http://traffic.libsyn.com/blackagendareport/20130605_gf_Reconciliation.mp3

More Stories

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Black Agenda Radio December 19, 2025
19 Dec 2025
In this week’s segment, we present a conversation about birthright citizenship, its benefits to Black people, and why it is under attack. But first, we hear from a U.S. activist who recently traveled…
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
John Parker on Solidarity with Venezuela
19 Dec 2025
John Parker is the coordinator of the Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice In Los Angeles and a leading member of the Struggle for Socialism Party. He is joining us from Los Angeles to discuss…
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley , Renee Johnston , Jared Ball
Birthright Citizenship and the African World
19 Dec 2025
Margaret Kimberley was recently a guest on the Black Liberation Media program, Saturdays with Renee, with Renee Johnston and Jared Ball. They discussed the issue of birthright citizenship in light of…
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor , Ahmed Kaballo
Struggling for Sovereignty: Sudan After Two Years of Civil War
17 Dec 2025
After two years of civil war, Sudan is now the site of the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. However, as in most conflicts in the Global South, colonial and neocolonial history are a large part…
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
The Turtle Island Liberation Front Warning for Activists
17 Dec 2025
Arrests of members of the Turtle Island Liberation Front are the latest in a decades-long effort to criminalize the left and to make examples of anyone who might fit the profile of being a "…