WATCH: Obama Nominee Says Reparations on the Table

In May 2008, Ninth Circuit nominee Goodwin Liu took part in a discussion of the documentary film Traces of the Trade, which explores the role of New Englanders in the slave trade.  Liu lists the event in his questionnaire response, but doesn’t link to any video or transcript (or any other account of his remarks).

Blogger Morgen of Verum Serum has dug up a video of the event and posted a striking two-minute video excerpt, which I encourage you to watch.  Here’s a transcript of Liu’s remarks (with some asides deleted):

Then there’s a further issue, which is that maybe there are white families who were not involved as directly or even indirectly with the slave trade, but who still benefited from it. And then there is the whole question, which you put on the table, about people who came to America after, and, you know, like my family. And why is it that this movie speaks to me so deeply yet?

And so, what I would do, I think I would draw a distinction between a concept of guilt, which locates accountability in a sort of limited set of wrong-doers, and, on the other hand, a concept of responsibility, which is, I think, a more broad suggestion that all of us, whatever our lineage, whatever our ancestry, whatever our complicity, still have a moral duty to … make things right. And that’s a moral duty that’s incumbent upon everybody who inherits this nation, regardless of whatever the history is.

And I think, to add one more point on top of that, the exercise of that responsibility … necessarily requires the answer to the question, “What are we willing to give up to make things right?” Because it’s gonna require us to give up something, whether it is the seat at Harvard, the seat at Princeton.  Or is it gonna require us to give up our segregated neighborhoods, our segregated schools?  Is it gonna require us to give up our money?

It’s gonna require giving up something, and so until we can have that further conversation of what it is we’re willing to give up, I agree that the reconciliation can’t fully occur. Read more here.