Group:

Siru Tornoos, Gabriella Gricius, Josephine Bush, Bianca Brandtner, Jessica Hoefer, & Florane
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H&E of Cultural Diplomacy

Final Exam

Ques%on One:

Can you use CD ideas to deal with the issues of US Slave repara7ons? If the answer is yes, show how you
would go about using CD to deal with the issue- (a) whether you decide repara9ons should be paid or (b)
if you are of the opinion repara.ons should not be paid. What eect would your decision have on other
countries and issues related to genocide, war crimes and historical incidents of systema5c
discrimina)on.

1. Execu)ve Summary

This proposal outlines how repara0ons if made through the form of investments in modern society are
able to be paired with cultural diplomacy to create substan4al outcomes in oppressed communi4es,
both historically and today. Repara3ons will always have a 3e to the past, but have the ability to change
the policies of the now. In order to create a be4er future, the agenda a4empts to understand the
narra$ve of the past, and in doing so, derive posi$ve adap$ve outcomes.

Investments translates into using money that comes from many ins4tu4ons including from governmental
support and pu+ng it into projects that will con4nue to grow. Because culture is constantly growing, we
nd it important to note that repara.ons do not have an allo2ed .me at which they come to an end.
Instead, they should be looked as a set of constant ventures. These ventures range from investment into
tradi&onal educa&on, but also into cultural diplomacy projects ranging from dark tourism to the growth
of black lms, music industry and community eorts.

In addi'on, it is important to note that this proposal was forma4ed by six white women, and although
we are interna)onal rela)ons students who are open-minded and have contras)ng backgrounds, we are
not from the black community and we do not claim to know what is truly like. Our en7re ini7a7ve is
intended to partner with individuals in the African American community and endorse their objec8ves
and goals for a be-er future.

Repara&ons in solely a monetary sense do not work, but using money crea&vely has the ability to create
a level playing eld where African Americans can truly prosper alongside of all other Americans.

2 & 3. Statements and Analysis of Problems and Issues:

Repara&ons by deni&on means, the making of amends for wrong or injury done (Dic&onary Online).
In the case of U.S. slave repara3ons, res3tu3on in the form of payments is neither sucient nor
produc've. Therefore, we suggest using a variety of cultural diplomacy and crea've economy ini'a'ves
to address the issue.

Nye suggests cultural diplomacy (a.k.a. smart power) as a combina9on of both hard and so= power.
Granted, there is no military hard factor concerning slave repara8ons, instead the hard power that Nye
could be alluding to here is economics. Examining the case of the Japanese internment camps, the US
Government did in fact repay back people who were in the camps. However, this did not fully address
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the issue of personal proper/es and items that were taken and destroyed by na/onalist Americans
during the war against the Japanese. Similarly, the Na7ve Americans received repara7ons in the form of:

(1) cash payments, through the opera4on of the Indian Claims Commission and the U.S. Court of Claims;
(2) land, through an occasional ac3on of Congress to return control over land to par3cular tribes; and (3)
tribal recogni-on, by either Congress or the Bureau of Indian Aairs (Trosper).

Trosper con*nues to analyze these repara*ons made to the Na*ve Americans, no*ng their success with
cash payments being the least successful and tribal recogni5on the most (PRRAC Online). In many cases,
this purely monetary (and therefore hard power based) form of repara6ons has not been sucient.
Alterna(vely, handling slavery must come from the power of ideas.

The problems of the U.S Slavery are rooted in the past and therefore each step must be addressed
historically. Historically it is necessary to approach each era, from the very beginning of slavery, moving
forward to the civil war and the Presidency of Lincoln, the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s and
ul#mately to how racism inltrates society today. It is necessary to use the history to exemplify how the
past has shaped policies today and how black members of society are s5ll excluded. According to
Bhabha, there are two forms of racism, slavery and migra7on/diaspora. In par7cular, migrant women are
uniquely poli+cally and socially invisible (Bhabha). Fanon sees here the dark side of a man and has a
hunger for Hegelian dream of humanity. However, racism is ins8tu8onalized from red-lining policies in
the United States, to where vo1ng booths are placed in addi1on to marke1ng adver1sements/measures
rarely including and targe.ng African Americans. Bhabha would explain that phenomenon as hybridity,
which has already been established in US ins2tu2ons for decades; in other words, it has already become
a big part of life in the US. Installing arma6ve ac6on but not implemen6ng it in real life is a form of
ambivalence. Thinking on another level of cultural diplomacy ini8a8ves, the US sending Jazz musicians to
Soviet Union in the segrega/on era can be seen as an ins/tu/onalized level of hypocrisy (Kiehl).

A major problem with repara0ons in the form of money is that money has acted as a further divider
between black and white communi1es. African American communi1es have always faced economic
drawbacks because of the historical roots. This is illustrated in school districts, in community lines and
has such a historical component that throwing money at individuals who are descendants of slaves does
not x the problem. There needs to be crea4ve methods (Crea4ve Economy report 2010) that use
money to invest in specic projects that bring about opportuni5es for oppressed people. It is very
important to note that these projects need to all come from a grassroots perspec3ve, where members of
black communi,es use their ideas, paired with policies that can create the most sa,sfactory outcomes.
In par'cular, as Spivak addresses, we need to let the Subaltern speak for themselves, rather than
dicta&ng for them. In addi&on, we need to have a shi6 culture from an epistemological object to culture
as enac've (Bhabha). We want all to feel assimilated, not foreign (lectures) and we can do it with cultural
diplomacy. In essence, this means according to Spivak that we need to listen to the culture and make
sure that our cultural diplomacy ini2a2ve speaks to the communi2es aected by slavery repara2ons in
their own language. This encompasses taking the historical context of a situa7on into regard and making
sure that the subaltern are involved in the program: a.k.a. members of black communi:es.

Due to the fact slavery is a product of the state and of the people the ques5on arises of who will fund
repara%ons? Should it be a state-to-state case, where some states who had higher rates of slavery
historically pay more? Or should repara3ons be distributed by the federal government? As a group we
would want to work at an arms length from the government, where a large percentage of funding
comes from the government. This one of the primary objec6ves in the Bri6sh Council (Bound), which
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con$nues to be seen as one of the most produc$ve cultural diplomacy ini$a$ves worldwide (UK
Powerpoint). Addi/onally, this can be a8ributed to the thinking about capital that Bourdieu discusses,
primarily that in the end - everything goes back to economic capital. However good the sugges<ons
that repara(ons bring forth, nothing can be accomplished without guring out the source of funding.

Further, many issues arise with the ques1on - who is in charge of handling repara1ons? For instance, this
can be paired with educa/on. According to Said, knowledge is power. This was true in the case of the
Egypt and Britain as Said notes, that knowledge gave the Bri7sh people a superior understanding and
therefore power over the Egyp.ans. In the case of handling repara.ons, educa.on and access to
educa&on is the power. Unfortunately, the United States has had issues with rewri&ng textbooks and
only having one or two paragraphs glazing over important topics such as abuse of slaves. There needs to
be a focus on educa,on, where the history, however dras,c it is, is accurate and portrayed in an
authen'c manner. One issue with this can be addressed with Scheins portrayal of the Iceberg model.
Slavery is something that the US handles culturally as an underlying assump6on because as a country,
slavery is not addressed on an open basis. In fact, it is regulated to a side issue. Although it is dicult as
a country for the U.S. to address its historical past, it is necessary.

Another issue surrounding repara0ons is its formula (or lack thereof) necessary to determine the par0es
and amounts involved. How much and for how long would the repara7ons be owed? Who exactly would
be in receipt of repara-ons? (Austria and Germany do not have a set date when the repara-ons are
stopped) For instance, should it historically go back to the countries in which slaves were taken from?
There is no simple answer to this problem but if a common, and equal future is our objec8ve then
cultural diplomacy methods must be in place to insure that we are working towards an all-encompassing
future, where all demographics see similar opportuni5es (Anderson). In this aspect repara5ons need to
be seen as an investment. This investment needs to be part of an ever-growing program, because culture
and humanity are uid and ever-growing. Schein addresses this in describing organiza9onal culture,
namely that it is the pa.erns of basic assump5ons that a group has developed in dealing with external
adap$on and internal integra$on. She addi$onally discusses how to address the strength of paradigms
of these cultures. In par1cular, one issue that comes up is how does a culture learn how to behave. In
bringing this back to slavery repara3ons, much of how the US addresses slavery is through avoidance
(i.e. once a solu-on or Swiss-Army-policy has been found, the process of adap-on stops). According to
Schein, this shows that the country is handling growth through anxiety, which is unhealthy. The cultural
policy that we are adap/ng specically will aim to be innova/ve with a strategy that does not disregard
the past but instead uses it to elevate the livelihoods of oppressed communi4es.

Our nal concern addresses the role the United States plays on the global stage. The United States
portrays itself as the mel0ng pot where people come for the chance of a life0me, however slavery has
le# a legacy in the United States where white people have unwri7en opportuni8es while black
communi'es are overlooked. Using repara'ons internally also gives the United States an opportunity to
apologize. This may create tension with foreign policies because as a world leader it may pull into
ques%on what other countries with colonial pasts and a history of slavery should do. However, it also has
the ability for the United States to put morals before money and think of the project as an investment in
the genera)ons of tomorrow that is a promo)on of prosperity for the U.S government with internal and
external aairs. Apologizing also build up iden55es and be6er interna5onal rela5ons. As Donfried says,
we have to accept our good and bad sides to build up our cultural rela4ons. This is the pla7orm for
cultural diplomacy, bigger cultural understanding, which means a two-way street. And there are actually
many ways to do it. But we always have to remember the ve star6ng points for that: Historical concept,
agent, agenda, target audience and vehicle. Patricia Go also adds that cultural diplomacy is bridging
dierences and helping mutual understanding. Par4cularly, she notes that cultural diplomacy reveals
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the soul of the na,on. When the United States is portraying itself to the global stage, it needs to be
aware in how its own internal ini-a-ves speak on a louder level. We could also think about Tingyuang
Zhaos ar)cle and the idea of All- under-Heaven that says that our Western idea of happiness is just a
Western ideology. When thinking about cultural diplomacy to deal with the issue of slaves, we have to
consider the other kind of idea of happiness.

4. Recommenda,ons:

Based upon the aforemen0oned, we recommend the following cultural diplomacy ini0a0ves: expanding
U.S history and humanity classes; pu6ng more money and infrastructure into schools in poorer
neighborhoods; into the crea0on of pen pals; correspondences between school-age children with
children of other backgrounds; inter-state exchanges; workshops on white privilege and various other
programs that work to create to interrupt ins2tu2onalized racism procedures that are in place and bring
awareness to the fact that they exist. Below we have outlined how each act can bring forth well-being,
promote equality and lead to a sustainable future.

U.S History and Humanity Classes: The United States has a dark history and the children of America need
to be taught an accurate history. History classes need to follow a narra6ve that is detail oriented.
a. (-i.e. the 1998 mandate that all students in Californias public schools learn about the internment of
Japanese-Americans- 75 Years Later, Internment of Japanese Remains Stain on American History By
Alexander Nazaryan).
b. The Trail of Tears, Trea/es and how trea/es have been overrode by the U.S government need to be
outlined.
c. Slavery needs to be looked at in every era but there needs to be special a6en7on to create
understanding on how there is s/ll racism today, ins/tu/onalized and overtly. This needs to happen at an
elementary school level and not just in higher educa4on
d. History books cannot be rewri2en to leave out certain aspects of history
e. Books of literature cannot take out historically accurate words to repaint a picture of the past. The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, for instance, has been modied for not using the adequate
terminology for their respec1ve 1me, and therefore the reality of the cultural context is altered.

Investment into black neighborhood schools: The public school system in the United States is awed.
Money needs to go into schools that are primarily black because they need to have the same
opportuni(es as their white counterparts. The stereotype that minori(es are not intelligent is o8en
derived from the fact that they have not given the same opportuni4es. This is a primary focus.
a. Money for actual investment of school and a5er-school programs that advocates for safer spaces and
uses educa(on as a way to li0 individuals.
b. Be&er pay for teachers will in turn lead to a more educated youth, literally an investment
c. the crea)on of exchange programs, correspondences, and pen pals creates a culture that embraces
diversity
d. Workshops will break down barriers, help ci4zens use their voices, and create inter-racial dialogue
that bridges understanding. Specically the focus on helping white people understand their privilege and
how they can use it to li/ everyone.

Arts and culture: Although educa1on is our primary focus, subsequent to educa1on our focus is on black
communi'es, both geographically as well as culturally. In this aspect we want to spend money on
developing sustainable infrastructure, from be5er transporta6on to community centers and gardens, but
also by using the crea1ve economies of dark tourism (Foley).
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Museums: crea+ng be/er infrastructure, teaching people in depth about slavery; Harvards research
should be essen+al in the museums contents because of its history with planta+ons.
Music: Organising venues with local black communi7es, promote and support ar7sts of African descent,
teach music classes in leisure .me a/er school in order to keep them busy in their communi.es and
apply their acquired knowledge in everyday life (Venezuelan violin program)
Films: Hiring more black actresses and actors (Oscars so white), Screenings of movies and
documentaries (source: Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy at Vanderbilt); Examples:
Hidden Figures, American History X, Mississippi Burning, Selma, the Help;
Theatre: Hamilton itself is a Cultural Diplomacy ini7a7ve with hiring black and la7no actors to play the
roles of very inuen.al white people. This is turning the perspec.ve on the manifesta.ons of the place
where the black society is put by the white society;
Church: Using a church as a way of community strength and ini6a6ves
to con&nue to promote understanding of black communi&es. Nearly all crea&ve economy narra&ves use
the past as a technique to create a be0er future. It is only by looking at our past that we can become a
be#er society and verify that racism does not further permeate society.

Through these recommenda0ons, we seek to ul0mately build cultural capital amongst African-Americans
that would ideally be transformed, as Bourdieu notes, into economic capital. With more access to
economic capital, African-Americans would also be gaining access to hard power. So, even though our
recommenda)ons do not explicitly support payments to individuals, economic benets would be a result
of our proposed investments in cultural diplomacy.

It must be noted that our recommenda0ons are framed according to its authors - white, female,
graduate students. We recognize that the reality inside our framed sugges6ons, does exist outside as
well. And so, for our recommenda2ons to be as successful as possible, we would ask whom Spivak labels
the sub-alterns, in this case the descendants of slaves themselves, what they would wish to receive as
repara%ons - if anything.

Bibliography

"Repara'on." Dic'onary.com. Dic'onary.com, n.d. Web. 22 Mar. 2017.
<h#p://www.dic,onary.com/browse/repara,on>.

Trosper, Ronald. "American Indian Repara5ons,". PRRAC. N.p., Dec. 1994. Web. 22 Mar. 2017.
<h#p://www.prrac.org/full_text.php?%2Btext_id=649&item_id=6623&newsle#er_id=17>.