Tutu and Franklin: The Present (continue)
In Germany, one of the German presidents, at one time--now, 50 years, more than 50 years after the Holocaust, he, he might or might not have himself been involved. But he spoke in a representative capacity, going to Auschwitz, or, or wherever, one of the concentration camps, and the symbolic value of that gesture--"We are sorry for what we did, we Germans did to you Jews"--you can't compute the worth of it, and, and I believe myself that there is something to be said for some of those, in your society, who come out of a background that was privileged, in that kind of way, who--whose forbears did some of these things.
DR. FRANKLIN: Yes.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: To, to, to say: "Sorry."
DR. FRANKLIN: You see, while the president is even setting up the advisory board on race, implied, clearly, that there was a responsibility, a public responsibility for what had happened, and despite the fact that he has specifically referred to apology, and that sort of thing, there are so many people in the United States who feel that enough has been done.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yes; yes.
DR. FRANKLIN: Not only do they say enough has been done. They will also say--and we got scores of letters on this--that they who live today are not responsible—
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yes.
DR. FRANKLIN: --for the past.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yes.
DR. FRANKLIN: They are not responsible, at all. So that a woman who, whose forbears arrived here in 1906, wrote me and said, "How are you going to hold me responsible for anything that happened in the 19th Century, when my people came here for the first time in the 20th Century, from Europe?"
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah; yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: In the 20th Century. And I, I humbly responded to her by pointing out that already, as she landed--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yes.
DR. FRANKLIN: --or as her forbears landed, they had advantages--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah; yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: --that day, which people who lived here for a half century--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Didn't have.
DR. FRANKLIN: --did not have.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: Did not have.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah.
DR. FRANKLIN: And that, that--that refrain of hers has been repeated--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: I know.
DR. FRANKLIN: --over and over--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: I know.
DR. FRANKLIN: --again by, by various people who, who simply absolve themselves--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yeah; yes.
DR. FRANKLIN: --of any responsibility--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Well, we, we--
DR. FRANKLIN: "You can't, you can't--you can't hold me responsible--
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: We have that. I mean, you could--you would say maybe there, there is something to consider in some of your peo--the people who were saying this, but in South Africa, I mean, people who--we are talking about things that happened in 1960, and, and, and--and there are very many who say, "For goodness sake, can't you stop this obsession with the past and let us get on with the, with the future?" And, and it, it is the same--
DR. FRANKLIN: Sounds like the United States.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yes. Is the same people who, when the government says, "Look--these people were disadvantaged, not accidentally. They were disadvantaged, deliberately." I mean, the government of the day spent seven times on a white child, on education, per annum,--
DR. FRANKLIN: Right.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: --what is spent on a black child. Now you can't say that when we now have a democratic dispensation, equity is treating these two on the same basis. This, this one has, for a number of years, had seven times what this one has had. In order to, to become equitable, we are going to have to try and balance out these inequities by concentrating on this one as many resources as we can to help them--and they say, "Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Is now apartheid in reverse."
DR. FRANKLIN: Yes.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: You know--
DR. FRANKLIN: Oh, yes. We say reverse discrimination.
ARCHBISHOP TUTU: Yes.
DR. FRANKLIN: We have the same problem. The very same problem.
