James DeWolf Perry is a regular contributor. He appears in Traces of the Trade and is director of research for the Tracing Center on Histories and Legacies of Slavery. This entry is cross-posted from James’ own blog, The Living Consequences, and the opinions expressed are his own.

Professor Henry Louis (“Skip”) Gates, Jr. has an op-ed in this morning’s New York Times in which he takes on the issue of reparations for slavery.

Gates will, no doubt, attract enough controversy for his general approach to the issue. He is convinced that our society must address the issue of reparations, and that we must reach a “just and lasting agreement,” which he believes will have to be “a judicious (if symbolic) gesture to match such a sustained, heinous crime.”

Remarks like these will land any public intellectual in the U.S. in hot water these days. Just consider the case of Goodwin Liu, whose mild remarks related to reparations at one of our events in 2008 became a central issue in his nomination by President Obama for a seat on the Ninth Circuit.

However, this essay is most notable for telling difficult truths about the central role of Africans in the transatlantic slave trade, and thus about the shared culpability of people of different races in the resulting history of slavery.

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Please note: This is an archived blog post, and these are not active job listings.

MANAGERS AND PROGRAM SPECIALISTS SOUGHT

Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North is an Emmy-nominated documentary film which has become the basis for outreach efforts focused on advancing the cause of racial justice and reconciliation and expanding understanding of the history and legacy of the North’s role in slavery.  Thanks to a recent major grant, we are in a position to expand our work beyond the first-year of release, to pursue more systemic institutional impacts.

The various positions/function areas described below are not full-time.  We list them all together here with the hope that applicants might be interested in, and capable of, filling various roles— possibly combining small part-time positions in such a way as to create fuller part-time positions, or a full-time position.  For example, the Program Director role could be combined with the Training Coordinator position for a 20-30 hr/wk position.  We are also open to applicants who are only interested in one position.  We hope that these positions will grow with more funding.

To Apply: Please submit a cover letter, resume, three references, and a writing sample to Madeline McNeely at human.resources@tracesofthetrade.org. When emailing, please put in subject line: Candidate – last name, first name (such as “Candidate – Jones, Julia”).

Deadline: The preferred application deadline for these positions is September 1, 2009. After that date please send an email to Madeline McNeely at human.resources@tracesofthetrade.org to see if positions might still be available.

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Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North has been nominated for a Emmy award in the category of “Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft: Research” by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.

This nomination is part of the 30th Annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards, which will be presented in a ceremony in New York City on September 21.

The individuals included in the nomination, for their original research for the film, are:

Jennifer Anderson
Africanus Aveh
Andrew Barr
Catherine Benedict
Katrina Browne
Boris Iván Crespo
Elizabeth Delude-Dix
Heather Kapplow
Alla Kovgan
James DeW. Perry
Beth Sternheimer

Congratulations to the members of the research team, and to all the others who made it possible for this research to appear in the documentary and to air on national television last year.