Brendan McAllister, Northern Ireland's Victims' CommissionerDr. Margaret E. Smith, from the School of International Service, American University, Washington, DC, reports on the Caux Forum on Human Security in Switzerland.

Overcoming the mistrust created by the wounds of history was the focus of one of the workshops during the Caux Forum for Human Security. There is a need to shift historical narratives that perpetuate personal trauma, power imbalance, injustice and other social divisions.

Brendan McAllister, one of Northern Ireland’s three Victims’ Commissioners, defined the task of the politician in Northern Ireland as finding a way to retain your own group’s loyalty while doing business with the other. The vision of true community, said McAllister, is well defined by the Mennonite activist and scholar John Paul Lederach, when he speaks of the “moral imagination.” In a society held together by the moral imagination, relationships, especially with those different from ourselves, are the core of the matter, and creativity, risk and curiosity contribute further dimensions. Curiosity means taking a caring interest in the “other side,” showing concern for their welfare, and making sure the opponent’s interest is served.

“People don’t live with a knowledge of history, but with a sense of history,” McAllister continued. “Popular and oral history capture this difference, in contradistinction with intellectual histories. We can feel that popular histories have more validity for the common person, but there is a danger in having people tell their stories, because these stories are always a partial history. This is something we must bear in mind.”

Reverend Tee Turner, Richmond, VA (Photo: Rob Corcoran)

Rev. Tee Turner, director of Hope in the Cities reconciliation projects from Richmond, VA, told about his reaction, as an African American, to a statue of a confederate soldier in his city, and how he had realized that white southerners had built the statue out of grief. “I had encountered compassion for someone whose actions I hated and despised.” He described his work with the city’s Slave Trail Commission, and Richmond’s joint memorialization of the slave trade with Liverpool and Benin. “I have to own my history, in the same way I own the family members I would prefer not to claim. My history is part of who I am.”

An historian from Niger said the history of colonization in Africa needs to be told in a way that can build confidence in present day Africans who are trying to rebuild parts of their history that have been completely obliterated. A German spoke of the way new inventions of history appear all the time. History is never settled.

Another participant asked whether those currently alive are supposed to adopt a feeling of guilt for what previous generations did? Tee Turner responded, “No. But each of us is accountable to engage in the truth and walk in the truth. That is what we mean when we speak of ‘white privilege.’ White Americans do experience privileges that they have inherited because of slavery and other inequalities. The question is what do we do with that?”