Last week, the Georgetown Memory Project (GMP) inspired op-eds and editorials pondering what Georgetown University should do for the descendants of 272 slaves whose 1838 sale saved D.C.’s Jesuit university from bankruptcy. GMP raises funds for research to track down these descendants and to honor their ancestors’ “sacrifice and legacy.” Its founders ask Georgetown to offer the slaves’ descendants “legacy status,” while a Georgetown professor and a private genealogist quoted in a
sprawling op-ed in the New York Times on the subject would like to see descendants granted scholarships to the university.
But a practical consideration remains: Who is to say these descendants would be best off attending Georgetown? There is no guarantee that students admitted on something more, or less, than merit will have the academic background and study skills necessary for success at an elite college. Regardless of their secondary schooling, most would doubtless fare better, on GMP’s dime, at colleges of their own choosing, Georgetown or elsewhere—even better, after years of college-preparatory summer programs. According to conventional wisdom, any college counselor (a class who serve, overwhelmingly, the descendants’ white-privileged counterparts) would attest that finding the right college is all about “fit.”
Georgetown should instead produce a practical plan that is actually sensitive to the needs of the individuals in question. But that won’t happen, if the proposals’ first aim is to ease the guilt of the institution and those connected to it, rather than to effect actual change.
