The Past Is the Present

Psalm 5, 6 • Psalm 10, 11
1 Sam. 15:24-35 • Acts 9:32-43 • Luke 23:56b-24:11

When Agag is brought to Samuel–alive, thanks to Saul, in disobedience to God’s command to destroy all the Amalekites–his demeanor is described as cheerful. “Surely the bitterness of death is past,” he says after his people have been slaughtered in retribution for Amalek’s own attack on Israel. He’s likely just relieved that the admittedly lopsided tit (total genocide) for tat (slaughter not amounting to total genocide) spared him, but this attitude of “Can’t we all just move on?” struck me as familiar as the debate over reparations flashed through the news.

Agag wants the memory of the Israel-Amalek conflict to fade as quickly as possible to save his own skin. When can the bitterness pass? 5 minutes? 5 years? 150 years? Does it pass when the originators of the slaughter die? Ta-Nehisi Coates’s full testimony on reparations delivered to Congress on June 19 deserves to be read in full, but 10 words stood out to me: “It was 150 years ago. And it was right now.”

It was over 300 years ago that the crop I work with today, rice, was introduced in North America by enslaved Africans with experience in West African rice culture. It became a huge cash crop in South Carolina especially, but it also was and still is grown in Louisiana. And it was from Louisiana that rice arrived in Arkansas 116 years ago. It was 154 years ago that Andrew Johnson canceled the reparative policy of “40 acres and a mule.” And it was 12 years ago that USDA statistics identified that only 1.3% of farm operators in the U.S. are black.

It was years ago. And it was right now. The bitterness is not past.

Written by Kathryn Haydon

Kathryn is a PhD candidate in Plant Science at the University of Arkansas studying the #1 crop in the state and the staple food of half the world: rice, but you should know that already if you read this far.