government apologies really sincere?

[acroyear]

Colbert I. King - In Virginia, More to 'Get Over' Than Slavery - washingtonpost.com:

Now chill. This piece isn't about reparations. It is, however, a reminder -- as if one is needed -- that the Emancipation Proclamation did not remove the shackles from the descendants of slaves; that injustice and inequality were an integral part of Virginia during the adult life of Frank Hargrove.

Which gets me to the source of his consternation: the legislative proposal for Virginia to issue an apology for slavery. I'm not sure it's worth the trouble. But if the effort must be made, why should the apology be limited to involuntary servitude? Why not include the sins of segregation and discrimination? Unlike slavery, those are sins that loads of Virginians, alive and well today, had something to do with.

At first I was almost annoyed with the direction the column was taking, then I got to these last two paragraphs. And he's certainly right here. Apologizing for something nobody alive today had anything to do with is a mere gesture, a convenience given because there's no actual personal guilt to comfort.

But apologizing for a century of laws that kept blacks as second-class citizens and preserved in legal code the attitudes that made it so easy, so comforting to the audience of George Allen to hear that "Macaca" insult, THAT would be an honest apology.

The fact that such an apology wouldn't even be proposed unless a black writer suggested it first is certainly telling.

Comments

[motherwell.livejournal.com]

The true measure of whether we, as a society, regret our ancestors' wrongdoings, will never be found in a mere apology speech -- it's always possible to say something and not mean it, or express "regret" about something one need nto even comprehend. And even the most sincere speech can be forgotten a week later.

The true measure of regret and contrition is in how well, and how honestly, we educate our kids about what happened in the past. That's where our attention needs to be: what are we teaching our kids? And what good is an apology for slavery, if we're allowing the truth about slavery to be distorted or glossed over in our history classes?