| Well, I think the article makes it clear that this isn't the first apology that's been issued. So, you know, the only reason it's happening NOW is either politics or the need to have the federal government address the issue one way or another. Me, I'm guessing it's more about re-election than anything.
Besides, this is an easy resolution to pass. It's nonbinding and it doesn't cost them anything. Not to mention that it gives them an excuse to do something besides, you know, deal with real issues.
But I don't think that the need to apologize for slavery is about the physical human-rights abuses so much as it is about the endemic spiritual and psychological abuses that framed the physical stuff. I mean, people who were shackled and beaten and raped and put to hard labour and hung because of their skin colour... I mean, sure, they're owed an apology. But, for me anyway, the real crime here was the framework that allowed for that sort of behaviour. The idea that you could own person because of their ancestry. That you could treat them as second-class citizens because of it. To me, that's what merits an apology.
But more than an apology, though, we need to acknowledge the ways in which the descendants of these practices still cloud our society today. Blacks trying to bleach their skin and joining the KKK out of hate for thei skin colour... how's that not a remnant of slavery and Jim Crow laws? Tell me we didn't get the ball rolling by institutionalizing laws and policies that addressed human beings differently based on their skin colour.
I don't know. I guess I'm hoping that this empty gesture is a sign that we can all learn from our history. __________________  Sunny
"The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die." avie by Jessie |