| I don't think it's about apologizing at all.
But I do think we should all be aware of how freaking fortunate we are that none of our ancestors ever had to go through that. (Assuming none of them did, skin tones change through the ages...)
To make a rather gauche comparison, to me it's a bit like the Holocaust. Yeah, the Nazis did the actual nasty stuff. But it took literally centuries of anti-Semitism before someone got to that point. And it's not like the rest of the world didn't know what was going on and it's not like did all we could to stop it either. The Allies knew where the train tracks were, they knew what the train cargo was, they knew where it was headed. And we didn't stop it.
Now, do I think we should all spend the rest of of eternity (whether German or not) apologizing to the global Jewish population (and the gay population, and the gypsy population, and the handicapped population, etc. etc.)? No.
But I do think that the worst of the worst of our global history --- be it slavery, segregation, the slaughtering of the Native Americans, the Holocaust and so on and so forth --- is part of our global history. Should we spend the rest of our days beating ourselves up over it and apologizing over and over again? No.
I just don't think it hurts to remind ourselves of it once in a while, though. __________________  Sunny
"The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die." avie by Jessie |