U.S. house of Representatives Apologizes for Slavery....Anything else you might want to do while you're at it?

Where in the hell is my sammich?

Thank you for writing about this Lainad, I heard about it on the radio while driving in the car with my husband and he and I discussed it. The commentator on the radio spoke of the apology and noted that reparations need to be brought into the discussion.

When I hear people discuss the necessity for reparations I understand the arguments but I do not understand how they supporters propose to do it. Slavery ended so long ago and who would ultimately be the beneficiaries? Here in the U.S. we are a melting pot of "black folk." Some with roots in other countries, most with mixed blood. So if indeed reparations become a reality how to distribute them? Do they go to an education fund? A housing fund(40 acres and a mule)? Or would it simply be an exercise to make the collective "us" feel better.

I think that an apology is weak and reparations would cause more harm than good. At this point we all know the devastating impact slavery had on all African people of the diaspora I do not need it to be acknowledged by folks so far removed that it is nonsensical.

Truth and Reconciliation went on while I lived in South Africa and the power behind it for me was that the abused actually were able to look the abusers in the eye. I know that was not a perfect process but I fail to see how something similar would have any effect here in the U.S.

Renée

Cutie Booty Cakes ( http://cutiebootycakes.blogspot.com/ )

Actually, I'm Canadian too and I struggled as whether I should have written a longer post that included the Canadian Government's apology to First Nations people. But you have provided quite a substantial bit of historical information, a lot of info that I certainly wasn't aware of. Thank you very much - your 'rant' is a welcoming addition to my post!

Contributing Editor - Race, Ethnicity & Culture

Writing is Fighting: www.lainad.typepad.com ( http://www.lainad.typepad.com/ )

Hi, recently in Canada our government apologized to our Native people for the way they were treated in the past, being sent off to residential schools where they mostly had their way of life, languages and culture beaten out of them. The schools were mainly run by Religious denominations and many of the children were sexually abused as well as humiliated to the point where they could not function as adults. Reparation has been made in some cases and is continuing. However, no amount of apologizing can give the native peoples back what they have lost and continue to lose.

Your government should have apologized a long time ago for the inhuman act of enslaving a people to work for nothing under terrible conditions of cruelty, too much to go into here, we all know the horrors from our history lessons, or at least we should do, we did in Scotland where I am from. Reparation is too late in coming for those people but reparation and an apology should be made to the people who had to suffer the humiliation of segregation and which is still happening today in perhaps more subtle ways. I was appalled to hear on our CBC radio that in the South mainly, there are still separate grads being held even in mixed schools. Some schools had tried to have mixed events but eventually they reverted to segregated ones again.

But you know, I really think all we can do now is confine history to the past, condemn the mistakes our predecessors made and endeavour not to repeat them and try to help those living in the present to overcome those mistakes. I don't know if the British Government ever apologized for the role they played in the slave trade and the misery and injustice they perpetrated. They ended the trade before the U.S. but not until after a long hard fought battle by abolishers.

There are too many dreadful acts that occurred in the past to be apologized for. If we tried, we would be here all night listing them. The Holocaust, genocides all over the world, slavery, imprisonment, internment, mankind has a lot to answer for and will do some day I'm sure. I think the British government should apologize for the way they treated the Irish during the great Potato famine, the government of the time didn't care, let them starve was their mandate. We Scots are still waiting for an apology for the Highland Clearances when crofters were driven off their land by the Kings men so they could hand it over to their English lords.

Did you know that it was actually the British who invented concentration camps? They built them in South Africa to contain the Boer people during the Boer war, women and children were contained there under dreadful conditions. Of course that was another place the British and Dutch had no business being and the natives there fought against the settlers exactly like the native Indians of America did and who can blame them? Look what a mess Africa is today. Apologies needed there too I think!

The Colonization of countries by the British, American, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Germans, etc. always led to the subduing of whatever native peoples were occupying the land at the time, should we now apologize to all of them and give them their land back? I can't see that happening can you?

Anyway, that's my rant for today!