[Mb-civic] An Apology for Slavery - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

An Apology for Slavery

By Carol M. Swain
Saturday, July 16, 2005; Page A17

It's time for the Republican Party to write a new chapter in race 
relations. What I have in mind is something beyond the Senate's recent 
resolution on lynching and this week's expression of regret by a 
high-ranking Republican official for the GOP's use of what came to be 
know as the "Southern Strategy." What I propose is a formal apology for 
slavery and its aftermath. This could take the form of a joint 
resolution passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the president 
in a ceremonial setting where Americans could gather to symbolically 
bury their past.

Whenever the idea of an apology is raised, some whites reflexively 
recoil. They believe it is a bad idea because it conjures up images of 
innocent whites prostrating themselves before blacks for crimes they 
never committed. Most outspoken are whites whose ancestors arrived after 
the end of slavery and those who fought for the Union. Neither we nor 
our ancestors, they argue, had anything to do with slavery, so why 
should we apologize?

<>Others will say that an apology is not necessary because one has 
already been issued -- two, really. In 1998 President Clinton 
acknowledged the evils of slavery. And last year President Bush visited 
Goree Island, a holding place for captured slaves in Africa, and spoke 
of the wrongs and injustices of slavery. "Small men," he said, "took on 
the powers and airs of tyrants and masters. Years of unpunished 
brutality and bullying and rape produced a dullness and hardness of 
conscience. Christian men and women became blind to the clearest 
commands of their faith and added hypocrisy to injustice."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/15/AR2005071501559.html?nav=hcmodule 

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