We’re Sorry
Yesterday, the US House of Representatives finally issued a formal apology to black Americans for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors due to slavery and Jim Crow laws. Congress has formally apologized in the past to Japanese-Americans for their World War II internment, to native Hawaiians for overthrowing the Hawaiian kingdom in 1893, and the Senate apologized in 2005 for failing to pass anti-lynching laws. While five states have issued apologizes for slavery before, Congress had failed to do so previously, in part due to fears that such an apology would lead to demands for reparations from the black community. Congressman Steve Cohen, a white Senator from a Memphis, TN district with a 60 percent black constituency, introduced this resolution in early 2007.
While I suppose such apologies are nice gestures, and in themselves there is nothing wrong with such things, I frankly just don't understand the point. We're all aware of this country's tumultuous past and the race-based strife that have run like earthquake fault lines through the heart of this country. But it's also a painful truth that we are still suffering from the effects of that past, and that as much as things have changed for the better, in far too many ways things have failed to change. CNN's recent series of specials entitled Black in America explored the many hardships that continue to haunt black Americans, and with Senator Barack Obama being the first African American with a very real chance at becoming President of the United States, issues of race have been brought to the forefront and have once again exposed the ugly vein of racism still running just beneath the surface of our society.
What I fail to understand is how an apology for a past wrong, all the perpetrators of which are long dead and gone on to whatever awaited them "on the other side," in any way makes up for, resolves, or moves us forward on a problem that is very much still a problem to this day. Yes, our laws are no longer blatantly biased to exclude people of color from full citizenship in this country, but the underlying attitudes that led to such laws in the first place are still there, like a smoldering and persistent flame within the aftermath of a house fire. We are fooling ourselves if we cannot see how much better things are for black people today, but we are also in a state of denial if we don't see that things are still bad in a number of ways.
How does this apology from Congress address social, economic, and financial issues that hit the black community much harder than they do whites? Does it in anyway explain why it took so long to get help to the predominantly black communities in New Orleans after the devastation of hurricane Katrina, or get employers to finally look at black applicants for open position as equal contenders to their white counterparts? There are times when the old adage "Actions speak louder than words" ring particularly loud and true, and I feel that this is one of those times. I wonder if it was ever considered whether taxpayer dollars might be better spent actually confronting and combating the racial issues still plaguing this country today rather than apologizing for the origins of these problems of the past. Because to me at least, apologizing for making me sit in the back of the bus in the past means little when in many ways I am still being ostracized for the petty minutia that is the color of my skin. While I have no doubts that Sen. Cohen had good intentions, I can't help but believe that the House only passed this resolution in an attempt to apply the "Band Aid over a gunshot wound" approach to the problem as I like to call it, meaning that if we use superficial means to cover up the problem, maybe we'll all forget about it and it'll magically go away.
As nice as it would be to live in this magical land where we could merely wish our problems away, the truth is that until we truly stand up and confront these problems head on without fear of getting our hands dirty in the process, then these problems will continue to fester until once again they blow up and tear this country apart. But hey, at least we now have it on record that one half of Congress is sorry (Which means what, that the Senate is still cool with the whole slavery thing?). And that's at least worth the value of the US dollar today, and that is equal to just over 10 pesos. Cool...
I feel so much better now. Don't you?
- GBB