Sorry
"Florida has become the sixth U.S. state to apologize for slavery."
I don't think too much of this.
1) It's moral preening. "We're great, other people are evil." I mean they're not apologizing for something they actually did, like raise taxes--that would be nice--but for the actions of others.
2) America has already apologized for slavery. It's called th 13th Amendment.
3) It's an empty gesture--if we're lucky. The resolution calls for "healing and reconciliation among all residents of the state." Well, anyone who feels aggrieved may look at this apology and ask for some action to back it up. Either they won't get it, and go on feeling aggrieved, or they might get it, and suddenly we've gone from apology to bad government programs. (In the unlikely case it's a good government program, let's do it anyway without apology.)
posted by LAGuy @ 1:39 AM
2 Comments:
LAGuy's point #2 reminds me of a scene from an episode of Boondocks last season. Riley hires a thug to kidnap a bully who stole his necklace. The thug captures the wrong kid and terrorizes him for an hour, hanging him upside down in his underwear and threatening to kill him. Riley shows up, tells the thug he's got the wrong kid. Thug releases the kid and says "my bad, you can go." The kid stands there, terrorized, crying and shaking. Thug gets angry, starts berating the kid for rubbing thug's mistake in his face, and abusing the kid for not accepting the "apology" and getting out of his face.
Yup, that 13th Amendment sure was one heartfelt apology.
I could have added hundreds of thousands died to make the 13th Amendment possible, but as long as people who are not slaves insist on an apology for slavery from people who are not slaveholders, I suppose little things like that don't matter.
By the way, Aaron Magruder's politics are actually stupider than Jeremiah Wright's, which takes some doing.
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