Should We Apologize for Slavery?

[pegwinn]

After reading all the responses I still go with the ullshitbay defense. I understand that some legal scholars may disagree with me. Oh well.

AS noted, the .gov didn't own slaves, even in slaveholding states. And so, an apology from the .gov is pointless.

If anyone is owed reparations at all it would be them pesky redskins that got relocated by .gov decree or the Japanese Americans interred during WWII.

 

[Paul Revere]

When the Israelis kill 6,000,000 so-called "Palestinians" we'll talk.

So that is your price?

How do you live with your sorry ass self?

 

[Ninja]

Oh, shut the fuck up. As if you give two squirts of piss about the Palestinians - to you they're merely a tool by which to attack Israel. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

[wiggles]

No we should not apologize for slavery or the holocaust. We should denounce both and work to stop both in our time. Both are happening now in Israel.

I don't know about slavery in Isreal but in Africa and Asia yes. Genocide's still going on too, obviously.

 

[Paul Revere]

Oh, shut the fuck up. As if you give two squirts of piss about the Palestinians - to you they're merely a tool by which to attack Israel. Nothing more, nothing less.

And you sir are every bit the Nazi.

 

[wiggles]

In the legal aspect of affixing liability, yes it hurts "us," the taxpayers. It opens the door for reparations lawsuits.

Not necessarily. An official apology might provide some closure on the issue and put an end to talks of financial reparations.

 

[Paul Revere]

I don't know about slavery in Isreal but in Africa and Asia yes. Genocide's still going on too, obviously.

http://www.usmessageboard.com/showthread.php?t=47919

 

[red states rule]

I would first ask, how would it hurt us to apologize?

Then I would ask, would it help us at all if we did?

Lastly I would ask, was it my responsibility or do I contain any responsibility for the past decisions of a representative government?

The next step for the feel good liberals will be to pay reparations.

 

[Gunny]

And there you have a reasonable view of whether we should offer apologies. Shoot my family wasn't even in this nation at the time of slavery, at least one side wasn't. The other lived in a State where slavery was always illegal and participated in the escape of many slaves. Should they too have to apologize for the legality of the time in other places?

And current government never had any legal slavery or support of such an activity to their record. Should the government way back then have apologized, probably. Now? I don't believe that they should.

My family was here, and both sides were Southern immediately proceeding and during the US Civil War. Both sides fought on the side of their respective states. No one, that anyone has ever been able to ascertain, in my family on either side ever had enough money to own so much as even a single slave and there is no record that any did.

I don't know that yesterday's government owed an apology. They were men of their times and are judged by today's educational and moral standard. IMO, they should be judged within the context of the world in which they lived. Slavery was accepted throughout the history of mankind until just within the past two centuries, a drop in the bucket time-wise in the overall, "big picture."

I see an apology now as pointless pandering to a special interest group that works on the premise that "they are owed."

 

[boedicca]

The fact that our country tore itself asunder with a Civil War in which hundreds of thousands died is enough of an apology.

 

[Dirt McGirt]

I say let blacks have reparations. I'll just open up a store that sells chicken, rap music, newports, and cadillac parts and become the next billionaire. I'll call it Black-Mart.



(Just kidding, black folks...sort of.)

 

[Gunny]

Not necessarily. An official apology might provide some closure on the issue and put an end to talks of financial reparations.

If I believed that to be the case, I would have no problem with it. Actual events point to the opposite. While I was "incarcerated" in DC, the blacks in Virginia were doing their damnedest to squeeze reparations out of the government. The courts turned them away. At the same time, I see all this apologizing as giving legal credence to their claims, it just being a matter of them managing to tie "apology" and "responsibility/financial liability" together.

What would you think about a class action lawsuit by all Scottish desdcendents who were forced out of their native land during the Higland Clearances?

How about anyone forced from their native lands due to religious persecution?

Should we give Texas, Arizona, N Mexico and CA back to Mexico? (Not that Mexicans aren't taking it back anyway)

Perhaps we sould render ourselves prostrate at the feet of Queen Elizabeth? Afrer all, "we" committed treason and mutinied against the Crown.

And, as PEGWINN mentioned, we did a real number on the Native Americans that were here when we arrived. But then, those Native Americans murdered off a race that occupied the land prior to them. So who gets the goods?

When we proceed to affix blame for history, where do we begin and where do we end?

 

[boedicca]

I want my Norwegian DNA to pay reparations to my British Isles' DNA.

 

[Gunny]

I say let blacks have reparations. I'll just open up a store that sells chicken, rap music, newports, and cadillac parts and become the next billionaire. I'll call it Black-Mart.



(Just kidding, black folks...sort of.)

Obviously, some sensitivity reorientation is in order for you.

 

[William Joyce]

What do you think?

I think things like an apology for slavery underscore the reality of the possibility of collective racial guilt. The import's clear: the apology is supposed to come from whites in general, all of whom are deemed 'guilty' for slavery by virtue of being white. You know black activists don't care whether you, or your ancestors, personally owned slaves. If you are white, you are guilty.

This principle is at work with affirmative action, obviously, and nobody protests too loudly. A white person denied a job today didn't participate in slavery, but the theory of "civil rights" and other black activism is, again, that whites are collectively guilty --- and therefore must be collectively punished.

On the other hand, blacks can never be collectively guilty of anything --- even, say, their wildly disporportionate contribution to the crime rate --- because the system isn't set up to account for that. Collective racial guilt goes in ONE DIRECTION: against whites, and for blacks. Not the other way 'round.

Amazing, eh?

 

[no1tovote4]

I want my Norwegian DNA to pay reparations to my British Isles' DNA.

I too want your Norwegian DNA to pay reparations to your British Isles' DNA. It just seems fun to watch!