U.S. Senate approves resolution apologizing for slavery
The U.S. Senate approved a resolution on Thursday apologizing for slavery and segregation of African-Americans, almost five months after Barack Obama was sworn in as the first black U.S. president.
While the Senate resolution acknowledged that an apology for centuries of wrongdoing could not erase the past, it said a “confession of the wrongs committed and a formal apology to African-Americans will help bind the wounds of the nation that are rooted in slavery, and can speed racial healing and reconciliation, and help the people of the United States understand the past and honor the history of all people of the United States.”
In an unusual step, the three-page resolution was read in its entirety in the chamber, where the first black senator, Hiram Revels of Mississippi, stepped onto the Senate floor about 139 years ago.
However, the resolution is not without controversy. Some are upset by the last lines of the resolution that include a disclaimer: “Nothing in this resolution — A) authorizes or supports any claim against the United States; or B) serves as a settlement of any claim against the United States.”
Democratic Senator Roland Burris, the lone African-American in the Senate, argued that the disclaimer should not prohibit future congressional action on the issue of reparations. Despite the concern, the resolution passed the Senate by voice vote.
Iowa Senator Tom Harkin noted that the Senate adopted resolutions apologizing to Native Americans, for the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and for not enacting anti-lynching legislation — but never slavery.
Anyone who thinks Barack Obama’s presidency solved the problem of racism should read the comments on this post. I don’t see how anyone can minimize the impact of slavery/Jim Crow and say I should be grateful I’m not a slave, or in Africa somewhere and claim not to be a racist. We don’t look at Jewish Americans or Japanese Americans or Native Americans and say those things. We don’t turn our noses up and say we should never have apologized to them, or that the Holocaust, or Interment Camps, or Hostile Takeover of them and their land made their lives better because they live in the US now and that they should be grateful. Can you imagine someone saying “You should be grateful Columbus came and raped robbed and pillaged you guys. Look how much better everything is now. Get over it.” As if having your village burned down, anyone who resisted killed, women raped, and family kidnapped, being chained up on ships in feces next to dead bodies, children ripped from your arms to be sold to someone else, being sold as PROPERTY, being deemed 3/5ths of a person, divided by skin color and hair texture and taught to hate yourself over the course of 400 years and then, once slavery is “over,” being treated as a second class citizen, with the law rarely on your side, even if a lynch mob tarred, feathered, and burned you or your family members, or your friends alive. We don’t deny what happened during the civil rights movement, but I don’t think people have really made the connection between that and chattle slavery. Today’s government shouldn’t be dealing with this sort of thing in 2009. It should have done it a century and a half ago, while it was still Yesterday’s government.
The only thing I learned about myself in school was that I was a slave. Slavery ended, and then I was a second class citizen. I was either oppressed, or fighting oppression. Everything about my present culture is called “ghetto” or “low class.” I knew nothing about any kingdoms by black people, any form of civilization before slavery, I have no idea where I come from before life on the plantation. Africa is not a country. And yet it’s the only thing I can say about my ancestry. “Africa, somewhere.” And people say that that should be enough, while they trace their ancestors back to some specific village or some ancient custom, or some thing that the history books are willing to acknowledge because THEY aren’t BLACK like me, and telling these people that their people were once something more than chattle slaves won’t upset the status quo. Our history was destroyed. Our languages lost. Reparations will NEVER be enough. But this…this is a start. And frankly, it’s a long time coming.