Apologize for Slavery?

LancYorkYankee

LancYorkYankee

Yank in King Art's Court!
Tackler
What are your guys thoughts on this? It's very interesting to read others thoughts on this issue (Post Thoughts). Seems huge majority agree with him. This has been a long simmering issue over here and hopefully this will trigger a debate that gets people to stand up and say enough is enough!

Brian


Lawmaker Under Fire for Slavery Comment

By BOB LEWIS
AP
RICHMOND, Va. (Jan. 16) - A state legislator said black people "should get over" slavery and questioned whether Jews should apologize "for killing Christ," drawing denunciations Tuesday from stunned colleagues.


20070117061709990001

Steve Helber, AP
Virginia state Del. Frank Hargrove, right, defends saying that black people "should get over" slavery, in response to a measure that would apologize to slave descendants on behalf of the state. "Are we going to force the Jews to apologize for killing Christ?" he asked.

Talk About It: Post Thoughts






Del. Frank D. Hargrove, 79, made his remarks in opposition to a measure that would apologize on the state's behalf to the descendants of slaves.

In an interview published Tuesday in The Daily Progress of Charlottesville, Hargrove said slavery ended nearly 140 years ago with the Civil War and added that "our black citizens should get over it."

The newspaper also quoted him as saying, "are we going to force the Jews to apologize for killing Christ?"

Black lawmakers swiftly denounced Hargrove's comments.

"When somebody tells me I should just get over slavery, I can only express my emotion by projecting that I am appalled, absolutely appalled," said Del. Dwight C. Jones, head of the Legislative Black Caucus.

Del. David L. Englin also criticized Hargrove's remarks, recalling that his grandparents were driven from their homes in Poland "by people who believed that as Jews, we killed Christ."

When Hargrove rose to speak, he told Englin he didn't care about Englin's religion. "I think your skin was a little too thin," Hargrove said as lawmakers gasped and groaned.
 
I think what most people should remember is that the black tribes in Africa kidnapped members of other black tribes to sell to the traders ... summat they seem to conveniently forget, so no apology necessary methinks.
 
What a load of rubbish this notion is of apologising for every sin that our ancesters have committed. I am not personally responsible for the slave trade in the 19th century so I do not want politicians "acting on my behalf" by grovelling to whoever and saying sorry for any atrocities that may or may not have been committed.

 
he's got a valid point
the start of slavery had sod all to do with him or anyone else alive today for that matter why the hell should anyone apologise.
it is about time the blacks took that giant redwood of a chip off their shoulders and got over something that started 100's of years ago.
anyhoo the grand old us of a boasts such a vast array of mongrels and misfits from so many races who is to say that the one who does the apologising doesn't turn out to be related via ancestry to the ones being apologised to?
 
I feel I must apologise for my anglo saxon ancestors for not beating those damn French Norman's :rolleyes:
 
shakermaker said:
Slavery didn't end until well into the 20th Century!
Laws change but attitudes remain.
The guy's an idiot.
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Slavery has not yet ended. There was a good article on the ongoing problem of slavery about a year ago in the National Geographic. Frankly, as it has a tendency to recur, given the least opportunity, it will take continued vigilance to keep slavery to a minimum.

I'm not sure what real good it does to have governments apologize to the folks held as slaves. After all, they are all long dead! On the other hand, I don't see a lot of harm in it, either. Perhaps it makes the descendents of slaves feel a bit better? Frankly, I view these apologies as fairly meaningless, but it is not worth getting upset or fighting over the issue if it makes some folks feel a bit better.

I certainly see no need to apologize for slavery on a personal level, or for any other acts that I never committed.
 
jedimaster said:
anyhoo the grand old us of a boasts such a vast array of mongrels and misfits from so many races who is to say that the one who does the apologising doesn't turn out to be related via ancestry to the ones being apologised to?
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My what a nice little racist you are, jedimaster!

Of course, given human nature, anyone who believes himself (or herself) pure-blooded is just fooling one person - themselves! While DNA testing can indeed answer some of the questions, how many among us really know what invading army, handsome gypsy, travelling salesman, sexual predator, etc., might have had a romp with one's own great-granny!
 
Second thoughts, nah the sons/grandsons/great grandsons don't need apologies.

& hey while we're at it, let's tell those moaning old windbags that lost people to 9/11 to shut up! The victims all dead anyways.

Put the shoe on the other foot for a change.
 
shakermaker said:
& hey while we're at it, let's tell those moaning old windbags that lost people to 9/11 to shut up! The victims all dead anyways.
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Thats a little different, they were killed very recently and more than likely by the CIA or some other American Government agency.
 
shakermaker said:
:eek:
What?!!!
So all blacks are moaning about slavery? Eh?
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Don't worry about racists like jedimaster. He's shown his true colors, so we now know how to deal with him.

We should not forget that the deliberate disenfranchisement of large portions of the African-American community did not end until almost 100 years after the end of the Civil War (for those from the South, let that read The War Between the States), nor did the oppression legally codified in the "Jim Crow" laws and the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision which condoned the creation of separate but equal rule for the races.

Of course, separate turned out to be the rule, but it certainly was far less than equal. It took until 1954 for Brown v. Little Rock Board of Education to overturn Plessy, and many years afterwards to enforce the law.

Not to mention the generally unpunished beatings, rapings and lynchings so often done by the Ku Klux Klan!

Slavery may have ended legally in the USA with Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation (at least in the Confederate States, with the rest of the country to follow shortly), but a lot of the trappings of slavery remained in place for a long, long time!
 
sounds like a 'good ole boy' to me , all this started because the US Govt. was dumb enough to give all that money to the Japanese who were interned during WWII.
 
Neil said:
Thats a little different, they were killed very recently and more than likely by the CIA or some other American Government agency.
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Would you care to provide some documentation for that outrageous claim?
 
Billcat said:
Would you care to provide some documentation for that outrageous claim?
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When I find it I will provide a you tube link to a documentary about it. There are just too many inconsistencies with the planes causing the building to fall. Watch it with an open mind when I find the you tube link for you.

I don't think the Americans went to the moon either.

Before you ask, no I am not a conspiracy theorist or anything. :D
 
Neil said:
When I find it I will provide a you tube link to a documentary about it. There are just too many inconsistencies with the planes causing the building to fall. Watch it with an open mind when I find the you tube link for you.

I don't think the Americans went to the moon either.

Before you ask, no I am not a conspiracy theorist or anything. :D
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A you tube "documentary?" That ought to be amusing!

Why would not not believe that we landed astronauts on the moon?

Have you recently seen Elvis, too?
 
I've seen the documentary Neil refers to and it's not some childish amateurish video. It's a very thought provoking in depth analysis with interviews with those involved directly.

However, back to the subject of slavery and apologies. I do feel it is quite inappropriate for people who have not been responsible for enslaving anyone to apologise to people who themselves have not been enslaved for actions which people who may or my not have been their ancestors did to other people at the time and for which no living person today can be held responsible.

A Native American whose name I cannot at present recall was once at a 'rally' of Native American's complaining that they had lost their traditions and their culture and demanding compensation. He asked if they would like to give up the modern conveniences and go back to living in tents and grass huts - to which their reply was along the lines of "of course not" and his response to that was to suggest they stop living in the past and start looking to the future instead.

Once when I was in Ireland I was confronted by a very opinionated person who told me that I had caused grief and poverty and starvation in his country. When I pointed out that the famine occurred long before I was born he then said that it was my ancestors who had done it to his ancestors which according to him amounted to the same thing. I pointed out one gaping hole in his logic - although I was born and brought up in Lancashire I too have Irish ancestry. At that point he shut up.

I've got a friend who was born in the West Indies and whose mother and father can both trace their line back to slaves - but she's also got a Scottish landowner and slave owner in her family tree. Should she be apologiser or apologisee?
 
Willow, that's why I emphasized that it should be an apology by the government, not by individuals. I also said that I did not see it as being particularly harmful or helpful for most folks.

Asking individuals to apologize for things they have never done is inappropriate. Asking nations to apologize for past actions that they have done is somewhat different.
 
I'm not altogether sure it is - the racial mix which constitutes this nation today for example bears little resemblance to the England of the 19th century whose upper classes were responsible for some of the things which our leaders feel the need for the nation to apologise for. You couldn't even hold the whole nation responsible back then because the lower classes were also suffering at the hands of those same upper classes.
 
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