Note to Congress: That Apology Is Not On My Behalf

H. Res. 194 - Passed by the House of Representatives of the United States of America July 29, 2008.

This resolution passed by the House specifically states that the House of Representatives "(3) apologizes to African Americans on behalf of the people of the United States, for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery and Jim Crow;".

On behalf of myself, I explicitly remove my name from that apology.

And now the explanation.

To begin with, not a single person alive today either owned or lived as a slave in the United States of America. An apology is required to be delivered of a wrongdoer to the wronged. Neither party exists in the case of slavery, and therefore no apology is valid. While so-called Jim crow laws are substantially more recent, the parties involved are for the most part nearing the end of their days.

It is also not valid for a branch of the Federal government of the United States of America to offer an apology for slavery as the US Government never actively created or furthered slavery and discrimination. The constitution acknowledged the fact that slavery pre-existed the Union. It even shrewdly accorded the "other Persons" (slaves) a value equal to three-fifths that of a "free Person" (primarily whites) - not as a means of demeaning or lessening the stature of blacks but to prevent the southern slave-holding states from amassing even greater power and representation in the Congress and federal government. The federal government did nothing but take an active role in the abolition of slavery and race-based discrimination. From the Emancipation Proclamation to the 13th Amendment to the Civil Rights laws of the 1960s the national leaders took the appropriate actions to negate the efforts at sate and local levels of government. The Supreme Court decision of 1896 in Plessy v. Ferguson can be viewed as a thinly veiled affirmation of discrimination - or it might charitably be construed as a sincere, if misguided, notion that separate but equal truly was just that. In either case, the Court corrected itself and removed any doubt concerning its position when rendering the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954.

The resolution additionally states "Whereas slavery in America resembled no other form of involuntary servitude known in history, as Africans were captured and sold at auction like inanimate objects or animals;". This assertion alone calls into question the competence of the framers of this resolution and its overall legitimacy. Slave auctions are hardly a uniquely American or even caucasian practice. Peoples and races from around the globe can point to their pasts and acknowledge that particular distinction.

Portuguese Prince Henry established a slave market and fort in 1445.

The Siberian region, Slavic peoples and Vikings are just a few examples with an ancient historical slave trade.

Arabs didn't want to be left out of the game.

China, Korea, and India all got in on the act.

So to proclaim that slavery as practiced in the US was uniquely horrific is ridiculous and completely undermines the premise of the resolution.

Let there be no misunderstanding: Slavery is a despicable and completely indefensible practice. In an ideal history it never would have happened, and the vestiges of those events would preferably not still taint the world today. However slavery is an historical human failure, one that has at one time or another negatively impacted and been visited upon all races. The twisted logic is that their ancestors having been victimized in the past, blacks today are inheritor victims and owed recompense by inheritor perpetrators (whites). Following that rationale to its absurd conclusion, all human beings owe reparations to all other human beings. So let's just call it even and look to the future.

As has been pointed out elsewhere in this blog, history teaches what has gone before - if we have the collective courage to study and learn from the lesson. History - taken in its totality rather than in self-serving snapshots - can be a highly effective guide to future behavior. No amount of reparations, whether monetary, tangible property, or affirmative action, is going to eliminate the atrocities of the past. Offering up a collective "White Man's burden" mea culpa and throwing in a handful of guilt money, both tangible and metaphorical, will not alleviate the sins of the past nor will it place the aggrieved parties on an equal plane with the oppressors. The history will still be there, attitudes both individual and collective will remain fundamentally unchanged, and human nature will compel the beneficiaries of those handouts not to strive for a greater future but rather to strive for a future even greater handout. Human beings who get something for nothing inevitably want to get more something - and are always willing to contribute more nothing. Anyone who has raised a child can attest to that universal truth.

I fully regret this particular aspect of the past and the pain and suffering caused. Baptizing in the blood of collective guilt will not however make it go away, and so I choose not to take part in this self-serving exercise in political grandstanding that is H. Res. 194. The sins of the past are expiated not by tossing an offering into the plate and moving on to happier thoughts, but rather by learning from the mistakes that were made and consciously choosing not to perpetrate them in the future.