Date Posted:10:24:54 04/01/07 Sun Author: Edmund Wenceseslas Augustus Von Fock Author Host/IP: pc45-128.lib.rochester.edu / 128.151.45.128 Subject: Re: Should we officially apologise for slavery? In reply to:
RMW Stanford
's message, "Re: Should we officially apologise for slavery?" on 10:14:16 04/01/07 Sun
In my opinion, if something was outside of both your direct control and your influence, you should not have to make reparations for it. The transatlantic slave trade happened before any human being living at present was born and, as such, those responsible together with those who suffered are now dead.
Reparations strikes me as a group of scrounging people begging for a hand out, to put it bluntly. And so far as it being a race issue, it simply is not. If you read Equino's account of being a slave, you'll see he and his sister were traded a few times in Africa by fellow Africans before being taken to (what is now) Freetown for transportation. Slavery had a long and ugly history well before slaves started being transported to the New World.
The Japanese asking for the US to apologise for Hiroshima really disgusts me though. The US should only apologise when the Japanese acknowledge that they were aggressors in WW2, apologise for Pearl Harbour, apologise for the revolting way they treated POWs, apologise for forcing Asian girls to serve as prostitutes (comfort girls) and apologise for the many other savage acts they committed in the war.
Of course, even if the Japanese did apologise for these, the apology would be hollow. It would not bring anyone back to life, would not unrape the girls raped by the Japanese soldiers, would not untorture the soldiers brutalised by the Imperial Army and, in all probability, the apology would be made by someone who had nothing to do with any of these atrocities.
In short, apologising for history is silly and childish.
VF
>>Surely the fact that other countries practised it is
>>completely irrelevant? Afetr all, Ian Huntley couldn't
>>really use as a defence "I'm not the first person to
>>murder a couple of kids".
>>
>>In many ways I think the state should apologise, as it
>>the British state has had continuous existence since
>>1807. In many ways though the fact that we outlawed
>>slavery was ana cknowledgement that it was wrong - the
>>abolitionists have therefore already apologised for
>us.
>>
>>However it's copmpletely bogus that white people
>>should apologise to black people. The next black
>>protestor to disrupt some event should be asked to
>>prove that he is descended 100% from slaves and not at
>>least in opart from black slavers - and if he can't he
>>should be made to apologise to himself!
>
>IT kind of like groups that call for slave reparations
>in the United States, there are a lot of black
>Americans that have ancestry from the slave owners
>than from the slaves. I dont think that the UK or the
>US or any one else should apologize for taking part in
>the Slave trade 200 years ago, but it doesn't annoy me
>as much as calls for reparations, since reparations
>for all practical purpose says that the people alive
>today are responsible for what their ancestors did.
