Also read: Congress, Juneteenth, racism, Black history, Black, slavery
How are readers responding to DiversityInc's article Congress Apologizes for Slavery? Here are several opinions.
Reader responses:
Congress apologizes for slavery? And so what does this mean? As far as I am concern, this is another "stoke" Black folk on the shoulder deal. Give me a break already! You can apologize all day and night. But if your behavior has not changed, what is the point? Give up the wealth you stole off of the back of Black labor and the continued suffering (mental) that has been nearly embedded in the genes of Black folk. Yes, we are "recovering"; we have the money, fame, etc. But the bottom line is: In the mind of Black folk, there is still that I-am-not-really-in-charge thought. The residue remains and is clearly evident in that we have "merged" our culture, values, morals and more with the surrounding communities without having established who we are and what we are among ourselves. The richness of what the pure Black race "could have been" is long lost and gone.
--Pat Barrow
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Does this "apology" also acknowledge the first slaves here, the first nations better known as the American Indian--and [what about] slavery to Blacks and the Native people (Taino and Caribs) of the Caribbean Islands and South America? With this apology, what does the government plan to do as "payback" to those families? Also, the government should readily go to the reservations and save the Native people from poor health, alcohol and other abuses [such as] AIDS; they were enslaved first on their own land (especially after they mixed with the Blacks and the government passed unfair laws that dealt with that issue). Prejudice and racism still remain today within the Blacks and Native people because of what the government did to people of color. If they acknowledge "slavery," then acknowledge all that slavery did in all the different levels.
--Stephen Wilson
Well, it's about time--but better late than never. Today, Juneteenth, is my birthday. A proclamation declared our ancestors free from enslavement, but the information was suppressed for two years, until the attempt to enforce it. I still hear a threat in Gen. Granger's words that while we were free, neither our assembly would be tolerated nor our idleness supported. Imagine being advised to continue to work quietly for the criminals who brutalized you, worked your parents to death and hid from you the fact that you were no longer in bondage (if ever there was a case to be made for back-wages due)! The logical next question of making amends is why an apology has taken so long.
--Laura Branca
I suppose to some this apology is acceptable, but for me, its not. I simply want REPARATIONS for what was done to my people; Africans who were made into slaves and who's wounded descendants labor helped create the country that the world knows now as the "most powerful nation," the United States of America! Until then, keep your apologies and do the right thing--put your money where your mouth is.
--Marilynn Jones
Apologies would not be necessary if people would just do the right thing. Congress is apologizing now for slavery, and they'll be apologizing for unequal treatment of the GLBT community too. This country would still have slavery today if you let the South vote on it. So why are we letting heterosexuals decide what homosexuals can and cannot do? We have to pay the same taxes but do not get the same representation. [It's] history repeating itself.
--Rose B
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