HUTCHINSON: Bush Should've Apologized for Slavery

Independent Media Institute

During his extended Africa visit in 1998, President Clinton's kind of, sort of, apology for slavery satisfied no one. Though it was not a formal apology, conservatives said it went too far. Though it was the first time a sitting American president forthrightly acknowledged the colossal and continuing damage of slavery, black activists said he didn't go far enough. Now it was President Bush's turn. In his visit to the old slave fort on Goree Island off Africa's west coast, he called slavery "one of the greatest crimes in history." But we already knew that. Bush refused to do what Clinton did and express his personal sense of shame and disgust over slavery. Worse, he refused to formally apologize for slavery.

A Bush apology and a call for Congress to fund education programs to study slavery's effects, establish a national slavery museum, and most importantly set up a commission to study the feasibility of reparations would have forced many Americans to face bitter truths about slavery and its hideous legacy. ---

Privatize bush It’s a Good Thing

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pmbryant
DU Moderator

But I'm certainly willing to change my mind if anyone can make a case for it.

I feel differently about affirmative action. Racism has real effects in our country today, and it is entirely fitting that institutions do what they can to remedy the effects of racism. The operative word there is "remedy". Both are social issues, and to the extent that the remedy, letting students of diverse backgrounds into schools and jobs impinges on the equal treatment of non-diverse people (like me), it is a legal issue. The justification for that impingement is that those institutions (government and corporations) have a strong interest fixing the wrong, and have chosen a diversification program as the method of doing so, rightly or wrongly.