Posted on 07/29/2008 7:56:52 AM PDT by rightwingintelligentsia
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The House of Representatives was poised Tuesday to pass a resolution apologizing to African-Americans for slavery and the era of Jim Crow.
The nonbinding resolution, which is expected to pass, was introduced by Rep. Steve Cohen, a white lawmaker who represents a majority black district in Memphis, Tennessee.
While many states have apologized for slavery, it will be first time a branch of the federal government will apologize for slavery if the resolution passes, an aide to Cohen said.
By passing the resolution, the House would also acknowledge the "injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow," the period after slavery was abolished in which African-Americans were denied the right to vote and other civil liberties. The resolution states that "the vestiges of Jim Crow continue to this day."
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
You forgot the Italians. Come to think of it the “Catholics need not apply” signs should mean that the Portuguese, some Germans, Lithusians etc etc etc should get an apology. Perhaps Congress can play that song by Brenda Lee.
There were *thousands* of black slave owners. There were even black slave breeders, a practice that was frowned on even then. One of the biggest black slave breeders sold his own children into slavery. Upon his death his will freed one of his own daughters.
How do those facts fit into the apology/reparation movement?
“I am fairly certain that none of my ancestors owned and slaves”
Barack Obama’s ancestors on his mother’s side did.
Definitions of negro: * Black: a person with dark skin who comes from Africa (or whose ancestors came from Africa) * relating to or characteristic of or being a member of the traditional racial division of mankind having brown to black pigmentation and tightly curled hair wordnet.princeton.
I must be way behind time's. I never even knew there was a problem with the word negro. The United Negro college fund must not have got the memo either.
Are you part Iroquois?
Unfortunately this just gives ammo and precedence to the reparations crowd.
Since it was the federal government that put down both slavery and Jim Crow, I don’t think the feds should be apologizing for what they defeated.
I think the Democrats should have to apologize for both, though. The DNC is the party of slavery, Jim Crow, race repression, race obsession, and race politics, and they should consider an apology for their history.
The point of this congressional apology is not an apology but a way for the Dems to shift their guilt. Its a way of making America look guilty when it was a very particular subset of America that was guilty. Them.
Send engraved apologies to the cemeteries where actual slaves are buried. Their living descendants are the most fortunate black people on earth and merit no apology.
Should we ask all of the recent African immigrants and their children to apologize for slavery as well? After all, it was "their ancestors" who sold other blacks (their own slaves) to the white devils.
The great irony in these pronouncements is that they are predicated upon the same foundation that slavery was - that the offspring must assume the social liabilities of their parents. Then: every child born of slave stock is a slave. Now: every child born of certain stock is born impure has to apologize for history. It is like some twisted incarnation of the concept of original sin. Demented.
My great, great granddaddy (we called him "Da" or "Gaffer") came to this country in the lowest class of a cramped vessel where there was little light and horrible noise from the booming of the ship's engines. He was forced from his homeland by a horrible famine. He couldn't get a job because discriminatory signs demanded No Irish Need Apply, and when he finally found work, it was of the most physical type. He was controlled and manipulated by Democratic white political organizations that told him where to live and who to vote for in exchange for a deadly drug called Whiskey. And he knew the horrible, constant, burning shame of being called "the M-Word"; a "dumb Mick".
Now, two hundred years later, I have suffered very little from this discrimination. I live in the most prosperous and free land in the world, with the highest standard of living of any nation. Here in a America, I have a Bill of Rights to protect me, and call no man King. America's poor people are fat and have DVD players and TV's, and usually a microwave and a car. In my homeland of Ireland, there has been horrible killings and death between the two major tribes, but I have always been safe and warm in America. I have been provided with a free education though high school as long as I am not stupid enough to walk away from it, and there are literally thousands of scholorships designed to help me get a college degree. Oh, I have to be able to speak clear English to be taken seriously, but never the less, the opportunities I would never have in the Olde Country are pleantiful. It is really up to me to determine how hard I want to rise, based on how hard I want to work. (I won't, however, be calling all my pale friends "Mick", because as it was used by our Democratic masters back in the day, I think it is crude, and racist.)
Still, despite these wonderful advantages and the shortcomings of the lands grandpa left behind, I think I deserve more than mearely the "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" that is the only thing guaranteed me by the Constitution. Yes, I deserve a big pile of money I can throw away on whiskey and scratch-offs. Please contact Ted Kennedy and let him know that I want that cash in my mailbox by the end of the week, or I shall drive up and down the streets of my town playing Irish bagpipe music, mournful Welsh mens' chorus mining songs, and salty sea shanties at full volume out the car windows.
“...pass a resolution apologizing to African-Americans for slavery”
Please don’t repeal the ban on drilling because energy prices are killing us...oh no. Be sure to pass meaningless tripe.
Nancy Pelosi = worst speak in history
Then those that think like that will never assimilate, and they will always be looked down on by those that have.
Some of these people are nothing more than a self perpetuating punching bags.
Tell you what, let's just look at the trillions flushed down the rathole of the Great Society with nothing to show for it but the complete destruction of the Black Family Unit and call it a deal.
How about the Jews suing Egypt?.................
Oh, let's not forget the Copperhead Democrats who pressed Lincoln to end the fighting and negotiate an immediate peace with the Confederates.
Oh yeah, and while they're at it, also condemning the outrageous TV appearance of the still-sitting senior Democrat senator Robert Byrd, who not only filibustered AGAINST the civil rights act of 1964 in the Senate, and was an officer in the KKK, but who dared to go on national TV (in the 21st century, yet) to demonstrate his evolved racial understanding by graciously conceding that you don't have to be black to be a "nigger."
I recently made these points to a Democrat of my acquaintance, who responded with the standard "yeah but the Democrats have changed" -- as if America as a whole hasn't.
Right on! As long as we’re discussing past crimes, I believe it should be brought up again and again that it was the DEMOCRATS who supported the very things they are now apologizing for!
Maybe, a hundred years from now, we’ll get a Democrat apology for socialism.
Robert KKK Byrd should be first in line.
When will the Democrat party apologize for long “forgotten” role in lynching black Republicans?
B.O.’s father’s ancestral family/tribe was one of the big players in capturing and selling slaves, so he has both slave owner ancestors as well as slave catcher/seller ancestors. He should owe his primary supporters a special apology for his part in slavery. My ancestors who were here during that period on the other hand fought against slavery so he also owes us an apology (and reparations) for the blood and money spent to free the slaves his ancestors caught/sold/held.
Hasn’t the useless congress slobbered over this useless crap like a hundred times already? (yawn)
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