Apologies, Ashmologies

This has been an absurd ten days of apologies flying all over the place for no real good reason except it makes the apologizers look good.

Bleh.

We started last week with Wachovia Bank (you know, one of the big conglomerates) issuing an apology (read: reparations) for ties to slavery. Wachovia corporation, has, through acquisitions over hundreds of years, acquired businesses and financial institutions that apparently owned or dealt in slaves. Now, in today’s day and age, that’s a horrible offense and something that would likely be investigated or prosecuted. Hundreds of years ago, as morally wrong as Slavery is now understood to be, it was a common and yes, normal, thing. In fact, as I understand it, it was unusual for land owners to not own slaves.

Putting all that aside for a minute - how many of Wachovia’s executives, employees or employee families own, want to own, deal or otherwise know of anyone who does own, deal or want to own slaves? I mean, I’m willing to give up my work to anyone who doesn’t want to charge me to do it, but I don’t want slaves. :p

It’s pretty amazing to me that a company who doesn’t have any inkling of slavery would want to capitulate to the corporate extortion that is the reparations movement.

In a similar vein, the Senate yesterday, in its infinite wisdom, decided it would be nice to issue a statement condemning itself for not passing anti-lynching laws a hundred years ago. :rolleyes:

Why?!?! What good is it going to do? Apologies are cheap and meaningless. African American descendants of slavery are in no better of a place today after yesterdays bill than it was before. There’s nothing binding on the Senate to actually do something about transgressions 100 years old. So why the hell would they issue an apology? Please someone tell me the purpose it serves.

Let me be real clear. The Senate does not care about reparations. They don’t care about lynching in an era gone by. They don’t care. The only thing this legislation does is pad the symbolic good will in their figurative pockets. Next year when the Senatorial campaigns go into full swing, watch how many Senators gloat over this wonderful legislation as they “preach” at the African American churches and speak to NAACP groups around the nation.

Black Americans, rest assured. You have now been exploited for political gain by a bunch of white men and women. You should be pissed.

By the way, I like Wes Pruden’s piece in the Washington Times this week:

Mzz Landrieu and Mr. Allen put on a demonstration of manufactured remorse last night in the Senate to persuade their colleagues to apologize for having never enacted a federal anti-lynching law. The resolution of apology sailed through the usual fog of pious Senate bloviation to a voice vote of what was surely 100 to 0. The vote wouldn’t have been that close if some of the senators could have voted more than once. Even Robert Byrd of West Virginia, the old Ku Klux Klansman who still occasionally uses the notorious n-word in his fulsome oratory, presumably voted with his fellows to apologize for something neither he nor they ever did. No one now in the Senate has ever had an opportunity to vote one way or the other on an anti-lynching statute.

Tagged as: racism, rant, social_issues