(Post Transferred from my formerly stand-alone blog, Tiffany Takes On.)
The New Jersey Assembly approved a resolution today to make a formal apology for the practice of slavery within the state until it was abolished in 1846.
Ok, folks. 1846 was 162 years ago, unless I've forgotten even the most rudimentary math skills. 162 years ago. This gestures goes way beyond symbolic and into the realms of flat-out absurdity.
Were YOU alive 162 years ago when the last slave in New Jersey was freed? You weren't? Really? Neither was I. Going based on average generation length - 25 years - that was more than 6 generations ago. Can you tell me what in the hell this apology NOW does for someone's great-great-great-great grandmother or grandfather?
If you answered "nothing", you win the prize. It really seems like politicians in this country have been stricken with an unhealthy dose of Catholic guilt and are trying to make up for things that happened generations ago, instead of addressing the actual problems of today. Just in 2007, the states of Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia also apologized for slavery. To what effect?
Still there?
Yeah, I can't figure it out either. But let me ask you this...
...has any state ever apologized for the practice of indentured servitude? Do you remember studying that in school, dear reader? Where people signed up for work in the New World in return for passage from the Old World, and then found themselves in such atrocious conditions that many died and many others never performed enough work to buy-out their servitude? Do you recall that? By some historical counts, 1/2 to 2/3 of immigrants during America's initial colonization were indentured servants. And up to HALF of those died within their first two years here. That's a lot of people.
Have their great-great-great-great-great grandchildren received an apology?
How about women? Women have often gotten short shrift in America...when did women's suffrage come about?
1920?
You mean that until 1920, or more than 50 years after the last state abolished slavery, women were still considered second class citizens, almost entirely without rights?
Hmm. Have any states apologized to women for this treatment?
None? Really?
Odd.
Know what? I do not expect any states to ever apologize for the practice of indentured servitude or the way in which women were denied many legal rights until the early 20th century.
Know why? IT'S NOT NECESSARY. Society is a constantly growing and evolving organism. Because of that, changes are made, occasionally, to steady the course of progression. States outlawed slavery, both before and after the Civil War, because it was recognized that the institution of slavery was cruel and unacceptable. Indentured servitude died out in the 19th century for similar reasons.
In fact, did you know that the very same amendment to the U.S. Constitution - the 13th - ended both indentured service as well as slavery?
Neither that amendment nor the one granting the right to vote made it equal for women. In fact, women were still struggling for equal rights in the 1980s with the failed Equal Rights Amendment - and even today often achieve far lower wages and job levels when compared to men.
Do women need an apology? NO. Society is STILL evolving, STILL changing. And you know what? I think society will take care of itself and in another generation or so, it'll all come out in the wash, so to speak.
To circle back, however, I'd really like to repeat my disdain for any body that either seeks to apologize or seeks an apology for the doings of a time now long past. It's ridiculous. It's a waste of time. And it's completely unnecessary.
Read more here: New Jersey Slavery Apology
(No Comments Transferred; original posting date 01/03/08, 8:21 PM.)
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