Say Anything Blog

These rather stupid statements from a Virginia state legislator have been making the rounds on the blogs today:

RICHMOND - A resolution to have Virginia apologize for slavery will encounter some opposition in the House of Delegates this month, according to legislators.

The highly symbolic issue likely to spark debate is a proposed state apology for African enslavement sponsored by black Virginia lawmakers, at least two of whom are descended from slaves.

“It is meant to be a resolution that is part of a healing process, a process that still needs to take place even today in 2007,” said one sponsor, Del. A. Donald McEachin, D-Henrico County.

“No one is asking any individual to apologize, because certainly there are no slaveholders alive today and there are no slaves alive today,” said McEachin, whose great-grandfather was born a slave.

“But Virginia is alive and well, and Virginia was built on the backs of slaves, and Virginia’s economy boomed because of slavery, and it is Virginia that ought to apologize,” he said.

Some delegates believe an apology is unnecessary and a sign of too much political correctness.

“The present commonwealth has nothing to do with slavery,” said Del. Frank D. Hargrove, R-Glen Allen, whose ancestors were French Huguenots who came to America in search of religious freedom.

How far do these calls for apologies go, wondered Hargrove, a member of the House Rules Committee that could take up McEachin’s resolution as early as Wednesday.

“Are we going to force the Jews to apologize for killing Christ?” Hargrove wondered. “Nobody living today had anything to do with it. It would be far more appropriate in my view to apologize to the Upper Mattaponi and the Pamunkey” Indians for the loss of their lands in eastern Virginia, he said.

Hargove’s foot-in-mouth disease aside, am I the only one who thinks he sort of has a point?  About the whole “let’s put slavery behind us” thing?  And by that I don’t mean that we should forget it happened, but rather we should stop apologizing for it (or stop demanding reparations for it as the case may be).  Nobody alive today has ever been a slave or owned a slave.  Most Americans today don’t even have grandparents who owned slaves, or even parents with grandparents who owned slaves.  It is ancient history, for all intents and purposes, so why the Virginia legislature is spending time and tax dollars on empty gestures apologizing for a long-gone institution that has already been apologized for over and over again.

At this point these apologies aren’t even well-intentioned any more.  To this observer most of them seem to be little more than crass, exploitive political pandering meant to endear a certain politician or party to a minority group.  Or the so-called “civil rights” groups that busy themselves selling victimhood to the minority group.

Hargrove is clearly an idiot, but his overall point in this isn’t entirely wrong.