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Forty phantom acres and a mule later Blackpower.com is reporting that Congress has plans to issue a formal apology for slavery. Necessary or nuisance? Speak on it in the comment section. -Toccara Castleman --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
by William Jelani Cobb The House is likely to soon pass legislation offering a formal apology for slavery. The Senate passed the same resolution on June 18, acknowledging the “injustice, cruelty and brutality” of slavery. The timing was a sad irony - it passed the Senate the day before Juneteenth. June 19 marks the annual commemoration of the day when slaves in Texas received word of emancipation, more than two years after Lincoln issued his proclamation. The response to the resolution has been a sort of inverted Juneteenth. The holiday recognizes a grand federal proclamation about slavery that was deliberately withheld from black people. Now Congress is on the verge of passing a grand federal proclamation about slavery, which black America simply chose to ignore. The primary effect of this apology has been the synchronized rolling of 66 million eyes. It’s not so much the idea that the evils of slavery don’t warrant recognition - I’ve devoted my career as a history professor to precisely that task. It’s the marrow-deep assumption that this really isn’t about us. There is weary history involved here. Personally, this is the third apology for slavery I’ve received, each bestowed with great gravity and something resembling sincerity, like the racial equivalent of receiving an honorary degree. The first was issued by a white classmate in grad school whose overwrought admission to her family’s slaveholding past preceded her hitting on me. The next was a random mea culpa from an editor who came clean over lunch and all but offered me the keys to his Jetta as reparations. The square root of all these apologies is the narcissism of the confessors. Last year, Barack Obama’s presidential campaign managed to turn the word “cynicism” into a term of profanity. But the problem is not with cynicism; it’s with the fact that cynicism is often the most accurate predictor of society. It is cynical, but not necessarily inaccurate, to say that apologizing for slavery is akin to an adulterer who confesses solely to clear his own conscience. That is to say, the fundamental selfishness of the offense is compounded, not alleviated, by the selfishness of the confession. “We really shouldn’t have done that whole slavery thing. My bad. Boy, I feel better already … I’m sorry, did I just call you boy?” It is cynical, but not necessarily inaccurate, to say that an apology could pass the Senate - and likely the House of Representatives - precisely because there is now a black man in the White House. You can offer these kinds of legislative confections in post-racial America. No harm, no foul. You guys got a black president out of the deal. (President Obama himself could not issue such an apology, since it would be something of a historical conflict of interest.) In politics, there is no end to the dividends of symbolism, and for the cost of a few sheets of paper, Congress has done something that allows the country to feel better about itself. Most of it, anyway. But slavery was real, not symbolic. Dig into the nation’s history, and we find ourselves lousy on race. The admissions of Missouri, Maine, California, Texas, Florida and Kansas were directly tied to the politics of slavery. Enslaved hands built the Capitol where this apology was voted on. 
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