Slavery vs. Racism: apologize for what?

So, a friend recently raised an argument on social media against Senator Bernie Sanders' proposal that the United States should formally apologize for slavery. He discussed a number of reasons why apologizing for something for which currently living Americans were neither responsible or personally victims of would only perpetuate a victim mentality and sense of entitlement among African Americans. His argument sparked a fairly heated debate in which I chose not to become involved, at least in part because I was reading it in the wee small hours of the morning and didn't feel I could be intelligent at the time.

I think that, perhaps, the argument against making such an apology is the application of a narrow view to a much broader, and irreconcilable issue. We as a nation often hold ourselves up as an example to the rest of the world. As that example, I think many people believe that we should apologize and take responsibility when doing so is right and reasonable. I know I do, and I expect other nations to do the same. 

So that begs the question: For what actions should a nation or institution formally apologize? 

Obviously, nations take actions in their own self-interest that cause harm to others all the time. I count our own nation among a handful of nations which seem to believe themselves to be beyond reproach much of the time. I think that a reasonable standard for making an apology should be whether the harmful action would be considered a crime. 

In the case of slavery, our nation was complicit or involved in the kidnapping, physical assault, occasional sexual assault, human trafficking and occasional murder of citizens from a nation outside of its own borders. If the nation were an individual, it would be eligible for prosecution and subsequent punishment. 

Other nations and institutions have made similar apologies. Germany apologized for its role in the Holocaust. As a representative of the Catholic Church, Pope John Paul II apologized for the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, its own complacency associated with the Holocaust, burning people at the stake during the Protestant Reformation, the sexual abuse of children within the Church and transgressions against women by the Church. 

Did those apologies undo any of the harm caused by those actions? Nope. But there is one thing they did do. They validated the hurt feelings of those who felt wronged. And they gave everyone the cue to move on. 

For what should we not apologize? Racism. Yeah, I just said we shouldn't apologize for racism. Why would I say something so outrageous? I would say it because if you consider the behavior of all animals, racism really isn't an unnatural behavior. 

There certainly are arguments for and against it, but I have noted similar behavior among my own dogs. Our oldest dog was a dachshund mix and our youngest is a dachshund. Our middle dog was a beagle. Our oldest dog looked more like a dachshund than the beagle, and he and our youngest dog never fought. But both our oldest and youngest dog scuffled with, or persecuted the beagle. He wasn't like them. 

Of course, we can all point out exceptions to such natural behavior. We have all seen the videos on social media of cats nursing abandoned puppies, dogs befriending elephants, etc. And when we see these videos, we all think about how adorable the behavior is and get a warm fuzzy. The reason we get that warm fuzzy is because such behavior is out of the ordinary. It is not the norm. 

We humans like to believe that we are the most intelligent and civilized link in the evolutionary chain, but when we are in new situations, with new people, we tend to look for people who are similar to ourselves. We gravitate toward those who are like ourselves because as animals, it is a means of attempting to predict the behavior of others and assess our own safety in an unfamiliar situation. We do it defensively and offensively to protect ourselves in situations where we feel discomfort, misunderstanding and fear. Even in a situation where all individuals are of the same race, we will frequently gravitate toward individuals that share our own traits, mannerisms or behaviors. 

Am I saying that these natural tendencies absolve us for discrimination and mistreatment of others? Nope. I'm just saying that there is not a resolution of the underlying issue of racism, because whether we want to accept it or not, we all have racist tendencies. Myself included. If we try to deny it, we are only fooling ourselves.

Growing up in a small Missouri city, I was able to tell myself that I wasn't racist. And I was horrified by racism in my own family. But in thinking about it, I can only recall a handful of African American students with whom I attended school from kindergarten through high school. I was never truly exposed to people who didn't look and behave similar to myself. When I moved to a much larger city, my exposure changed, and I not only more frequently saw African Americans, but I saw them behaving in ways I didn't see myself behaving. Based on appearance and behavior, I developed an unconscious sense of judgement that I had never had before. I am sad to know this about myself.

Does that mean we give up on trying to be fair and even to each other? Nope. I hope to raise my daughter to be as color blind as possible. But I know that I can't be everywhere she is throughout her life, and I can't counteract nature. I can, along with her father and trusted friends and mentors, do my level best to teach her how we should treat each other and every other living being with whom we make contact. 

I certainly don't believe that racism justified slavery, but I think to a very large degree racism between blacks and whites is viewed as being far more unacceptable than racism among other peoples because of slavery. And that is why the issue of a formal apology matters. 

So where does that leave us as a nation and whether we should apologize for slavery or not? There is not only a precedent for other nations and institutions formally apologizing for their wrongs, there is a similar precedent in our own history. 

After an investigation initiated by President Jimmy Carter's administration, President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Civil Liberties Act, which made formal apology for the wrongful internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. 

Apologizing for slavery, racist laws, the Holocaust, the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition or any other human atrocity doesn't erase those acts of the past, and it shouldn't be perceived as a blanket justification for criminal behavior or a victim mentality that promotes a sense of entitlement ad infinitum. But it does acknowledge our responsibility for those acts and lays a foundation for learning how to live with one another in spite of our past. 

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