Bipartisan Guilt

Republican Senator Sam Brownback and Democaratic Senator Tom Harkin pooled their collective guilt to come up with a senate resolution that apologizes for the slavery of African Negroes by American Caucasians, not unlike a similar measure passed by the House last year.

Consider these words by the writer Zora Neale Hurston:

My ancestors who lived and died in slavery are dead. The white men who profited by their labor and lives are dead also. I have no personal memory of those times and no responsibility for them. Neither has the grandson of the man who held my folks… I have no intention of wasting my time beating on old graves. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negroes who hold that nature somehow has given them a low down dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it… Slavery is the price I paid for civilization, and that is worth all that I have paid through my ancestors for it.