Members of one of America's oldest Protestant churches officially apologized Friday — for the first time — for massacring and displacing Native Americans 400 years ago.I'm sorry, but I find these kinds of things really stupid. For an apology to have any meaning it must come from the offender to the offended. It's like apologizing for slavery - none of the actual participants can be involved and therefore it's meaningless. It's a band-aid for liberal guilt and nothing more.
"We consumed your resources, dehumanized your people and disregarded your culture, along with your dreams, hopes and great love for this land," the Rev. Robert Chase told descendants from both sides. "With pain, we the Collegiate Church, remember our part in these events."
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Another Meaningless Apology
Once again people who didn't commit the offense apologize to people who weren't harmed:
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9 comments:
Great post! Hope you don't mind that I'm linking to it!
Please forgive me (no irony intended!), but why do you believe that this is an example of an apology "from" "people who didn't commit the offense"?
After all, this is an apology from a denomination which did terrible things to Native Americans in earlier times. It's an apology from the denomination as an institution, and not from any individual person alive today.
My denomination (the Episcopal Church) issued a similar apology for its role in slavery. No one believed that they were being asked to apologize personally, or that it was people alive today who were harmed (at least directly) by those historic actions.
I can easily see why many people find apologies from an institution to be less than helpful. But for many people, such expressions of remorse make a statement: that while we often talk about our institutions as having existed for centuries, and speak of "it" or "we" as having done something good long ago, we do repudiate certain actions of our forebears as a violation of our own morality, and we regret the lasting consequences of those deeds.
If it makes you feel better, have at it, but it's still meaningless. None of the people offering the apology were involved in the offense in any way other than belonging to a church, and none of the people receiving the apology were victims of the original wrong. It's all very silly.
As I said, I can certainly understand if *you* happen to feel that an institutional apology is meaningless.
What I don't understand, though, is how you can say, point-blank, that such an apology is simply "very silly."
After all, we speak constantly about how our nation, our society, our legislature, or our church did certain good things in the past. We even commemorate many of these things formally. We don't quite say that we, as individuals, did these things or share in the glory, but we frequently say "we" and speak as if it's to our credit.
Why, then, is it not entirely appropriate to acknowledge the evil things that these institutions have done, as well?
We're going to have to agree to disagree, I guess. The problem with apologies like this is they don't change history, they're not even designed to provide solace to the supposedly offended party - they're all about making white liberals feel a little less guilty. That's all.
They make as much sense as me driving over to Watts and grabbing the first black guy I see and say "hey, I'm sure sorry about slavery and all that. I apologize". I never owned a slave and he never was a slave. The only possible reason to do that is to make me feel less guilty, and since I don't feel guilty about any of that stuff, why bother? It doesn't do a thing for him (except possibly give him a reason to pound me into the ground).
It's all about liberal guilt, as is most of the social spending we do in this country. If we could just teach liberals not to feel guilty about everything we could probably cut 75% out of the budget.
They make as much sense as me driving over to Watts and grabbing the first black guy I see and say "hey, I'm sure sorry about slavery and all that. I apologize".
I think the difference, Rick, is that I would never think to apologize to someone for something I didn't do. But I certainly believe that we should be honest about our history, and should be sure we've acknowledged both the good and the bad.
Now, you may be right that anyone who does want to apologize, in their own name, for slavery is feeling liberal white guilt. That's fine, but I think that's a very different issue.
If we could just teach liberals not to feel guilty about everything we could probably cut 75% out of the budget.
Speaking of agreeing to disagree ... I can't even imagine what big-ticket items in our national budget could be the result of liberal guilt. It's not as if we devote more than a tiny percentage of governmental spending in this country to race-based programs. I can't see how the national defense budget, for instance, is about liberal guilt, or Social Security and Medicare spending, which pay back according to past contributions and old age, respectively.
These apologies are totally meaningless. There is no substance to them. It's sort of like a large smoke-screen that makes them feel good psychologically. I don't think anything good can come from me apologizing for a deed done by someone else in which I had no interest, and the person to whom the apology is addressed to was not involved in any way with the act for which the apology is connected with. The whole thing is nothing less than a make believe feel good gesture, however if it makes you feel any better about yourself or the other person feels good about it then go ahead with the apology on a personal basis, but not on a all inclusive
basis for other's.
Who's going to apologize for the Pelopensian Wars? Huh? That's what I want to know! And who's going to accept the apology? Yeah! I'd like to know that too!
(Is there a history buff in the house?)
These apologies are just another way to denigrate white people as a way to lift up people of colour; a lot of good that does in the end.
My family wasn't even in this country until the 1920s or later. And because my white ancestors left a rather poor European country for a better life, we are suppose to accept this guilty charge? Let bygones be bygones. Time to move forward; but everyone's too busy playing the victim instead of working their butts off.
Besides, bigotry knows no bounds and can be found in every society on the planet. That's what sinful human nature is all about. In other words, America does not hold the corner of the market bad behaviour.
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