History shows apology helps heal; Georgia Legislature considers 'contrition' for slavery
by John Blake, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
March 25, 2007
Christine Umeda was swept away by one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on Feb. 19, 1942, three months after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. The order allowed the U.S. Army to round up 120,000 Japanese-Americans and dispatch them to remote internment camps.
Umeda, 4 years old at the time, cried when the order came. Her parents could only coax her outside their Sacramento, Calif., home with the promise of a birthday party. But the trip ended at a bleak internment camp in Utah where her family lived for three years.
That could have been the end of the story, but President Ronald Reagan signed a bill in 1988 that sent a letter of apology to every Japanese-American detainee, along with a check for $20,000.
"To have something that comes from the president saying that we did an injustice to you --- that was really important, " says Umeda, now a 68-year-old retiree in Sacramento. "I didn't photocopy my check but I still have that letter."
Those who wonder if the state of Georgia should apologize for its role in slavery may take something from Umeda's experience. State Rep. Al Williams (D-Midway) sparked a fierce public debate this month when he announced that he would introduce a resolution that would ask Georgia to express "contrition" for its role in African-American slavery.
The resolution has been framed as a political issue, but it also raises a moral question that's divided people in countries as diverse as Japan and Australia: Should people apologize for something their ancestors did?
Similar debates are taking place abroad. In Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ignited an emotional political debate recently when he said his country would not apologize to thousands of Asian women forced to work in army brothels during World War II. Australia's prime minister, John Howard, also sparked criticism when he rebuffed a similar call for his country's treatment of Aborigines. Howard said his generation shouldn't apologize for something their ancestors did.
But Robert Franklin, the Presidential Distinguished Professor of Social Ethics at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University, disputes those arguments.
People routinely accept their connections to their ancestors when it benefits them, he says. People gladly accept prosperity passed down from previous family members.
"When there has been past wrongdoing that is state-sponsored, it's appropriate, no matter when, for the state to acknowledge past transgressions, " Franklin said. "I regard this as a gesture of moral maturity.
"Part of our identity is that we're part of a collective. Though we may disagree, for instance, with decisions of foreign policy, we're all Americans."
Walter Donald Kennedy, author of "Myths of American Slavery" (Pelican Publishing, $24.95), says there should be no apology. He says black lawmakers are pushing a slavery apology because "it's a lot easier going after dead white Americans" than dealing with problems such as teenage pregnancy in their community.
"If you're going to talk about slavery, talk about the entire history, " he said. "How many African-Americans are demanding an apology from those Africans that enslaved their relatives and families and helped ship them to the United States?"
Despite criticism, calls for such apologies are multiplying. In the United States, the Virginia Legislature passed a resolution last month that expressed "profound regret" for the state's role in slavery. Lawmakers in Maryland and Missouri are considering similar resolutions.
Previous apologies
Collective repentance is not just morally necessary, it's politically wise, says Donald W. Shriver, president emeritus of Union Theological Seminary in New York.
"Forgetting in this case is politically damaging in the sense that a group in the public is being treated as if the wrongs of its ancestors are not important, " he says. "That can be insulting to people whose ancestors were mistreated."
Shriver says people resist apologies because they mistakenly believe that they are being asked to assume guilt for something they didn't do.
"Guilt is to be assigned to people who commit a evil, " says Shriver, author of "Honest Patriots: Loving a Country Enough to Remember Its Misdeeds" (Oxford University Press, USA, $35).
"The guilt of the Holocaust belongs on the shoulders of the Nazis, " he says. "But responsibility adheres to people who not only should remember those evils but remember it publicly."
Several well-known political and religious leaders already have heeded calls to publicly apologize for something their ancestors did.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair issued a statement of regret to Irish citizens for his country's passivity during the 19th-century potato famines that killed millions of their ancestors. Pope John Paul II apologized for the past sins of the Roman Catholic Church against non-Catholics. And Southern Baptist leaders in 1995 apologized to blacks for its past defense of slavery.
And in 1993, President Bill Clinton signed a resolution apologizing to Native Hawaiians for the overthrow of the kingdom of Hawaii in 1893 by U.S. naval forces representing sugar planters and financiers.
Germany's political leadership, however, has been the most decisive in confronting the sins of its past, Shriver says. All German students are required to take courses in the Holocaust. It's also paid out at least $50 billion in reparations to Israel and concentration camp survivors.
"Think about how much international trouble Germany would be in if its current governmental officials acted as if the Holocaust was something to be forgotten, " he says.
Yet, Ray McBerry, chairman of the Georgia League of the South, a group that seeks a "free and independent Southern Republic, " said Georgia's leadership never unequivocally supported slavery. He said the state's founding charter prohibited slavery but the practice was introduced by New England Puritans who later settled in Georgia.
"Those Yankees brought slaves here in the first place, " said McBerry, who unsuccessfully ran against Sonny Perdue to gain Georgia's GOP gubernatorial nomination in 2006.
Kennedy, the author, said some freed blacks owned slaves and that Southern slaveholders eventually would have ended slavery because of advances in farming technology.
"Southerners didn't invent this institution, we inherited it and we were having to deal with it the best way we could, " Kennedy said.
Where does it stop?
Others opposed to the proposed apology resolution say it could open governments up to perpetual apologies --- and legal liabilities.
That fear has in part stalled a proposed bill in Congress that would ask the U.S. government to apologize to Native Americans, says Pat Powers, a Native American lobbyist for the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).
"The general rationale is that if you start with one, there are so many other groups you have to apologize to, " she says. "If you apologize, you're opening yourself up to liability and money."
Kathy Thomson recently wrote a letter to the editor of the AJC to oppose the Georgia legislation, writing that "every civilization was built upon the sweat and the backs of slaves."
Reached at her Roswell home, Thomson says slavery was a tragic stain on Georgia's history.
"I'm from Indiana, " she says. "I don't know if anybody in my family had slaves. Once you make an apology, you're admitting some sort of guilt, even if it's something in the past. We can't start apologizing for everything."
Williams, the state legislator who penned the apology for slavery, says people like Thomson misunderstand his request.
"I'm not asking her to apologize, " he says. "It's not a personal request. This is an official statement from the state. She's not an elected official."
Williams concedes the apology is symbolic.
"But symbols are good. Symbols are important. Showing the cross doesn't save anybody. It's what it stands for that saves. The symbols for apologizing for a wrong doesn't correct the wrong, but it shows regret for slavery."
Saying something was wrong didn't mean a lot at first to detainees, says Umeda, the California woman who was detained as a young girl.
Eventually, children and grandchildren who wondered why their parents passively accepted internment pushed for the government apology, Umeda said. Their anger led to the official letter of apology that she still keeps in a file cabinet in her bedroom.
Her parents, however, didn't live long enough to get the letter.
"For our children, it's very meaningful, " she says of the apology. "If it were not for the third and fourth generation, we probably would have never worked for getting the apology."
--John Blake, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
