Last week the US Senate issued a formal apology to lynching victims (over 5,000 documented cases) and their descendents. The first time Congress has apologized to African Americans for any reason.
(Eight senators refused to support the apology: Larmar Alexander (TN), Thad Cochran (MS), John Cornyn (TX), Mike Enzi (WY), Craig Thomas (WY), Judd Gregg (NH), John Sununu (NH), and the Senate’s biggest racist of all, Trent Lott (MS).)
The Black Commentator‘s cover story this week ask why some Black folks are happy to hear an apology from people who don’t mean it?
“There are nearly a million African Americans in prison — one out of eight inmates on the planet — a gulag of monstrous proportions, clearly designed to perpetuate the social relations that began with slavery. We demand an end to those relations, not an insincere, risk-free “apology” that sets not one prisoner free.”
In the same issue of The Black Commentator, Margaret Kennedy muses on why racist Dixiecrats (who filibustered every effort to pass anti-lynching legislation in the Senate) turned Republicans, like Senatory George Allen (VA), are delivering an apology for lynching.
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