Florida Apologizes for Slavery
The Florida legislature approved a statement in which it officially apologized for the slavery suffered by blacks.
I’m a bit ambivalent about this whole apologizing thing. For starters, all the real victims are long dead. Additionally, how could a little piece of paper saying “oops, sorry” do diddly squat to make up for generations of slavery? On the other hand, if it makes the community descendant from those slaves feel better, I guess it’s not too big of a deal. Still, this sins of the fathers business doesn’t sit well with me. An apology to the living victims from the government for Jim Crow, now that I could understand.
Thoughts?
IMO reparations is not a viable option at this time. It would have probably been apropo during the first half of the 20th century. But that time has long passed. What I would like to see in my lifetime is a commitment by our government to level the playing field in terms of educational, financial, and entrepreneurial opportunities for all people of color.
There are too many disparities that exist in this country between white and black folks to dismiss such as some sort of fluke of nature or one group being more motivated than the other. There are real inequities that have to be addressed.
Unfortunately, no mechanism has yet been found for the government to successfully do that. And every attempt has resulted in no progress towards the goal while producing massive new injustices on both side of the racial divide.
Are you aware how much of the current meltdown in the mortgage industry was caused by misguided attempts to "level the playing field" in the mortgage industry?
I don’t approve of modern-day apologies. The goverment that exists now represents me, not the people who lived in this country before the Civil War. I have nothing for which to apologize because I didn’t do anything wrong.
Now if a government wants to apologize for something done by the people it represents, that’s fine. Otherwise, I don’t see that it serves any use at all. Mostly, it seems to me, such apologies aren’t accepted by the people to whom it was intended (or they’re ambivalent since the apology doesn’t mean anything) or they’re used by activists to further their own political agendas.
Jason,If the mortgage companies were truly interested in leveling the paying field, they could have offered mortgages that split the difference between the buydown interest rate and the accelerated rate (say 8%) and offered a standard fixed thirty year mortgage.
Of course those indiviuals and families that bought into the mortgage hype have to bear the majority of the responsibility for purchasing something that they couldn’t afford. However the fact that adjustable rate mortgages were allowed to proliferate without some type of federal oversight is something that needs to be discussed as well.
You are obviously unaware of provisions in banking law that require mortgage companies to offer large numbers of bad mortgages to areas specified by minority-controlled community action groups in order to avoid baseless accusations of current racism, all in the name of "leveling the playing field". The problem here was not just lack of oversight in some areas (which I agree with you about), but also TOO MUCH oversight in the area of "leveling the playing field".