APOLOGIES NEEDED FOR U.S. WRONGS
By Michael Paul Williams
Richmond Times Dispatch, VA
rticles-RTD-2007-10-22-0145.html
Oct 22 2007
As editor of the Farmville Herald, Ken Woodley has been an outspoken
proponent of a congressional apology for slavery.
And as a family man whose wife and children are part Monacan Indian,
he’s also sensitive to the genocide committed against American
Indians. "That’s something I feel very deeply about."
So Woodley is as mystified as I am at a resolution recently passed by
the House Foreign Affairs Committee — and backed by House Democratic
leaders — that labeled as genocide the killing of 1.5 million
Armenians by Ottoman Turks during World War I.
"It’s completely hypocritical," Woodley said. "And it begs the question
why this nation has refused to apologize for the cultural genocide
that was perpetrated against African-Americans on a huge scale and
for decades and decades and decades."
Robert J. Miller, a professor at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland,
Ore., said he is unaware of any congressional apology to American
Indians.
Two resolutions on the past mistreatment of Indians are before
Congress. "The resolutions just aren’t going anywhere," said Miller,
a member of the Eastern Shawnee tribe of Oklahoma.
Now let me get this straight.
A Congress that has historically lacked the spine or heart to tackle
the nation’s ugliest legacies in a meaningful way is censuring Turkey?
A Congress that had no stomach for a national slavery apology would
set off an international incident with ramifications on the war in
Iraq, even though the U.S. relies on Turkey as a staging area?
What makes the spectacle regarding Turkey, Armenia and Congress
more unseemly is the role big money and lobbying have played in
the controversy.
According to Newsweek, the Armenian American Political Action
Committee raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Democratic
candidates. Meanwhile, former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, who
as a Democratic congressman from Missouri sponsored Armenian-genocide
resolutions, is now paid to represent the Turks.
That’s the way it is when the historical record is subject to the
highest bidder.
Meanwhile, the dark side of U.S. history goes largely unacknowledged
by Congress.
"This is where we need to lead by example," Woodley said. "We’re
pointing a finger and we’ve got all the other fingers pointing back
at us because we’ve refused to apologize for slavery. And we live with
the consequences of slavery today. It is not part of our dead past."
Woodley argues that a congressional apology for slavery, delivered to
the nation on television by the president, "will help drive a stake
through some of these ghosts which continue to haunt us to this day."
Woodley’s newspaper, once a platform for Massive Resistance, has
become a voice for reconciliation.
"Maybe if we would apologize for slavery, we wouldn’t have to
force other countries throughout the world to apologize for their
atrocities," he said.
Miller called it "unbelievable" that Congress is pointing fingers
elsewhere while ignoring a U.S. history of black enslavement and the
destruction and displacement of Indians.
Until we take responsibility for our own painful history, we run
the risk of being viewed as a nation of phonies whose primary export
is self-righteousness.
Before we ransack other nations’ historical baggage, we need to sort
through our own.