White America has already paid the Bill

In matters of race, it is the one itch we cannot scratch; the stone in our shoe that does not go away, no matter how much we shake it.



Slavery. And the debt it brings Black people from white people. I’m not one of those who shrugs off the value of apologies — even for social injustice…


Anyone who has betrayed a loved one knows why. No one can really move on until the betrayal is admitted, explained and atoned for. It’s why a jilted girlfriend or cuckolded husband insists on hearing the reason why — even when they already know.


But when it comes to slavery, I think white America has already paid that bill as much as it ever will. And insisting on more seems less about healing a progress and more about Black people basking in white folks’ guilt and shame.


Will a slavery apology pull more young Black men from prison, or get more of them through high school and college? Will it curb the alarming tide of AIDS in Black communities or bring Black fathers back into their children’s lives?


Will it pull an ounce of trash from a rundown Black neighborhood or create a single, well paying, working class job?


We have seen institutions apologize for past inequities connected to slavery and Jim Crow…


Did any of these apologies bring new initiatives for covering people of color or insuring underinsured Black neighborhoods? Of course not. Because in America action often stops at apology.

… I suggest we simply look at some institutions that have already apologized for their part in the centuries-long enslavement of Black people.


… No doubt these apology initiatives were undertaken with the best of intentions. But these apologies, passed without a substantial discussion of the White privilege or Black poverty they enabled, were incomplete — like a thief apologizing for stealing your wallet while using your cash to buy his next meal.


Unless an apology for slavery comes with a comprehensive agenda of initiatives aimed at erasing the historic inequities it created, White America can keep it. As any cuckolded husband will tell you, an apology doesn’t mean much if you don’t right the wrong you caused in the first place. ~ Eric Deggans, excerpt from EBONY magazine august 2007