What will it take for the West to apologize for imperialism, slavery and aiding terrorists?
No Western nation ever apologized for imperialism, slavery or political dirty business – yet they are proud of their history. Must we, as Westerners, suffer Germany’s fate to feel remorseful for our crimes?
Well, that’s not true. Several western nations including the United States and Australia have offered apologies and regret for the past.
I am a white man born in New Jersey, USA, living in Texas, USA. Who should apologize? Me? I didn’t do it. I was just born here. I like and get along with pretty much everybody. My son is Hispanic, my nephew is black, and I have other relatives who are from China. So should I apologize? My neighbor? My friends?
Should the government apologize? The people in the government didn’t do it, they were just elected recently. Who or what entity would be able to offer enough of “I’m sorry,” to make it better?
Everyone is sorry it happened. Don’t you know that? Who’s going to be “enough” to offer the apology? Bitterness doesn’t solve it just as ignoring that it happened solve it.
Just go on and build a better world, together.
Comments
You need to post the source of your quotation, so we can better understand the context.
My life parallels yours. I was born on Long Island, lived in California, then went to Dallas for 8 years to build the light Rail. I married a Brazilian, who had a part black son.
My son adopted a baby Girl from China, and I brought my family to Taiwan to live for 2 years.
I now live in Thailand, as freedom is what I want, not luxury.
Thanks for a positive article! All we get nowadays is angst.
It seems there is never enough “I’m sorry” for those wanting something.
It could apologize for the policy of forcibly removing very young native American children from parents to be sent off to ‘civilizing’ boarding schools until adulthood–with very high suicide rates. Australia recently apologized for this (they had the same, effective policy with Aboriginals for about a century only ended in the 1970’s).
What is your problem?
And they tend to be people who are pretty happy with white privilege.
Welcome here. Another clear mind 🙂
Europe has nothing to apologize for. The rest of the world should be grateful for the West ending slavery until ISIS and Boko Haram brought it back.
The West has quite a lot to apologize for, though not as much as some people think today, but if they were to do it, my wish is that it would be in a more timely fashion. I mean, just try to get the British government to apologize to the torture victims of the Mau Mau rebellion… Then again, West German and Swedish (or was it Norwegian?) firms which supplied the communist Romanian regime with phone and mail interception technology never apologized for profiting from crimes against humanity either, and many of those victims are still alive today.
I call bullshit.
Good god you yarpies are stupid.
Kilo Mike Alpha. Serve in the military and you’ll know what that phonetic alphabet abbreviation means…
And like Mircea I am in the same boat. I was laid off from a job (2 jobs) by a woman. So all female owe me an apology?
Now if you can’t believe a credible analyst, who can you believe?
A Washington based neocon think tank?
You’re having a laugh.
Be that as it may, which perpetrators are those to whom you refer? As far as I know, these “perpetrators” are long dead and the people born after them, like myself as an example, are not perpetrators of anything significant.
I see no value in getting dead people to apologist for their inhumane treatment of fellow humans or innocent living people apologizing for things they had nothing to do with.
Therefore my conclusion would be, no one can adequately or even appropriate apologize for things they didn’t do or knew anything about when they were born. I learned about it in school and reading history books.
I feel really bad people did bad things to innocent people. Maybe if the people who did it apologized that wouldn’t have been enough either, but their all dead and gone now. We just learn from mistakes of the past, learn from history and through education and culture and respect for one another, and try to make the world a better place from here on out.
As white male from New Jersey, I suppose I could understand apologizing for slavery. After all, it was white Americans that enslaved blacks, but the notion you had anything to do with it, as you point out, is ridiculous. More ridiculous is apologizing for something that never happened such as being an imperialist (unless you can trace your roots back to the Roman Empire). Why would you even consider apologizing for aiding terrorists?
Nobody wants Black African to atone for their acts in the past and present slave trade, do they?
Do Eastern nations/cultures have to apologize for their horrible offenses? How about the Mongols overrunning Europe? Tell you what – you can wait for apologies for things you had nothing to do with and I will fix myself a nice ham and cheese sandwich.
This is a perplexing statement. Are not those that perpetrated these misgivings long dead? Do you want me to apologize on their behalf? Who do you want to apologize and how much apology will be enough in your mind, or is there no “enough?
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