"get over it" ... that phrase is a bit rough, but the meaning behind it is true. Slavery should never be forgotten, but as a country, we need to move past it.

Someone brought up the Jewish / WWII incident. That's been almost 70 years and people have moved on.

Look at Japan and the Pearl Harbor bombing ... people moved on.

In 2007, look at the relationship the US has with Germany and Japan. Even Russia and the cold war from the 1980's.

It's in the human nature to learn from past mistakes and let go.

Slavery? It was wrong, it was a LONG time ago ... let's move on.

 

Look at Japan and the US...we vaporized so many of their people with the 2 atomic bombs...

 

Not ancient history. Today it is just called a different name. Trafficking.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic...n_human_beings

 

apples and oranges.

 

exactly.

that's a form of slavery, but not the one in question.

 

Germany has since apoligized to the jews.. as did the US regarding Nagasaki and Hiroshima...

 

Ah yes, the jewish example.

Genocide is a tough thing to get over, even if it happened before you were born. I have relatives who got put in the camps in WWII, relatives who were already Americans and went over there and died fighting. Plenty of my jewish friends and family still refuse to even think about buying a german car or any other product of Germany. Me, not so much, they make damn nice cars and kitchen knives.

That said...

Judaism has Yom HaShoah which is a Holocaust memorial holiday. A big part of the religion is forgiveness, even for shit as fucked up as the Holocaust. So, that's a big component of Yom HaShoah, that and saying to ourselves "never again will we allow something like this to happen."

Even with the official jewish forgiveness about the matter, the majority of Germans are none too happy about their legacy and there's a lot of collective guilt over there about the whole thing, and relatively frequent apologies. Generally along the lines of "we know an apology is never going to change anything but we're still sorry."

There's more forgiveness on the side of the victim, and more contrition on the side of the aggressor, and it happened a lot sooner after the fact than with black people in america. So hey, maybe it wouldn't hurt things so much for the Commonwealth of Virginia to issue an official apology to black people. Maybe it also wouldn't hurt for black people to forgive the old slaveholding states.

 

LOl
So what are you going to do about it
go put on a white hood

 

So it passed with a unanimous vote...

Virginia apologizes for role in slavery

By LARRY O'DELL, Associated Press Writer Sun Feb 25, 6:38 AM ET

RICHMOND, Va. - Meeting on the grounds of the former Confederate Capitol, the Virginia General Assembly voted unanimously Saturday to express "profound regret" for the state's role in slavery.

Sponsors of the resolution say they know of no other state that has apologized for slavery, although Missouri lawmakers are considering such a measure. The resolution does not carry the weight of law but sends an important symbolic message, supporters said.

"This session will be remembered for a lot of things, but 20 years hence I suspect one of those things will be the fact that we came together and passed this resolution," said Delegate A. Donald McEachin, a Democrat who sponsored it in the House of Delegates.

The resolution passed the House 96-0 and cleared the 40-member Senate on a unanimous voice vote. It does not require Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's approval.

The measure also expressed regret for "the exploitation of Native Americans."

The resolution was introduced as Virginia begins its celebration of the 400th anniversary of Jamestown, where the first Africans arrived in 1619. Richmond, home to a popular boulevard lined with statues of Confederate heroes, later became another point of arrival for Africans and a slave-trade hub.

The resolution says government-sanctioned slavery "ranks as the most horrendous of all depredations of human rights and violations of our founding ideals in our nation's history, and the abolition of slavery was followed by systematic discrimination, enforced segregation, and other insidious institutions and practices toward Americans of African descent that were rooted in racism, racial bias, and racial misunderstanding."

In Virginia, black voter turnout was suppressed with a poll tax and literacy tests before those practices were struck down by federal courts, and state leaders responded to federally ordered school desegregation with a "Massive Resistance" movement in the 1950s and early '60s. Some communities created exclusive whites-only schools.

The apology is the latest in a series of strides Virginia has made in overcoming its segregationist past. Virginia was the first state to elect a black governor — L. Douglas Wilder in 1989 — and the Legislature took a step toward atoning for Massive Resistance in 2004 by creating a scholarship fund for blacks whose schools were shut down between 1954 and 1964.

Among those voting for the measure was Delegate Frank D. Hargrove, an 80-year-old Republican who infuriated black leaders last month by saying "black citizens should get over" slavery.

After enduring a barrage of criticism, Hargrove successfully co-sponsored a resolution calling on Virginia to celebrate "Juneteenth," a holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070225/...lavery_apology

 

you dont know anyhting about history of africa do you? Africa was under european colonisation. The black people were controled by the white european.

I dont think that the whole black issue is only about USA slavery... i think that it is because it was done on such a big scale that the black population has a right to still be sensitive about it.


Should the politician not say "get over it"? YES
Should they infact stop looking at the past to be able to look forward? Yes what he was trying to say is something i agree with... But i agree that the way he said it is unexeptable and disturbed the black comunity.