I had an ancestor die on the Lewis and Clarke expedition. Will the AMA apologize for not having adequate facilities and training available for him?

What about the guy on my dad's side who died at the Alamo. Poor schmuck chose a bad time to visit from the Carolinas. Will Texas apologize to me for not answering the call for help? Mo Fos.

Neither the City of Waco, nor McClennan County had anything to do with the lynching. It was a lynching because it was done by vigilantes, had it been done officially it would be a "hanging." :)

Why should the City of Waco or McClennan County apologize for what some citizens did 100 years ago? No doubt, he'd gotten to trial, they would've hung him anyways, but if we want to seek redress for every wrongful conviction and execution across the south, we'll be doing so until the end of time.

I'm sure that the State of Texas has passed some sort of blanket resolution apologizing for all of these acts at once, for the sake of time, that'll have to do.

If I were a councilman or commissioner, I would hope to have a little bit bigger fish to fry. Atticus Finch was awesome, but stop wasting our time and tax money.

Reparations now!

How does passing a resolution saying "We are sorry for the actions of our community during a terrible part of American history." cost any money? I think that's a cop out. It's not 'white liberal guilt' and many Universities have done the same thing, including my alma mater, The University of Alabama, as a gesture. A recognition that damn that was some hate-filled shit going down in our past. We need to say yo, sorry, and move on.

Exactly PD, they should be speding that money on reparations.

Well if we're talking reparations there some goddamn yankee that owes my family some money. They stole some shit from us and we're still bitter.

Righ on, Pink! And the Canadians, they kicked my relatives out of Novia Scotia and I want my ancestral land back.

Er, then again perhaps not....

Wonk is just irritated because he wants reparations from when some bank repossessed his trailer house!

Wonk at the scene of the crime:

http://www.bofunk.com/photoalbum/102.jpg

Oh. My. God. ^THAT is sooo wrong.

Right. Saying "I'm sorry" is worth so much. So is the soundbite where some old lady says how she feels vindicated, now that some people who had nothing to do with the act said they were sorry for the fact that someone she never met was murdered. Contrition from someone who had no responsibility for an act is unfair and dishonest.

"Moving on" means having the maturity and intellectual integrity to acknowledge that some historical event is unchangeable, nothing can make it better, and letting it drop.

Adopting that thing would be just reopening old wounds. I should have never been brought up. Unfortunately, once it was, it was too late to avoid making a racial issue out of it... no matter what you do.

I suggest you look at this more carefully before you rush to judgment either way.
1) The city council and county commissioners are still considering adopting a resolution on the lynchings, sometime this summer.
2) The idea that the city and county had nothing to do with the lynchings is false. Two recent books (The First Waco Horror by Patricia Bernstein and The Making of a Lynching Culture by William Carrigan) clearly demonstrate a gross negligence on the part of local law enforcement during the lynching era. The mayor and police chief calmly watched the Jesse Washington lynching from the third floor of city hall.
3) "Contrition from somone who had no responsibility for an act is unfair and dishonest." We're talking about an institutional apology, not a personal one. The governmental bodies that failed their citizens 90 years ago are still in power. The idea is for those bodies to go on the record against their past actions.
Such an apology may or may not be useful, but it's not illogical.
4) Re "reopening old wounds," those stories have never died out in Waco's black community. It's only the white community that, until recently, had forgotten.