Posted on 06/24/2015 12:32:30 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The white author of an op-ed piece arguing the country’s first African-American president should apologize for slavery doubled down on the provocative idea on Tuesday night.
New York Times columnist Timothy Egan said President Obama should issue a formal apology in an opinion piece published on June 19, the 150th Anniversary of black slaves’ emancipation in what is now commemorated as Juneteenth.
But he was forced to defend his notion against stringent criticism by SiriusXM radio host Joe Madison on “CNN Tonight with Don Lemon” on Tuesday. Egan, 60, didn’t hesitate.
“I just think it could be so redemptive and so powerful and so moving for a man who’s the leader of what was once the largest slaveholding nation on Earth to say ‘I apologize for what we did in America’s original sin,’ ” the author of six books insisted.
But the longtime activist and host of “The Black Eagle” on SiriusXM’s Urban View channel didn’t waste any time dismissing Egan’s idea.
“Hell no,” Madison, 66, told Lemon when the CNN personality asked him whether Obama should offer a mea culpa for the country’s defunct but still reverberating system of servitude.
“This is not an institution that was created by an African-American,” Madison reminded viewers. “I mean, if you want to talk about being heartfelt, then it should come from those individuals whose heritage benefitted from this.”
He added, “This is absolutely the most absurd thing that I have ever heard. And let me say this: it’s not gonna happen.”
But Egan maintains that Obama’s race would make the potential admission of guilt, which he says wouldn’t be accompanied by any reparations, more meaningful.
He wrote the opinion article only days after a bigoted white shooter allegedly gunned down nine African-American churchgoers and says the “timing is ripe” for an apology he compares to the Vatican’s regrets for Galileo’s descendants and Britain’s expressions of remorse to Ireland.
“Countries, religions and corporations sometimes do awful things in their names,” Egan wrote. “It doesn’t diminish them to note their failures, their injustices, their crimes against humanity. It elevates them.”
The U.S. Congress apologized to African-Americans for their forbears' enslavement in 2009, he noted.
Obama is descended from not just a slave owner but a slave trader and in fact probably the first person to import Africans to the new world, Sir John Admiral Hawkins, the secretary of Navy under Queen Elizabeth I. Just saying.
Can’t we at least get the “white” half of Odumbass to apologize?
obama’s ancestors were in the slave trading biz in africa, so hell yes.
Only fair.
He is a descendant of the Luo tribe in Kenya, which was a notorious slave-trading muslim tribe for 1,000 years.
Are you responsible for your ancestors’ actions.
and still are.
It would be a half-assed apology.
He already apologizes when he goes overseas....
Makes sense, Mr. Egan. 0bama's progeny were slavers.
5.56mm
You are claiming Malia and Sasha owned slaves?
He should only issue a half assed apology since his ass is only half black. Is a ban forthcoming?
And just out earlier, first us slave owner was african and had one black slave and 4 white ones. so now the truth is out.
LOL. That was pretty good.
No, Baraq's ancestors were slavers.
5.56mm
Clown Prince nobama should apologize to the USA and self-exile (along with his whole grifter, racist family).
I think Obama should start by issuing a formal apology on behalf of the Democrat party for erecting all of those Civil War monuments that are now being removed, for forming the KKK to intimidate freed slaves against voting for Republicans, for enacting gun control laws to prevent freed slaves from defending themselves against the KKK, for enacting segregation, for filibustering the civil rights and voting rights bills, for enacting welfare laws that lead to the destruction of the black American family, and for all of the other racial injustices that the Democrat party has perpetrated against black Americans over the past 150 years.
regardless, one should be prepared to be judged by one’s own standard, if by nothing else.
Obama should apologize on behalf of ALL DEMS for slavery, the Civil War, the KKK, segregation, Jim Crow, lynchings, beatings, urban renewal, etc.
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