I was reading an article about some tension in Virginia. Apparently some of the black congressmen think that the government of Virginia should apologize to the black citizens for the whole slavery thing. The furor came about because a white congressman said there's no point because it all happened a long time ago and there are no slaves or slave owners still living. I can see merit to both sides of the argument. Now this will seem like a digression but I assure you it has a point. When my parents moved our family to southern Illinois back in 1979, they put me in a Catholic grade school. No biggie. I'd been in a Catholic school in Missouri. This one was different tho. I was almost immediately ostracized by my classmates and for almost 2 years I had two people who would talk to me. Yeah. In the whole school I had two people who would talk to me without calling me a name. I got called fat, stupid, idiot, goon, ugly, basically anything but by my name. If I managed to make it thu lunch without having food thrown in my hair it was a small victory. Think about this. I went for two years with having two "friends" at school. I count one as a friend, the other as a guy who would talk to me. This began in 5th grade. I have to say that this has messed me up. I have forgotten a lot of it. Not deliberately, but I think because it was all so painful. Kids shouldn't begin wanting to kill themselves at 10 years old. After a while, you do begin to believe what people say to you. It's horrible. I've been told by people that I should let all this go, just forget about it and get on with my life. I have gotten on with my life, but I can't forget the pain. I would love to, really I would. I would like to erase it from my life. I can't. Would apologies help? Not really. I'm 38, going to be 39 in a couple of months. So why would an apology from the government of Virginia to blacks, who hadn't ever been slaves or endured what their ancestors did, make any difference? Maybe I'm missing something here. I do realize that not everyone internalizes their pain and is unable to let go of it like me, but I do kind of fail to see how an apology would do anything. I'm not saying I don't think that the government needs to apologize, I just don't see that it would really do any good. Just like the federal government needs to make broad apologies to the Native Americans. It needs to be done, but really isn't going to fix anything at this point. I don't know what the solution is, I just know an apology isn't it.