Unless you're a white, male Protestant, chances are you've been discriminated against at some point in American history.
In California, discrimination hit Chinese immigrants and ABC's (American Born Chinese) particularly hard in the late-19th/early-20th centuries. A recent effort by the California legislature seeks to apologize for its discriminatory practices toward the Chinese-American population.
This comes on the heals of national resolutions to apologize to interned Japanese-Americans during WWII and for slavery.
To what extent do these apologies matter? Should these apologies be followed by restitution (monetary compensation for past evils)?
California issues formal apology for past discrimination against Chinese
Check out a follow-up on the Chinese-American immigrant legacy in America (very interesting!):
'Paper sons,' hidden pasts
I'm tired of hearing America appoligize for things that happend over 100 yrs, and here's why, NO ONE that suffered slavery for example is alive today, so who are we saying sorry to?
ReplyDeleteYes slavery happened, but guess what no one alive in the U.S. needs an apoligy for it.
no i disagree with andrew. even though things like discrimination against chinese happened so long ago it is still important to apoligize. even if they are not alive today, when they WERE alive they would tell their children how BAD and EVIl america was, so each generation would pass down this image of america and each generation will be raised to ditrust it. apoligizing may not fix what happened so long ago but it will help future ABC's to learn to trust and respect this country again. ALSO, depending on what america DID to the chinese says whether or not the families should recive restitution. for example, if america made a chiense storeowner close down his shop and cause him to lose ALOT of money, they should pay him back, but if they did something that CAN'T be fixed by money, like prevent them from marrying the one they choose, then they should get on their knees and beg for forgivness (over exaggerated). (:
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