موضوع لصغيرتي نضال هباني ب(Dallas Morning News)!

Apologizing for past atrocities and historical injustices is not about individual responsibility. The present white Americans are not “individually responsible” for their ancestors’ past. Even if some of the present Americans are relatives of those slave traders, and benefited from the wealth slave trade and, later, the exploitation of slaves in cotton and sugar plantations, has generated.

Apology is about recognizing that something horrible has happened. That millions of people suffered. And that the present people should learn the lessons of the past. The most important lesson being that human beings are equal by the very virtue of being human. If people learnt this lesson, racism would have been consigned to the dustbin of history. But the mentality which justified slavery is still present. This mentality manifests itself in many ways, even though discrimination is prohibited by law.

So, the recognition of crimes in the past would help purge the collective conscience of all Americans, black and white, from both, the guilt and the sense of historical determinism. At the same time, this recognition would help modern-day policy makers to see that discrimination , marginalization and exclusion is a time bomb waiting to explode. Take note of the innate discrimination, hurricane Katrina has exposed, when the areas, mostly populated by blacks, were hit the most by a preventable natural disaster.

Apology is about recognition of mistakes, and about feeling sorry, and about catharsis, and about healing on a spiritual level, and about redressing injustices on a socio-economic level. Because history is not the simplistic notion that “it happened” and finished. No, history doesn’t work like that. History is connected to the present in an organic and dialectical bond. It is a chain reaction. Cause and effect. Hence the concept of “positive discrimination” to redress injustices, to bridge the gap between different ethnic groups, to create opportunities that help equality in real terms.

As ever, Nedal Ahmed is writing thought-provoking articles of immense honesty and intellectual depth .