An Apology to the African American People in Behalf of White America: Part IV

An Apology to the African American People in Behalf of White America:  Part IV


A Promise of Rectification Through Transformation of K-12 Education 


I am sorry for the loss of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King to assassination.



I am sorry that so many of you languish still at the urban core, and as a teacher I apologize profusely for our wretched public schools from which if you graduate at all, you graduate with nothing resembling the education that a high school diploma should signify.


I am sorry.


I apologize and hope that you can forgive this poverty, this loss, these murders on top of so many murders.


But thank you for the gift of Maya Angelou, who in January 1993 urged as at the first presidential inaugural of Bill Clinton to reexamine ourselves for what we can be, having learned that what we have been and what we are falls far short of our potential and those transcendent values to which we should aspire:


Maya Angelou


On the Pulse of Morning


Delivered at the Inaugural of William Jefferson Clinton as President of the United States January 20, 1993


A Rock. A River. A Tree.
Hosts to species since departed.
Marked the mastodon,
The dinosaur, who left dried tokens
Of their sojourn here
On the planet floor.
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.


But, today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly,
           f orcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow,
I will give you no hiding place down here.
You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness
Have lain too long
Facedown in ignorance,
Your mouths spilling words


Armed for slaughter.
The Rock cries out to us today,
You may stand upon me;
But do not hide your face.
Across the wall of the world,
A River sings a beautiful song.
 It says, Come, rest here by my side.
Each of you, a bordered country.
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more.
Come, clad in peace,
And I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me
when I and the
Tree and the Rock were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your brow
And when you yet knew you still knew nothing.
The River sang and sings on.


There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing river and the wise Rock.
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew
The African, the Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek,
The Irish, the Rabbit, the Priest, the Sheik,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.


They hear the first and last of every Tree
Speak to humankind today.
Come to me,
Here beside the river,
Plant yourself beside the River.


Each of you, descendant of some passed-
On traveler, has been paid for.
You, who gave me my first name, you,
Pawnee, Apache, Seneca, you
Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then
Forced on bloody feet,
Left me to the employment of
Other seekers--- desperate for gain,
Starving for gold.


You, the Turk, the Arab, the Swede.
The German, the Eskimo, the Scot,
The Italian, the Hungarian, the Pole,
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought
Sold, stole, arriving on a nightmare
Praying for a dream.


Here, root yourselves beside me.
I am that Tree planted by the River,
Which will not be moved.
I, the Rock, I, the River, I, the Tree
I am yours--- your passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.


Lift up your eyes
Upon this day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.
Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of you hands,
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need.
 Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For a new beginning.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.
The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space
To place new steps of change
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out and upon me,
The Rock, the River, the Tree, you country,
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.
Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister’s eye
And into your brother’s face,
Your country,
And say simply
Very simply
With hope—
Good morning.


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I thank you for the great gift of Maya Angelou.


But I remain sorry.


And I apologize.


I am sorry and aghast that so very recently 16 year-old Trayvon Martin, 19 year-old Michael Brown, 12 year-old Tamir Rice, and 28 year-old Akai Gurley were shot and killed by police--- sworn officers of the law who acted without subtlety, without adept professional judgment, upon an abiding fear of young black men everywhere, whom white America refuses even now to understand as young people born to conditions of raging terrorism, stark fear, broken families, lousy schools, all flowing from a brutish history,


Perhaps, now that the national economy is according to many indicators back on track--- understanding that abiding features of familial cyclical poverty, crime-ridden communities, and inadequate public education have produced an underclass for whom the economy is never good--- we can shift our attention to the perennial inequities from the daunting economic challenges that Barack Obama urged people to meet head-on in his both stirring and reality-grounded first inaugural speech:


Barack Obama


First Inaugural Address


Delivered in January 2009


My fellow citizens, I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you’ve bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors.


I thank President Bush for his service to the nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout the transition.


Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often, the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because we, the people, have remained faithful to the ideals of our forebears and true to our celebrated documents.


So it has been, so it must be with this generation of Americans.


In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted, for those that prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things--- some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor--- who have carried us up the long rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.


For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life. For us, they toiled in sweatshops, and settled the West, endured the lash of the whip, and plowed the hard earth. For us, they fought and died in places like Concord and Gettysburg , Normandy and Khe Sahn.


Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might have a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions, greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.


This is the journey we continue today. Starting today we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.


We have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united. We cannot help but believe that the old hatreds will some day pass, that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve, that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself, and that American must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.


This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed, why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served in a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.


In this winter of our hardship, let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter, and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.


Thank you. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America.


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I am sorry that the economic conditions that served as a backdrop to President Obama’s first inaugural speech fell so heavily on many of you.


I am sorry that the condition of cyclical poverty in which so many urban African American families have been stuck has never been understood as a product of historical circumstances, the remedy for which must be a viable K-12 system that can start each child out with an equal chance to have a culturally enriched, civically prepared, professionally satisfying life.


But I thank you for the great gift of this president, who has moved us closer to universal health care, superintended policies allowing us to emerge from that dark economic time that described the start to his presidency, and with grace and style has advanced our national discussion on a wide variety of social issues.


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I am sorry.


I apologize.


I am sorry and I apologize in behalf of white America, which has never reckoned with the terrorism witnessed at each phase of United States history, and which has never offered this sort of apology to you.


I am sorry for the treatment that you as African Americans have received in the course of four centuries on the American continents. I am sorry for the conditions on the slave ships, the humiliation of the auction blocks, the brutality of forced labor on farms and plantations in the American South. I am sorry that amendments 14 and 15 went for a century before any protracted and dedicated enforcement ensued.


I am sorry that the effect of the 13th amendment was vitiated by the conditions of sharecropping. I am sorry that the Republican Party sold you out in the Compromise of 1877, that the Democratic Party was suffused with such a mean spirit for so long, that Supreme Court Justices rendered such an unjust decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, that so many of your ancestors died hanging from a tree or were charred on the stake.


  I am sorry that because of all of this so many of you felt the need to leave the home and the family and the region of your nativity in an attempt to find a better life at the end of a Northern Migration. But how wrenchingly awful were the restricted housing covenants, job discrimination, and racist white attitudes that dashed so many hopes and dreams that you had carried to New York City, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Detroit, Chicago, and eventually on to St. Louis, Kansas City, Des Moines, and Minneapolis/ St. Paul.