The current fad is for governments to apologize for past wrongs to women, black people, people of Japanese ancestry, indigenous people, gay people, and any other group who feels that they were mistreated in previous generations.
Dear governments: Stop it. Stop apologizing on my behalf because I haven’t done anything that requires an apology.
Let us take slavery as the stereotypical example. Black people were treated abysmally in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. There is no question about that. They were forcibly removed from their homes in Africa, enslaved, beaten, families were broken apart. That is well-documented and universally understood.
So why should I not apologize for those enormous crimes?
Because I didn’t commit those crimes. I never owned a slave; nor ever wanted to. Nor did my ancestors ever own slaves. They immigrated from Europe to America fifty years after slavery was finally outlawed in the United States. And they emigrated from countries that didn’t have slavery, at least, not since the time of the vikings. And, from what little I know about my ancient ancestors, they were more likely to be slaves than slave owners.
So why am I expected to apologize for slavery?
Because I’m white? What could be more racist than expecting me to apologize for the colour of my skin? I would never dream of asking a person of African or Asian descent to apologize for not being white, so why would anyone expect me to apologize because I am?
If my ancestors did support racist policies, what’s that to me? My parents were alive during the Second World War. They supported the internment of Canadians of Japanese descent. I believe that was wrong and am embarrassed that they did. But I’m not responsible for it. I can’t change what they did, not do I intend to apologize on their behalf.
What is my responsibility? I am responsible for my own actions. I am responsible for doing what is within my power to do. I am obligated not to be racist, sexist, or biased against people who identify gender differently. I am obligated not to imprison people unjustly and not to enslave people. I am obligated to hire and pay people according to their talents and capabilities, and not because of their skin colour, ancestry, or gender.
Further more, I am obligated to oppose people who are racist and support people, especially politicians, who oppose racism.
I am not a nazi because I believe that all people should be treated equally; I am not a white supremacist because I do not believe that my skin colour makes me superior, and I’m not alt-right because I do not believe in allowing police to profile people by race.
But, that does not mean that I will apologize for anything that my ancestors did to your ancestors. Rather, I will endeavour, in my own lifetime, to treat all people fairly and equally.
To make the world a better place, we must learn from the past and not repeat those mistakes. But we need not apologize for anything for which we are not responsible.
Ashley Zacharias' Musings 
I agree with this in principle, but it’s an attitude that can be taken too far.
First, I believe that nobody can apologize for other people’s actions; for example, a wife can’t apologize for her husband acting badly at a party. By the same token a government can’t apologize for things I — or my ancestors — did. However…
… goverments and lived insitutions can legitimately apologize for things that they did, or failed to do. The U.S. government can apologize — and offer reparations for — its insitutional mistreatment of WWII internees of Japanese descent, to appropriate one of your examples, or American Indians, or failure to free the slaves when the Consitution was adopted. A corporation or university can apologize for profiting from the mistreatment of various groups decades or centuries ago, even if all of the people involved in making those decisions are long deceased.
In each of these cases the insitution can apologize for their own actions or the consequences thereof, and in the same way a person living today could ‘owe’ an apology for profiting from decisions their ancestors made. Two examples are: If you’re a descendant of a Scottish clan that invited another clan to a peace conference several hundred years ago and took that opportunity to wipe out the other clan’s leadership and are now living in that other clan’s castle, you may owe somebody an apology… or a debt. In the long-running soap opera “Guiding LIght” the richest family in town was the Spaldings. Their family fortune was founded upon setting up fake lighthouses to lure ships (and their crews) to their destruction upon the rocky shoals surrounding the harbor, then salvaging the wreckage.
Now, in the latter case, to whom do today’s generation of Spaldings owe the aoplogy? The people who were directly wronged have been dead for over a century, and determining who the descendants of the dead — or of the ship owners, or of the shareholders of the companies that insured the ships — is virtually impossible. So, what is a feeling-guilty-for-his-inheritance modern day Spalding to do?
In this case a generalized apology to the world at large and ‘doing good’ (employing as many people as possible, endowing charitable foundations, etc.) with your share will have to be enough. But, while a feeling-guilty Philip Spalding can legitimately apologize for profiting from morally bankrupt decisions his ancestors made, and he might be able to persuade the Spalding board to throw corporate resources behind suitable charitable works, he CANNOT apologize for his half-brother Alan Michael Spalding similarly profiting. If Alan Michael feels guilt, it’s up to him to apologize himself, and if he feels no guilt any apology would be insincere.
I’m living on land the Oneida tribe of Iroqouis Indians claims. Do I owe anybody an apology or reparations? I don’t believe so. For one thing, as far as can be determined with today’s knowledge, no Oneidas ever lived here, or probably within fifty miles of here. The land is being claimed because members of the tribe used to hunt through here a couple of months of the year. In my mind, that’s a roll-your-eyes claim that doesn’t even deserve a day in court. For another, the American Indians had a different view of land ownership than white settlers did, or than modern society recognizes. Ironically, the Oneidas sued based on white property laws, while my belief concerning land ownership (that it’s a ridiculous concept) is fairly close the classic Indian model.
The courts ruled against the Oneida tribe, and I think their claims were specious to begin with, so I don’t owe anybody anything… except owing our local governments my annual taxes.
That’s long and convoluted, but as with most issues there’s a lot of grey area that needs to be covered, and I certainly have skated around some aspects of the issue. To summarize, I agree with the principles of your argument, but with several caveats.
Absolutely right, Curtis. Those at the two aspects that I didn’t address: first, that my ancestors might be long gone, but the government (which wronged people) is not and it’s the government that is apologizing; and second, acknowledging that “white privilege” does give me advantages that are others do not enjoy.
The first of these, the persistence of institutions across generations is the most problematic. My response is simply to ignore it. This government today is elected and run by this generation. Therefore, the current generation is obligated to make the current government behave properly, regardless of the misbehaviour of the government of previous generations. It is true that laws and regulations persist across generations, but those laws and regulations can be changed by the current generation.
As far as white privilege, the solution there is simple: stop it. Hire people of every kind solely on the basis of merit; give people loans solely on the basis of their financial stability; stop people and arrest them solely for the crimes that they commit; etc. If nobody treated white people differently than any other people, then there would be no “white privilege” because we’d all have the same privileges.
I want to keep these solutions simple-minded because they need to be simple-minded. The motivation pushing the alt-right is that they are accused of having white privilege when they can’t get a job, can afford only to live in a trailer park, and can’t get accepted into a decent post-secondary program (yeah, I know that I’m stereotyping horribly here, but there are some people in that position). When they see their government apologizing on their behalf for benefits that they aren’t enjoying, these people are easily convinced by racist, sexist, homophobic propaganda that they have to fight back against those who receive affirmative action benefits. What I’m trying to say is that the solution to racism, isn’t counter-racism, it’s to stop being racist, period.