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To take this stand, you must think that I'm just looking for trouble. After all, an apology doesn't cost anything: I can just say it and be done with it, right? And then we can just put the issue at rest, yes?

I really wish that there was something I could do that's that simple that would in fact end this issue. Unfortunately, it's exactly because I want to see this issue ended that I cannot apologize.

One principle of mine that I stick to is meaning exactly what I say. Lying is something that I have very little tolerance of. This means that I don't say something unless I'm ready to live by what I've said, and accept its consequences. In the case of apologizing, the consequences are many.

I'm going to actually start out with the most important reason why I won't apologize. It's the same as why I won't pay reparations. I've never been a slaveowner. All of the things that I've said in my other articles apply here as well. If I'm not guilty enough to pay, then I'm not guilty enough to apologize. And IMO, I'm not. To apologize would be to contradict everything else that I'm saying on this web site. That's a consequence I'm not willing to accept.

And some of the consequences that would logically extend from such an apology I'm also not willing to accept.

It would be really nice to think that a single apology, either from me, or from "white America" or from the government or from the United Nations or from someone, anyone, could actually settle the issue, even if the apology was a dishonest one. I have actually in my life apologized for things that I didn't think I did wrong, just for the sake of making peace. It's too bad that it never actually accomplished that goal.

Jesse Jackson Jr. has said as much, that an apology, being an admission of guilt, would have to be accompanied by something more like oh, say, money. And he would be right. If you plead guilty, then you naturally open yourself up for whatever sentencing follows. I ain't about to plea bargain.

No, I see no reason why apologizing will close the issue. And in fact, this now goes to one of the main reasons that I've chosen the reparations issue for my activism. One of the main reason I won't pay reparations is that as far I can see, paying them won't solve the issue either. Like an apology, it'd be nice to think that it would. But I've seen too many signs that reparations would be only the first step towards a particulary freightening dystopia, and I'm not going to help us get there. I'll go into why I feel this way in a future article. For right now, it suffices to say that I don't see either an apology or reparations as a solution, but as a gateway to all new problems, problems that I don't want to see in my lifetime.

There is one last reason I should not be apologizing, though, and it goes back to my first one. Yet again, I did not own slaves. Others did. They should be the ones to apologize. Of course, they really can't do that.

But imagine that they could. Imagine that we could communicate with them. Would we then speak for them? Of course not: we would let them speak for themselves. And so should we now, even when we cannot communicate with them through anything but the words that they've left behind to us. It's more than just a question of what we can or cannot do. It's a question of what we have a right to do. We do not have a right to speak for anyone else without their permissions, especially the dead, who cannot assert this right for themselves.

One of the things we as humans too often forget is that we have only our two eyes to look out from. We especially forget that just because no one can prove to us that we are wrong about something, doesn't mean that we're not. In other words, we hold an excessive pride about what we believe in right now, forgetting about the fact that it's inevitable that at some point in the future we're going to find out we were hopelessly naive before. The only people who don't fit this mold are the people who will believe precisely the same things at age 80 that they do at age 20: people who know all the answers to everything. For my purposes, these people are not alive, and so I don't really count them.

One of the extensions of this is that we forget that people of the past only had so many existing ideas to build upon. Concepts that we take for granted were heresy once upon a time. The concept of abolishing slavery was one of them. Even in America, which itself was founded on ideas so new that the world watched to see if they could actually work, enough people couldn't question it that it nearly derailed a revolution, and then cost several hundred thousand people their lives in resolving it.

But now we look back at them with an arrogant glare. "Duh! How could you have not known? It's so obvious! I can't believe that we actually evolved from such barbarians!" It's a rather comfortable feeling, at least until we feel something else. Do you feel it? That nasty ting on your skin?

That is the same glare, coming down to you from some of your more judgmental future progeny. They're ashamed of you for some of the things that you are doing right now. Which ones? You don't know, and you'll likely go to your grave not understanding; but they will. It's really not a very nice feeling, now is it?

I feel it too, but I have a response to them. "Sir, Madam, whoever you are, please forgive me. I'm doing the best that I know how to. I'm striving every day to improve myself, to not make stupid mistakes, to not be afraid to learn and unlearn. But I'm only a mortal man, and I'm destined to make mistakes all throughout my life. There's just only so much I will ever understand, and I apologize to you for what I don't understand that you will have to clean up then.

"But one thing that I do want you to understand is that I am the sole owner of my mistakes. Please do not revisit them upon my children, and their children, and their children. Please let disagreements in my time result in understanding in yours."

That is a proper apology. There will be plenty more in my life. But there will be none for things that I did not do.