POLL: How Bout An Official Gesture Of Atonement For Past Sins Against African Americans?...

[Pogo]

Buchanan and the Democrats had effectively no competition in 1856. The Whigs were disintegrating and the Republican Party had just formed two years earlier. Plus its candidate Frémont DIDN'T EVEN RUN in the South (neither did Lincoln, either time) ---- so who exactly was Buchanan supposed to NOT sweep against? Millard Fillmore, the Know-Nothing candidate-in-absentia?

Breckinridge was not the Democrat. The Democratic convention was suspended without naming a candidate because of disruption from the South. Please tell me "disruption from the South" at a political convention is not something you're hearing for the first time. So the Southerners split off and named their own candidate (pre-shades of 1948) and the Democrats reconvened later and nominated Douglas. Actually the South split into two parties, differing on the question of whether to secede. The other was John Bell. The area where I live voted against secession and remained loyal to the Union, and that would be the Bell vote.

And Missouri is not part of "the South". Never was. Missouri was the one and only state Douglas won. Lincoln took the North and Midwest, Breckinridge and Bell dominated the South, and thus split up the vote.

This is what armchair historians who don't bother to do their homework don't get -- it was never a "war of political parties" --- it was regional. The Democratic Party was already established in both the North and the South; the new (founded 1854) Republican Party existed only in the North --- that doesn't make it a "party war". Republicans established in the North first because of the same dynamic that split the Democrats, and that is that the South was not going to be happy with either. The Republican Party didn't bother to run a Presidential candidate in the South until Grant, 1868.

And that's a recurring theme -- not "party A" versus "party B" but North versus South. To try to whitewash this crucial element into a façile political party spat is excruciating naïveté that deliberately ignores all context.

Southern discontent with established politics is a constant. Breckinridge and Bell did it in 1860; Thurmond did it in '48; Wallace did it twice. South Carolina, where the War began and the first state to secede, was already talking about seceding over the "Tariff of Abominations" in 1828 -- before the Democratic Party even existed and more than three decades before the War.

Soooooooooooooooooooooooooo ............................ no. Context is a bitch. It's never binary.

No it isn't, that is what you perceive.

Nope. It's the history book. A small part thereof.

Prove me wrong.

Buchanan swept the south. Fremont won states in the north. A Southern Democrat swept the south. Prove me wrong.

Again ---- Buchanan had no competition. Unless you think Millard Fillmore was "competition". Frémont did not run in the South. Neither did Lincoln. You don't get votes if you don't run. So of course Frémont got votes in the North -- that's where the Republican Party was based. Exclusively.

And Buchanan was from Pennsylvania; he was a Democrat but Pennsylvania is not in "the South" either. Never has been. I'm from there, and my mother's from the South, so nobody knows the difference better than I do.

Anyway, the Presidential candidate of the Democratic Party in the 1860 election was Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas, not Breckinridge, not Bell. Douglas carried one state, which means he came in not second or even third, but fourth. Because for reasons alluded to above in post 90, it was more important to vote for a Southerner --- or in this event, to split between two Southerners ----- than to vote for a Democrat. The same thing occurred in 1948, and in 1968, and effectively in 1964 when the divorce was pending.

Same dynamic every time. This is why I keep pointing out the obvious regional roots, where y'all armchair pundits want to talk "political parties". The former is where the deep roots are --- not the latter.

And I've got more.

So you can't dispute what I said.

I just did. Blew it into tiny bits. Proved you wrong.

Buchanan was not a "Southern Democrat". There's no definition that make that characterization work. Never even lived in the South. Outside his time in DC and as a foreign ambassador he lived his whole life in central Pennsylvania, which has never been ""the South".

And again -- how do you "sweep" when you haven't got a competitor? Who exactly is the sweepee? Millard Fillmore, the Know-Nothing? The leftover of the Whig Party which was by then defunct, who only had name recognition because he was VP when Zach Taylor died? That's your sweepee?

 

[Jackson]

Would you support it? Do you think it would help heal the deep wounds? Maybe an official Government-sponsored acknowledgement and atonement could lead to reconciliation.

Most African Americans still feel anger and sorrow over how they've been treated. It does seem like an open festering wound. Maybe a kind official gesture could help African Americans forgive and get some kind of closure. What do you think?

I bet african americans are really upset over the last 7.5 years.....tyrone scratches head.

Well in fairness, it doesn't wipe away hundreds of years of brutal treatment.

Are we responsible for that???? They need to pull up their "big boy pants" and make something of themselves.

When someone intrudes on another's rights in this day and age, the law will be used to deal with it. If there was an ancestor of mine that was killed by an Irishman, I am not stupid. I would not hold the Irish responsible today. If a portion of our citizens feel they are not being treated properly here, go bACK TO THEIR NATIVE COUNTRY.

 

[Preacher]

Sure! A one finger salute and tickets back to Africa

 

[paulitician]

Would you support it? Do you think it would help heal the deep wounds? Maybe an official Government-sponsored acknowledgement and atonement could lead to reconciliation.

Most African Americans still feel anger and sorrow over how they've been treated. It does seem like an open festering wound. Maybe a kind official gesture could help African Americans forgive and get some kind of closure. What do you think?

I bet african americans are really upset over the last 7.5 years.....tyrone scratches head.

Well in fairness, it doesn't wipe away hundreds of years of brutal treatment.

Are we responsible for that???? They need to pull up their "big boy pants" and make something of themselves.

When someone intrudes on another's rights in this day and age, the law will be used to deal with it. If there was an ancestor of mine that was killed by an Irishman, I am not stupid. I would not hold the Irish responsible today. If a portion of our citizens feel they are not being treated properly here, go bACK TO THEIR NATIVE COUNTRY.

I know what you're saying, but i'm trying to find solutions to heal the open festering wound. Ignoring it or getting defensive, won't make it go away. It has to be confronted.

Make an official Government-sponsored declaration of acknowledgement and atonement. It could help African Americans forgive and find some closure. Let's try it, what do we have to lose?

 

[bripat9643]

Would you support it? Do you think it would help heal the deep wounds? Maybe an official Government-sponsored acknowledgement and atonement could lead to reconciliation.

Most African Americans still feel anger and sorrow over how they've been treated. It does seem like an open festering wound. Maybe a kind official gesture could help African Americans forgive and get some kind of closure. What do you think?

The government didn't enslave them. That being said if they want an official "we're sorry" that doesn't include reparations I have no problem with that. Reparations though are a non starter.

After they get the "I'm sorry" they will start using it as a justification for reparations, so no dice.

I agree, some will. But i think most will forgive and find some closure.

You are utterly naive about the left. The only reason they want an apology is so they can use it as a justification for reparations. You are making a mistake if you ever cut the left an inch of slack. They are all ignominious douche bags.

I'm not supporting monetary compensation. But some sort of official acknowledgement and atonement could go a long way. And after that, we can do the same with Native Americans.

Wrong. It wouldn't do a thing. We were told the same thing about electing Obama. So what happened? Race relations have never been worse.

 

[bripat9643]

Would you support it? Do you think it would help heal the deep wounds? Maybe an official Government-sponsored acknowledgement and atonement could lead to reconciliation.

Most African Americans still feel anger and sorrow over how they've been treated. It does seem like an open festering wound. Maybe a kind official gesture could help African Americans forgive and get some kind of closure. What do you think?

I bet african americans are really upset over the last 7.5 years.....tyrone scratches head.

Well in fairness, it doesn't wipe away hundreds of years of brutal treatment.

Are we responsible for that???? They need to pull up their "big boy pants" and make something of themselves.

When someone intrudes on another's rights in this day and age, the law will be used to deal with it. If there was an ancestor of mine that was killed by an Irishman, I am not stupid. I would not hold the Irish responsible today. If a portion of our citizens feel they are not being treated properly here, go bACK TO THEIR NATIVE COUNTRY.

I know what you're saying, but i'm trying to find solutions to heal the open festering wound. Ignoring it or getting defensive, won't make it go away. It has to be confronted.

Make an official Government-sponsored declaration of acknowledgement and atonement. It could help African Americans forgive and find some closure. Let's try it, what do we have to lose?

No. That will only provide ammunition to the race pimps. There is no way to placate these vermin. They aren't interested in solutions. They make a living off of racial division and acrimony.

 

[Kondor3]

...You uh, know that 'Forty-Acres-and-a-Mule happy horseshit' was a Republican idea...

1. Incorrect... it was a Military General's idea; one that the Federal government immediately repudiated when word leaked up from the field.

2. Libs take great pains to tell us that the Pubs of the 1860s are the Dems of today, and vice versa, once the Southern Democrats jumped ship to the GOP in 1964.

Uh --- not exactly, you skipped a lot just as PG did.

Again, political parties are not some static force that never evolves, and I suspect you're smart enough to know that, but just to state the history you're leaving out --- the Republicans of 1860 weren't the Democrats obviously, but they were (a) the Liberals, considerably to the left of Democrats, and (b) the party of activist central government, a legacy of the Whigs that populated them (Lincoln for one) while the Democrats were the Conservatives and the party of "states rights" or "smaller government".

Obviously that's not where we are today, but that didn't shift in 1964. It shifted as the 19th century became the 20th, when the RP gradually abandoned its Liberalism and took on the interests of corporations and the wealthy, and the DP absorbed the Populist movement, culminating in FDR, which is exactly where the black population started voting Democratic and has been ever since. If there's a magnetic reversal of the parties, that's where it is, and deserves to be observed as such.

Now 1964 was simply the final straw in that North-South conflict that aforementioned magnetic pole reversal created and exacerbated; while the DP had moved significantly to the left in the '30s, it still had the bipolar problem of the conservative South hanging on, who hated "Liberals" but hated even more the idea of having anything to do with the "party of Lincoln" that had vanquished and humiliated them (and the only reason they were hanging on), so they teetered in an uneasy alliance often broken by the aforementioned split in 1948 (and a less dramatic breakdown in 1924), and of course George Wallace's endless ranting against "liberals", even putting off a similar run in 1964 at the request of Barry Goldwater, which would have taken all the support Goldwater had (and then offered to be Goldwater's running mate).

So these opposing forces had always been there unresolved, and stayed unresolved until LBJ dispensed with the jellyfish-think and signed the CRA. This prompted Strom Thurmond to do what was for exactly 99 years unthinkable, and become a Republican, far more in line with the South's conservative values anyway. In effect it was simple traditional spite that had kept them hanging on some thirty years to a party that was increasingly foreign to their perceived interests.

Thurmond's move, sudden as it was, was not without a prior indicator --- he had dipped a toe in the water in 1952 when he endorsed Eisenhower, and in retaliation the Democratic Party kicked him off the ballot -- he had to run in his next re-election as a write-in (which he won) --- which is yet one more indication that, even if it was unthinkable to be a Republican, it was more important to be a Son of the South than to be a Democrat.

Sorry but it's never easy to recount this in a quick sound bite. Can't be done.

I'm not sure it's possible to articulate how strongly this emotional tide, the one against "the party of Lincoln", the North in general, and "liberals" --- held on in the South. I saw it in my own lifetime, in no uncertain terms, not so much in my Southern relatives (they were after all relatives) but absolutely in the population surrounding them. When I was little I seriously wondered if we would get shot for being "yankees". The tension was so thick you could have cut it with a knife. And this is nearly a century after the Civil War, which was still even then a topic of everyday conversation.

That's no longer the case today but the significance of the positions Johnson and Thurmond took in 1964 as a cultural purge, aside from the superficially political, probably cannot be overemphasized.

...the first instance of "affirmative action" and a legacy of the Whigs' big-government philosophy...

As I said, 40-acres-and-a-mule were the idea of a general in the field, who had no authority to speak in such terms; something that the central government rushed to repudiate.

Again, you left out that the central government that rushed to repudiate it was that of Andrew Johnson, the Democrat who inherited the office after Lincoln. Which again reflects the characterization of where the parties were at the time as outlined above.

The point being, we gloss over these histories at our peril. Like PG above, pretending a simple naïve dynamic like "duh, the Democrats were the South and pro-slave and they fought the Republicans in the Civil War" is to ignore the entire contexts and roots and dynamics of the entire national history, and thus is to ignore them, and thus is to be condemned to repeat them. I guess my original impetus was to point out that the "40 acres and a mule" - slash - "affirmative action" idea isn't the exclusive-and-forever domain of Democrats but was actually started by Republicans, demonstrating once again that political parties are not static but change with the times.

You were writing for Actual Depth, while I was writing for Short Attention-Span Theater... both have their place...

And, while it's rare that I agree with you... I thoroughly enjoyed that particular recital... well done.

 

[Jackson]

Would you support it? Do you think it would help heal the deep wounds? Maybe an official Government-sponsored acknowledgement and atonement could lead to reconciliation.

Most African Americans still feel anger and sorrow over how they've been treated. It does seem like an open festering wound. Maybe a kind official gesture could help African Americans forgive and get some kind of closure. What do you think?

I bet african americans are really upset over the last 7.5 years.....tyrone scratches head.

Well in fairness, it doesn't wipe away hundreds of years of brutal treatment.

Are we responsible for that???? They need to pull up their "big boy pants" and make something of themselves.

When someone intrudes on another's rights in this day and age, the law will be used to deal with it. If there was an ancestor of mine that was killed by an Irishman, I am not stupid. I would not hold the Irish responsible today. If a portion of our citizens feel they are not being treated properly here, go bACK TO THEIR NATIVE COUNTRY.

I know what you're saying, but i'm trying to find solutions to heal the open festering wound. Ignoring it or getting defensive, won't make it go away. It has to be confronted.

Make an official Government-sponsored declaration of acknowledgement and atonement. It could help African Americans forgive and find some closure. Let's try it, what do we have to lose?

There are TWO shootings that are under investigation. It is quite possible that the police in question were at fault but we won't know it until a thorough investigation takes place. Blacks HAVE to accept that. It is the law!

Do you think a simple, "Gee we are sorry for slavery is going to appease them?" No! That would be the beginning of a platform that they want reparations for things that never happened to them.

Why are you accepting projectiles being thrown at police is alright? Why are you accepting that blacks can ignore the demands of police? There's festering wounds on BOTH sides. The only answer is that we all follow the law and wait for investigations to come to an end before making judgments.

 

[paulitician]

Would you support it? Do you think it would help heal the deep wounds? Maybe an official Government-sponsored acknowledgement and atonement could lead to reconciliation.

Most African Americans still feel anger and sorrow over how they've been treated. It does seem like an open festering wound. Maybe a kind official gesture could help African Americans forgive and get some kind of closure. What do you think?

I bet african americans are really upset over the last 7.5 years.....tyrone scratches head.

Well in fairness, it doesn't wipe away hundreds of years of brutal treatment.

Are we responsible for that???? They need to pull up their "big boy pants" and make something of themselves.

When someone intrudes on another's rights in this day and age, the law will be used to deal with it. If there was an ancestor of mine that was killed by an Irishman, I am not stupid. I would not hold the Irish responsible today. If a portion of our citizens feel they are not being treated properly here, go bACK TO THEIR NATIVE COUNTRY.

I know what you're saying, but i'm trying to find solutions to heal the open festering wound. Ignoring it or getting defensive, won't make it go away. It has to be confronted.

Make an official Government-sponsored declaration of acknowledgement and atonement. It could help African Americans forgive and find some closure. Let's try it, what do we have to lose?

No. That will only provide ammunition to the race pimps. There is no way to placate these vermin. They aren't interested in solutions. They make a living off of racial division and acrimony.

Do it anyway. Hopefully they'll fall by the wayside. I think most African Americans would appreciate it and find some closure.

 

[Pogo]

...You uh, know that 'Forty-Acres-and-a-Mule happy horseshit' was a Republican idea...

1. Incorrect... it was a Military General's idea; one that the Federal government immediately repudiated when word leaked up from the field.

2. Libs take great pains to tell us that the Pubs of the 1860s are the Dems of today, and vice versa, once the Southern Democrats jumped ship to the GOP in 1964.

Uh --- not exactly, you skipped a lot just as PG did.

Again, political parties are not some static force that never evolves, and I suspect you're smart enough to know that, but just to state the history you're leaving out --- the Republicans of 1860 weren't the Democrats obviously, but they were (a) the Liberals, considerably to the left of Democrats, and (b) the party of activist central government, a legacy of the Whigs that populated them (Lincoln for one) while the Democrats were the Conservatives and the party of "states rights" or "smaller government".

Obviously that's not where we are today, but that didn't shift in 1964. It shifted as the 19th century became the 20th, when the RP gradually abandoned its Liberalism and took on the interests of corporations and the wealthy, and the DP absorbed the Populist movement, culminating in FDR, which is exactly where the black population started voting Democratic and has been ever since. If there's a magnetic reversal of the parties, that's where it is, and deserves to be observed as such.

Now 1964 was simply the final straw in that North-South conflict that aforementioned magnetic pole reversal created and exacerbated; while the DP had moved significantly to the left in the '30s, it still had the bipolar problem of the conservative South hanging on, who hated "Liberals" but hated even more the idea of having anything to do with the "party of Lincoln" that had vanquished and humiliated them (and the only reason they were hanging on), so they teetered in an uneasy alliance often broken by the aforementioned split in 1948 (and a less dramatic breakdown in 1924), and of course George Wallace's endless ranting against "liberals", even putting off a similar run in 1964 at the request of Barry Goldwater, which would have taken all the support Goldwater had (and then offered to be Goldwater's running mate).

So these opposing forces had always been there unresolved, and stayed unresolved until LBJ dispensed with the jellyfish-think and signed the CRA. This prompted Strom Thurmond to do what was for exactly 99 years unthinkable, and become a Republican, far more in line with the South's conservative values anyway. In effect it was simple traditional spite that had kept them hanging on some thirty years to a party that was increasingly foreign to their perceived interests.

Thurmond's move, sudden as it was, was not without a prior indicator --- he had dipped a toe in the water in 1952 when he endorsed Eisenhower, and in retaliation the Democratic Party kicked him off the ballot -- he had to run in his next re-election as a write-in (which he won) --- which is yet one more indication that, even if it was unthinkable to be a Republican, it was more important to be a Son of the South than to be a Democrat.

Sorry but it's never easy to recount this in a quick sound bite. Can't be done.

I'm not sure it's possible to articulate how strongly this emotional tide, the one against "the party of Lincoln", the North in general, and "liberals" --- held on in the South. I saw it in my own lifetime, in no uncertain terms, not so much in my Southern relatives (they were after all relatives) but absolutely in the population surrounding them. When I was little I seriously wondered if we would get shot for being "yankees". The tension was so thick you could have cut it with a knife. And this is nearly a century after the Civil War, which was still even then a topic of everyday conversation.

That's no longer the case today but the significance of the positions Johnson and Thurmond took in 1964 as a cultural purge, aside from the superficially political, probably cannot be overemphasized.

...the first instance of "affirmative action" and a legacy of the Whigs' big-government philosophy...

As I said, 40-acres-and-a-mule were the idea of a general in the field, who had no authority to speak in such terms; something that the central government rushed to repudiate.

Again, you left out that the central government that rushed to repudiate it was that of Andrew Johnson, the Democrat who inherited the office after Lincoln. Which again reflects the characterization of where the parties were at the time as outlined above.

The point being, we gloss over these histories at our peril. Like PG above, pretending a simple naïve dynamic like "duh, the Democrats were the South and pro-slave and they fought the Republicans in the Civil War" is to ignore the entire contexts and roots and dynamics of the entire national history, and thus is to ignore them, and thus is to be condemned to repeat them. I guess my original impetus was to point out that the "40 acres and a mule" - slash - "affirmative action" idea isn't the exclusive-and-forever domain of Democrats but was actually started by Republicans, demonstrating once again that political parties are not static but change with the times.

You were writing for Actual Depth, while I was writing for Short Attention-Span Theater... both have their place...

And, while it's rare that I agree with you... I thoroughly enjoyed that particular recital... well done.

Thank you Sahib.

It does fascinate me to dig up all this stuff we never got told in school, but I think it's also essential that we do, for the Short Attention Span Theater bestows nothing deeper than post 103.

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

I know what you're saying, but i'm trying to find solutions to heal the open festering wound. Ignoring it or getting defensive, won't make it go away. It has to be confronted.

Make an official Government-sponsored declaration of acknowledgement and atonement. It could help African Americans forgive and find some closure. Let's try it, what do we have to lose?

A hell of a lot of money, like we've lost already.

Atonement for what anyway? No blacks today have ever been enslaved. No blacks today even knew anybody that was enslaved.

 

[paulitician]

It's about forgiveness and reconciliation. But how do we get there? That's the big question.

 

[PredFan]

I have a relative who died in the Civil War fighting to free the slaves. When will I get reparations for that?

 

[PredFan]

It's about forgiveness an reconciliation. But how do we get there? That's the big question.

Forgiveness and reconciliation are made up issues that have no basis in the real world.

 

[paulitician]

I know what you're saying, but i'm trying to find solutions to heal the open festering wound. Ignoring it or getting defensive, won't make it go away. It has to be confronted.

Make an official Government-sponsored declaration of acknowledgement and atonement. It could help African Americans forgive and find some closure. Let's try it, what do we have to lose?

A hell of a lot of money, like we've lost already.

Atonement for what anyway? No blacks today have ever been enslaved. No blacks today even knew anybody that was enslaved.

I'm not advocating monetary compensation. And most African Americans would say they've been enslaved long since after Slavery was abolished. In fact, you can go back only a few decades to the 50's and 60's to see where they're coming from.

 

[Jackson]

I bet african americans are really upset over the last 7.5 years.....tyrone scratches head.

Well in fairness, it doesn't wipe away hundreds of years of brutal treatment.

Are we responsible for that???? They need to pull up their "big boy pants" and make something of themselves.

When someone intrudes on another's rights in this day and age, the law will be used to deal with it. If there was an ancestor of mine that was killed by an Irishman, I am not stupid. I would not hold the Irish responsible today. If a portion of our citizens feel they are not being treated properly here, go bACK TO THEIR NATIVE COUNTRY.

I know what you're saying, but i'm trying to find solutions to heal the open festering wound. Ignoring it or getting defensive, won't make it go away. It has to be confronted.

Make an official Government-sponsored declaration of acknowledgement and atonement. It could help African Americans forgive and find some closure. Let's try it, what do we have to lose?

No. That will only provide ammunition to the race pimps. There is no way to placate these vermin. They aren't interested in solutions. They make a living off of racial division and acrimony.

Do it anyway. Hopefully they'll fall by the wayside. I think most African Americans would appreciate it and find some closure.

Are you watching the news???? We should make a declaration that the law applies to both black and white. BlackLivesMatter should apologize and agree that ALLLIVESMATTER. It could help all Americans forgive and find some closure.

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

I'm not advocating monetary compensation. And most African Americans would say they've been enslaved long since after Slavery was abolished. In fact, you go back only a few decades to the 50's and 60's to see where they're coming from.

I grew up in the 60's so I know exactly where they are coming from. So what kind of compensation are you talking about here, and why should I be the one to compensate? Just because I'm white?

 

[paulitician]

It's about forgiveness an reconciliation. But how do we get there? That's the big question.

Forgiveness and reconciliation are made up issues that have no basis in the real world.

I don't know, Australia did something like it with the Aborigines. It doesn't solve all the problems, but it's like getting a new start to things.

 

[Jackson]

I know what you're saying, but i'm trying to find solutions to heal the open festering wound. Ignoring it or getting defensive, won't make it go away. It has to be confronted.

Make an official Government-sponsored declaration of acknowledgement and atonement. It could help African Americans forgive and find some closure. Let's try it, what do we have to lose?

A hell of a lot of money, like we've lost already.

Atonement for what anyway? No blacks today have ever been enslaved. No blacks today even knew anybody that was enslaved.

I'm not advocating monetary compensation. And most African Americans would say they've been enslaved long since after Slavery was abolished. In fact, you can go back only a few decades to the 50's and 60's to see where they're coming from.

I know many blacks that have made something of their lives and never needed excuses to be a failure. What would M.L. King think if the protesting blacks today? He would be very disappointed.

 

[paulitician]

Well in fairness, it doesn't wipe away hundreds of years of brutal treatment.

Are we responsible for that???? They need to pull up their "big boy pants" and make something of themselves.

When someone intrudes on another's rights in this day and age, the law will be used to deal with it. If there was an ancestor of mine that was killed by an Irishman, I am not stupid. I would not hold the Irish responsible today. If a portion of our citizens feel they are not being treated properly here, go bACK TO THEIR NATIVE COUNTRY.

I know what you're saying, but i'm trying to find solutions to heal the open festering wound. Ignoring it or getting defensive, won't make it go away. It has to be confronted.

Make an official Government-sponsored declaration of acknowledgement and atonement. It could help African Americans forgive and find some closure. Let's try it, what do we have to lose?

No. That will only provide ammunition to the race pimps. There is no way to placate these vermin. They aren't interested in solutions. They make a living off of racial division and acrimony.

Do it anyway. Hopefully they'll fall by the wayside. I think most African Americans would appreciate it and find some closure.

Are you watching the news???? We should make a declaration that the law applies to both black and white. BlackLivesMatter should apologize and agree that ALLLIVESMATTER. It could help all Americans forgive and find some closure.

I hear ya, but that doesn't really address this issue.