Suddenly, Sen. Sam Brownback wants to apologize to African Americans and Native Americans for generations of suffering. Such attempts have been made by Congress before, but the twist here is that Brownback, who is an extreme right-wing politician, is running for president in 2008.
The resolution, authored by Brownback and Tennessee Rep. Steve Cohen, “acknowledges that the U.S. government ‘violated many of the treaties ratified by Congress and other diplomatic agreements with Indian tribes’ while taking actions that caused ‘immense harm’ to native peoples, including forced removal, relocation and extermination.”
Brownback has a 20% rating (lower than Harry Reid’s!) from the ACLU, which means that he has gone out of his way to deny civil liberties to citizens, many of whom, of course, are minorities. He voted to end special funding to minority-owned businesses and against setting aside highway funds for minorities.
Brownback voted against maintaining the right of habeus corpus in death penalty appeals, has consistently voted against public education, and–despite his talk about Native Americans’ stewardship of the land–has consistently voted against conserving the environment (he has a 0% rating from the League of Conservation Voters).
And while it’s nice that hypocrites in Congress are falling all over themselves to apologize to African Americans and Native Americans, when is Congress going to consider apologizing to women? We were burned as witches, denied birth control, denied the vote, forbidden to take most jobs, forbidden to enroll in many schools (until the 1970s), had genital mutilation performed on us (until the late 1970s), denied credit, given no protection against spousal abuse, denied the right to divorce, placed in psychiatric hospitals for asking questions or speaking our minds, sexually abused and assaulted in the workplace, denied the right to participate in most sports…the list goes on and on.
The truth, of course, is that “apologies” like Brownback’s are shallow and offensive, but at least Congress considers African Americans and Native Americans politically important enough to pander to.
