Critics : Slavery apology is move to reparations

Annapolis (Map, News) - Proposals asking Maryland and Annapolis to apologize for slavery will lead to reparations, critics say.

“It’s a bad idea because people are pressing it as an interim step with the end goal of reparations,” said Larry Helminiak, chairman of the Carroll County Central Republican Committee. “The thing that’s wrong with reparations is that there are a whole lot of people who are not native to Africa that taxpayers in Maryland could be paying.”

Figuring out who deserves financial compensation from the state for their ancestors’ bondage would be impossible to determine, he said.

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Read more on Maryland's slavery history

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Government-approved reparations remain unlikely, officials say.

Sam Shropshire, an Annapolis alderman who introduced a resolution that the city apologize for participating in the slave trade, said the measure wasn’t about reparations but encouraging dialogue about the area’s painful past.

“To ignore is ignorance,” he said. “This is not intended to uncover past sins or reopen old wounds, but to bring about further racial conciliation in a city that’s already made strives.”

Helminiak said he wondered why the state and city should apologize “for something that happened 200 years ago” and “something we didn’t do.”

“The 40 acres and a mule, they didn’t get that, so first comes an apology,” and then reparations, he said. “And where do you classify Tiger Woods? Does he pay himself?”

Take the poll

» In an unscientific poll of online readers at examiner.com, 76.22 percent of respondents said the state should not apologize; 19.49 percent of respondents said the state should; and 4.29 percent of respondents said they didn’t have an opinion. As of Friday evening, a total of 513 votes were cast. Take the poll.

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