Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes

We cannot erase what has been done. We can apologize for it. We can express our outrage. We can say to the American people and to the people of the world, this is not our way and we do not condone it, but we cannot change it and we cannot erase it.

Last year the National Sorry Day Committee consulted with stolen generations people in every State and Territory, and concluded that programmes set up in response to the Bringing Them Home Report are reaching only a small fraction of those they are intended to help.

I have made the most profound apology in front of the Truth Commission and on other occasions about the injustices which were wrought by apartheid.

As nations we should also commit afresh to righting past wrongs. In Australia we began this recently with the first Australians - the oldest continuing culture in human history. On behalf of the Australian Parliament, this year I offered an apology to indigenous Australians for the wrongs they had suffered in the past.

The justice of our cause must be reflected in the manner in which we rectify the crimes of the past.

Without white South Africa realizing what it had done - and on the basis of that realization having the courage to ask for forgiveness - there can really be no significant movement.

I have to say that it's very few countries that are willing to look back at its past and apologize for its act, or make amends for its act, as the United States had one.

To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past I extend my sincere thoughts and deep sympathy. With the benefit of historical hindsight we can all see things which we would wish had been done differently or not at all.

Now is the time for the U.S. and the nations of Western Europe who engaged in the slave trade throughout this hemisphere to come forward in a positive way to assist in undoing the harm that was caused by their past colonial policies in the hemisphere.

I am not very moved by historical apologies.

The country in which reparations actually happen is a very different one than the one we live in.

The wounds of my country will heal after the troubles of anarchy and bloody revolution. The peaceful Canadian will see happiness and liberty on the St. Lawrence. Everything converges towards that end, even the executions; the blood and tears spilled on the altar of liberty today of watering the roots of the tree on which will fly the flag marked with the two stars of the Canadas.

This agency participated in the ethnic cleansing that befell the Western tribes …. By accepting the legacy we accept the moral responsibility of putting things right.

I don’t want to see the issue of Black reparations for slavery close the door to historic memory and continuing responsibility.

I, ______ do solemnly swear, (or affirm) in the presence of Almighty God, that I will henceforth faithfully support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Union of the States thereunder, and that I will, in like manner, abide by and faithfully support all laws and proclamations which have been made during the existing rebellion with reference to the emancipation of slaves. So help me God.

You cannot turn the clock back, you cannot give the island of Manhattan back to the indigenous, but on the other hand, you can ensure that the indigenous can maintain their way of life.

I think what history has done to Jewish people, frankly, cannot be made good by giving them a piece of land.

For anyone who has ever asked why the U.S. needs to address the issue of reparations for its history of slavery, Donald Trump is why. He is the living embodiment of America's unresolved issues.

I do think that some form of reparations for the descendants of American slavery would go a long way.

Only when we ensure that the mistakes of our past are not the vision for our future, will we truly have achieved justice.

The Canadian government has had a field day apologising for past policies towards a series of ethnic groups: Italian, Ukrainian, Sikh, Chinese, Japanese and Jews.

We must turn the page on the dark parts of our history.

To operate with the aspiration of color-blindness in a country whose central operating mechanism for centuries has been race belies the logic of race-neutral public policy. Public policy must account for the historic and intentional pillaging of resources experienced by black Americans.

Until affirmative action is described and understood as one mechanism by which to make amends for historical wrongdoing against members of marginalized communities, it will fail to meaningfully address the inequality that exists as a direct result of federal policy.

Does that mean that all vestiges of past discrimination would be eliminated, that the income gap or the wealth gap or the education gap [between Afro-Americans and white] would be erased in five years or 10 years? Probably not, and so this is obviously a discussion we've had before when you talk about something like reparations.