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Apology

LOS ANGELES, April 13 /PRNewswire/ -- Let's face it -- the world is in
a mess! The younger generation will inherit that mess, what can we do
to help them? At 90 years of age, I'm living on "the house's money"
and I don't intend to buy "green bananas." But what about the kids who
will replace us? What can we do to help them?

I wrote a book that I dedicated to my grandchildren and the younger
generation. They must know now that our country needs to take
inventory. What causes suicide bombers, corruption in our top business
officials, inefficient bureaucrats that can't deal with Katrina,
deficits, schools, border patrols? Lots of problems.

I don't have any easy solutions to offer but I can suggest the goal
that we must strive to reach -- a strong nation filled with caring
citizens. Let's not try to spread democracy by military might, but by
a good example.

Let's start by apologizing for our mistakes. First, we need an apology
for slavery. Recently, the Jews celebrated the holiday, Passover. That
commemorates the time when we were slaves in Egypt -- over 3,000 years
ago.

It was a much shorter time ago that human beings were wrenched from
their families and their lands, put into the hold of a ship and
carried to a far off country to become slaves. Thousands of young
Americans were killed in a war to end slavery, but did the Civil War
end it? Cruelty and discrimination existed long after the war. The
examples are too numerous to mention. It is less now, but it still
exists.

I suggest that our offspring work to reach a national apology with
that heinous error. The apology should be accompanied by a "Marshall
Plan" in Africa. Let's try to help eliminate the poverty, starvation,
genocide, AIDS that plagues the country where we captured our slaves.

Let the world see that we really care about others and have the
courage to admit our mistakes.

I am encouraged to see that North Carolina is leading this apology.
The State Senate expressed "regret for the practice of slavery and
apologized for promoting legalized discrimination." Larry Shaw told
his fellow senators, "When you dehumanize a human being it's one of
the worst things you can do."

I hope our future citizens will follow up and lead to a national
apology for all African-Americans. There must be a national museum of
that period to remind the world of man's inhumanity to man.

Maybe 3,000 years from now, the African-Americans will celebrate a
holiday, like Passover, to remind them that they were once slaves and
their Moses, Martin Luther King Jr. helped to free them. SOURCE
Annabelle Stevens Public Relations for Kirk Douglas

-0- 04/13/2007