The General Assembly this year passed a resolution acknowledging "profound regret" for the enslavement of African Americans and the exploitation of Native Americans, and to "call for reconciliation among all Virginians." Pretty tame stuff, given the oppressive conditions that blacks and American Indians faced in the commonwealth. Mind you, this resolution is symbolic, and comes nearly 150 years after slavery ended. Nor does it mention, even tangentially, the issue of reparations.

Speaking of apologies, the North Carolina Senate on Thursday unanimously approved a measure expressing "profound contrition" for that state legislature's role in promoting slavery and legalized segregation.

Overseas, the Japanese prime minister recently caught flak for his faux apologies about that nation's practice of forcing women to work as sex slaves during World War II. Shinzo Abe used the term "comfort women," a despicable euphemism that belies the involuntary nature faced by as many as 200,000 wartime women, most from Korea and China.

Certainly, in my view, the longer it takes to give an apology probably lessens its value. In Earl Washington's case, it would perhaps mean something more because he's still alive. But do such public mea culpas even make a difference?

They can, Zehr said in an interview. But they must be part of a process that includes naming the harm, expressing sincere regret and committing to avoiding the specific bad acts in the future.

Zehr also said such statements of contrition can make a difference on scales much smaller than the state or national level. For example, he works with crime victims and their offenders, and apologies often provide a measure of healing. "It's amazing sometimes what an apology means to victims," he told me in an interview. "It's not everything. But it's incredible when somebody takes responsibility and genuinely apologizes."

Which got me to thinking: Do I really care, a century and a half later, that the commonwealth has apologized for slavery, even though it ended in 1865, and even though race relations have progressed dramatically from their troubled past?

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