The politics/optics of apology

On November 16, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologized for a long-gone immigration practice that resulted in the migration of thousands of British children to Australia and Canada in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. With the apology for “not providing what was promised” British home children are the latest to join the ranks of the officially victimized. Ironically, given that the apology was intended to highlight the suffering of a particular group of migrants, the Australian government’s intervention, is a giant, flashing neon reminder that we are all victims of liberal democratic governments that care more about their own agendas, then those of their citizens and non-citizens. We don’t elect politicians to make apologies, and yet they do it anyways.

The past three decades have witnessed a flurry of apologies from Western governments for offensives as diverse as the Irish potato famine, African slavery, wartime internment in the United States and Canada and wrongful prosecutions.  Recently, the government of Alberta apologized for giving the Calgary Flames the swine flu vaccine before everyone else. Only in the last example did the same government responsible for the wrongdoing, actually assume responsibility with an apology. All the other governments were apologizing for somebody else. Yet no one has yet to apologize for the fact that is the very institution of government that leads to harm. It would be awesome to see someone apologize for being a coercive nation-state bent on nothing else but securing and safeguarding power. Somehow that seems like an unlikely possibility.

But if governments aren’t apologizing for the real thing, why apologize at all? More pointedly, why apologize for something your predecessors did? Why assume responsibility for something that you didn’t do? It’s akin to me apologizing for a racist ancestor. Politics is obviously a factor. Apologies are popular with interests groups representing the personally aggrieved, or people whose families were subjected to harm. The idea is that apologies can heal wounds. Campaigner Art Miki talked about finally feeling Canadian after the Mulroney government apologized for the wartime internment of the Japanese Canadians.

Certainly, apologies can put an end to potentially damaging political campaigns by pressure groups for redress. The Chinese Canadian community fought for decades for an apology for the punitive head tax that fed the coffers of the Canadian state full at the turn of the century.

But by apologizing for everything under the sun, governments are also trying to put an end to history, as championed by Francis Fukuyama in his book of the same title. Drawing on the philosopher Hegel’s work on the nature of history and historical practice, Fukuyama argued that liberal democracies are as good as it gets in terms of political systems and claimed that with the end of the Cold War, the great ideological battles were over. Liberal democracies had won and therefore history as progress had reached its ultimate pinnacle. Similarly, apologetic governments seem to be banking on the possibility that by making an official apology they can wash their hands of history. Notice the recently released Canadian Citizenship Guide. The document acknowledges that Japanese Canadians were interned during the Second World War and that aboriginal children in residential schools suffered abuse but the document also notes the government apologies issued in 1989 and 2008 respectively. It is all very neat and tidy.

Jason Kenney, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, has made it clear that his government will not be apologizing for the home children who came to Canada through government programs. Instead, Kenney is proposing a Year of the Home Child in 2010. What tone this year might take is unclear. It is a fine line between commemoration and celebration. If done properly, it will be an educational year. And as such, it won’t be about the end of history but about the very real impact of historical events on Canadians and Canada today. And there’s no need to apologize for that.